الأربعاء، 31 يوليو 2019
Fed Cuts Key Rate in Its First Reduction in More Than a Decade
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Thoughts and Strategies for Handling Ethical Shopping Dilemmas
A few weeks ago, while Amazon was running its Prime Day event, a few readers contacted me and asked me not to talk about the event in any detail because of ethical concerns they had about Amazon and their business practices. I wasn’t planning on covering the sale with much depth anyway, so it wasn’t an issue, but it did leave me thinking about the issue of balancing ethical shopping with good personal finance practices, an issue that’s been dangling in my mind for years.
I attempted to make a list of ideas, principles, and strategies regarding this difficult topic and, after a while, I realized that the core ideas I have to share actually just make up a fairly small list, so let’s just dig right in, shall we?
Everyone has different ethics and values, so it’s very difficult to make broad recommendations about ethical shopping. The reality is that different people care about different things and value different things more highly than others. We all largely agree on the set of things that are right and wrong, but which thing is more right? Which thing is more wrong? We can argue about that forever, especially when we’ve come to a consensus on some of the true black and white issues.
Take the Amazon issue that spurred this article, for example. Some readers were bothered by issues with Amazon’s warehouses and employee treatment. Others were bothered by the waste generated by shipping.
Those are both valid concerns, but they’re not necessarily high priority concerns for everyone. If I were to offer a blanket statement of “don’t shop at Amazon for these ethical reasons,” that turns the issue from good practical personal finance advice into promotion of my own ethical views. I am far more interested in giving people practical tools so they can make their own judgments than imposing my judgments on others.
So, what are those practical tools?
Know who you’re buying from. If you’re giving your money to a particular business, either a retailer or a manufacturer, it’s worth your time to spend a few moments learning about who you’re buying from in terms of the issues you care about.
If you do a bit of investigation into any sufficiently large company, you’ll likely find some issues that concern you. The question is whether or not those issues concern you enough to not be a customer of that business or that manufacturer, and that’s up to you and your personal ethics.
There are a handful of companies out there that I never want to shop from or own products made by them for specific ethical reasons, but my reasons for doing so are in line with my own values and the things I care about. I also have a second tier of companies I prefer not to do business with unless there’s not a reasonable option, and, again, my reasons are my own. I am not a perfect database or repository of information about companies, nor do my values likely perfectly match your own.
That being said, I understand that most companies out there do have some sort of ethical issue if you look close enough, whether it’s something related to how they treat employees or how they distribute products, and once a company grows to a reasonable size, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll find complaints about their behavior. It’s very difficult to find a “perfect” company. You simply have to decide for yourself what level of corporate behavior you’re okay with, and that varies a lot from person to person.
Research the company and make up your own mind. Don’t expect perfection, but it’s perfectly reasonable to have some companies that you don’t wish to give money to, and understand that other people may have other distinctions and other issues they prioritize. Also, recognize that one giant corporation with some bad spots on their reputation may not be any worse than another giant corporation with a more clean reputation; they may just have worse public relations and marketing.
I actually prefer a different approach.
Rather than focusing your energy on taking your spending away from an unethical business, focus your energy on taking spending to an ethical business. I am far more interested in companies that do things well than I am in companies that do things poorly. I would prefer to take my business to a company that treats employees well than take my business away from a company that doesn’t. I am less interested in boycotting than in simply choosing to spend my money at a great business.
For example, I like to see companies that make reliable products. I like to see companies that treat their employees well. I like to see companies that take solid steps toward environmental responsibility. I like to see companies that expect some of these standards from companies in their supply chain.
To me, this is a positive approach to ethical spending. If you have $X to spend and you take that $X to a business with practices you’re happy with and use it to buy products from a manufacturer you’re happy with, then that’s a much better approach than taking money away from a company you’re unhappy with and merely spending it with a similar company that may be doing the same things but you don’t know about them.
In other words, I don’t usually try to go out of my way to avoid companies with mediocre or even somewhat negative reputations. Instead, I try to take my business to businesses with positive reputations if they’re available to me.
But what about the cost? Often, buying from a more ethical company with good employee and business practices and good products means that the sticker price is going to be higher. How does one solve that issue?
My approach is simple. A personal commitment to spending less overall and being careful about your purchases means that you have more breathing room to be ethical about your purchase. Part of the reason that people tend to balk at paying anything higher than the lowest possible price for something is that they want to simply buy more and more things. If you pay $80 for something at one retailer versus $100 at another retailer, that’s $20 in your pocket. If two retailers charged the same amount, then, sure, the person is likely to go to the more “ethical” retailer, but if one retailer offers lower prices, that means they can fill up their cart with more stuff or have more cash left over for other things.
But what if your approach to spending wasn’t to fill your cart up with more stuff? What if you ideally didn’t want to buy new things at all unless they filled a genuine need in your life? What if you consistently used a strong mental toolbox for avoiding unnecessary purchases? That would leave you with a much greater ability to be ethical in your shopping behavior.
In the end, I am going to suggest one single concept that I think is a very strong idea in terms of ethical buying for almost everyone.
When in doubt, buy from the more local source so that money stays in your community and thus supports other local services. Buy from the business that’s owned by a local person that employs lots of local people. Buy from the smaller chain that’s only got a handful of locations, all in your state, instead of shopping at MegaloMart.
That kind of choice might cost you a little more, but it means that a much larger portion of your spending dollar stays in your community and state. The taxes paid by those employees and business owners are going to go toward things that help you, and it’s going to make sure that people stay employed in your town.
Not sure what’s truly local? This circles back to doing the research into who you’re buying from and what you’re buying. Find out about those businesses. Who runs them? Do they operate ethically? Understand that no business is perfect, but look mostly toward businesses that try to operate in a good manner rather than away from businesses that you find negative reports about.
Good luck!
The post Thoughts and Strategies for Handling Ethical Shopping Dilemmas appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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How to Build a High-Converting FAQ Page on Your Website
FAQ pages represent a crucial component of the customer conversion funnel. Anyone who lands on this page has already identified the need for whatever you’re selling and is now entering the consideration phase of the purchase process.
Your FAQ page can provide them with the information required to finalize their buying decision.
However, I see so many websites that overlook the importance of this landing page. I read lots of FAQ pages that sound more like an afterthought, as opposed to a page that’s been designed to drive conversions.
FAQ pages must have a purpose. Don’t just add one to your website because you feel like it’s a requirement and you want to fill up space.
While most websites should have a FAQ page, yours could be doing more harm than good if it doesn’t have any clear intentions. It’s possible that your FAQ page is driving people away from buying, as opposed to drawing them in. Obviously, you don’t want that.
For those of you who are currently neglecting your FAQ page, it’s time to make changes. The rest of you might not have an existing FAQ page and want to add one from scratch.
Regardless of your situation, you’ve come to the right place. I’ll show you how to address common problems with FAQ pages and learn how to optimize them for conversions.
Ask the “right” questions
I’ve seen plenty of FAQ pages that have a great design, layout, and optimal user experience. But to be blunt, the questions are awful.
Somewhere along the line, so many sites have lost the meaning behind frequently asked questions.
Anything related to where your company was founded, how many employees you have, or where your CEO was born does not belong here. You can include details about the history of your company on your about us page. I have a separate guide on how to create an impactful about us page on your website.
But adding irrelevant or useless questions and answers to your FAQ page is just going to confuse your visitors.
They’ll end up having a more difficult time finding information that will answer their actual question. So you need to have questions that are more related to conversions.
Check out some of the questions on the Allbirds FAQ page.
This company has an ecommerce platform for selling shoes direct to consumer. So all of the questions are intended to drive sales.
They have questions related to how the shoes fit, sizing, returns, exchanges, refunds, and shipping. All of these are important to the consumer buying decision.
Allbirds does not offer half sizes in their shoes, which is definitely something that might throw some of their shoppers off. But they have questions directly made to address this potential concern.
Do you offer half sizes? Will the shoes stretch? Do the shoes fit a wide foot?
These are all logical questions that someone would ask before buying. You want your customers to feel confident when they’re shopping.
Buying a product, such as sneakers, online can be a challenge. Customers don’t get a chance to try on different sizes, walk around, and see what feels good like they would in a store.
But Allbirds alleviates any uneasiness by asking the right questions on this FAQ page.
If you’re still unsure about how to ask the “right” questions, just see what your customers are actually asking. Take a look at questions and comments from:
- Submission forms
- Customer emails
- Live chat
- Social media comments and messages
- Phone support
Keep a database to track all of these questions and group similar ones. If lots of people are asking the same thing, it definitely belongs on your FAQ page.
Simplify the navigation
Like the rest of your website, Your FAQ page must be frictionless.
You might have great questions and answers, but if your site visitors can’t find them, then your FAQ page is going to fail.
Do your best to try and emulate an in-person shopping experience. If a customer was in a physical store, all they would need to do is find an employee and ask their question. Sure, sometimes that employee might direct the customer to another department or something like that. But in the end, the question is answered directly and timely.
Don’t make people hunt for answers on your website.
If the format of your FAQ page is just questions followed by answers repeating all down the page, visitors will have to keep scrolling to find what they’re looking for. This is not ideal. They might even overlook their question, which wouldn’t solve their problem.
Take a look at how Microsoft simplifies things on their FAQ page for software downloads.
Right away, you’ll see that there are two categories to choose from.
So the website visitor can narrow the results depending on if their question is related to Windows or Office. That way any Office questions won’t have irrelevant Windows questions that need to be sifted through.
When a user clicks on one of the options, the menu expands, without redirecting to a new page.
Here’s what it looks like if I click on Office.
All 12 questions can be read without having to scroll. This makes it extremely easy for people to find exactly what they’re looking for.
Now, imagine if there was an answer directly below each of these questions. It would take up probably four or five times the amount of space on the page.
That layout would be much more challenging and require additional scrolling and text to read through. But this approach by Microsoft is clean and simple.
If you want to know something specific, like how long it takes for software to download, just click on the question and the answer will expand below it.
Frictionless.
If a site visitor has multiple questions, it’s still easy for them to navigate and find answers to everything.
Here’s the way you need to look at your FAQ page. If a site visitor has a question and it does not get answered, they aren’t going to convert. It’s that simple.
So if you approach your FAQ page trying to design the navigation in a way that’s optimized for user-experience, then it will increase the chances that people will find what they’re looking for.
Keep the answers short
Another common mistake that I see made on FAQ pages is the length of the answers. Everything needs to be clear and concise.
For the most part, your FAQ page should be fairly broad. You want everything to appeal to as many people as possible.
So you won’t have super-specific questions that require in-depth explanations.
But even for a general question that most people would ask, you still need to keep the answer concise. You don’t need to answer everything. Certain details can be left out.
I’d rather see FAQ pages with 30 questions that have short answers, as opposed to 15 questions with long answers. So if you currently have long paragraphs on your FAQ page, see if you can take one question and break it down into two or three.
This will provide a much better user experience.
Visitors shouldn’t have to read through an essay or short blog post to get a simple answer.
Let’s say that a website visitor is able to locate their question and ends up reading through a long answer. They might end up having additional questions, based on the length and details of that answer. You don’t want that to happen.
So sharpen your writing skills and only include the most important information related to the question.
Check out this example from the PayPal FAQ page.
Look at the first question—what is PayPal?
Talk about a loaded question. PayPal is so many different things. They offer services for businesses, consumers, and websites. They could probably answer this question in 50 pages if they wanted to, going into details comparing PayPal and Stripe for ecommerce.
But no, they take a much simpler approach. The entire answer is just three sentences.
If they got into all of the specific details of PayPal, what it is, what it does, and who it’s for, it would only confuse the initial question. The answer above is clear, concise, and still answers the question.
Offer added support
While a FAQ page should be written to help most of your website visitors with broad questions, sometimes it’s just not enough.
No matter how good your questions are, how great the answers are, or how simple the format is, some people will still need additional assistance. That’s OK.
If it’s going to take a little bit of extra support to get people to convert, then give it to them.
Just make sure that all support options are available. Here’s how Samsung approaches this on their FAQ page.
The first thing I noticed when I landed on this page was the list of categories. Samsung is a huge company, so it makes sense for them to start this way.
But as I stayed on the screen without making any actions for a while, this pop-up window appeared prompting a live chat session.
They obviously have this triggered to appear whenever someone doesn’t scroll or click since the implication would be that they can’t find what they’re looking for. I love this approach.
It’s much better than forcing the site visitor to go back and find another support page or make them go through countless questions manually until they find an answer. That’s just too many added steps.
Put a live chat window directly on your FAQ page.
Furthermore, Samsung has a phone support button in view at all times as well, as I pointed out in the screenshot above. So the customer has options.
Can’t find a solution on the FAQ page? No problem. Just pick up the phone or speak with one of our live chat representatives. This strategy should be incorporated into your FAQ page if you want to drive as many conversions as possible. The extra effort will go a long way.
Optimize for SEO
When you’re crafting a high-converting FAQ page, you need to keep the big picture of your website in mind. Nothing screams big picture louder than SEO.
For the most part, FAQ pages are designed with the idea that a visitor will land somewhere on your website, have a question, and then navigate to the FAQ page. In many cases, this very well might be the case.
However, you can set up your FAQ page to get traffic directly from organic searches as well.
So every question doesn’t need to be brand-specific. For example, let’s say your website offered web hosting plans for small businesses. Your FAQ page could ask, what is shared web hosting?
This question isn’t exclusive to one of your products or services. But it’s definitely something that one of your prospective customers will search for online. Your question could end up in the SERPs, driving more traffic to your website, and ultimately leading to conversions.
A great tip for finding SEO questions is to just use Google.
Let’s say you sell sneakers. Type in keywords that you’re trying to rank for, like “sneakers for travel,” and then scroll to the bottom to view related searches.
Based on these search suggestions, you can get SEO-inspired questions for your FAQ page.
So you can add questions related to shoes for walking all day or stylish shoes for Europe.
Another way to improve your SEO is by creating dedicated landing pages for your questions. Now, this slightly contradicts what we talked about earlier in terms of user experience. Redirecting people every time they want to see a new question could be a bit annoying.
However, these dedicated landing pages that interlink with each other can give you a boost in terms of SEO, if your website architecture and sitemap are optimized properly.
Conclusion
FAQ pages are critical resources for your website visitors.
Anyone who lands on this page is on the verge of converting. Sometimes getting a question answered is all it takes for them to finalize a decision.
So stop wasting time and space with FAQ pages that don’t add real value to your site.
Focus on questions that are related to conversions. Keep the user experience in mind by simplifying your design and writing concise answers. Offer additional support options for people who still have questions. Go the extra mile and optimize your FAQ pages for SEO.
If you follow the tips that I’ve covered in this guide, you can turn your FAQ page into a conversion machine.
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Fund briefing: Emerging markets
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“How should we invest to pay for our children’s university education?”
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Should we transfer our rental property into joint names?
When we moved, we decided to rent out our old property rather than sell. As I was a higher-rate taxpayer we transferred ownership to my husband. He took out a mortgage on the property in just his name. The property has been rented out since then.
We’re now considering putting it back into joint names as we are both retired and only have my occupational pension and the rental income. Neither of us is a higher-rate taxpayer any more. My husband’s tax-free allowance covers the net income on the property virtually every year.
We’re not looking to sell for the next few years but may do so in the future. Is it worth our while making this transfer and what are the likely costs and consequences?
Yes, putting the property back into joint names or to ‘tenants in common’, owning 50% each as opposed to owning it in joint names, is a good idea because gifts between spouses are exempt from CGT. When you do sell the property, you will be able to offset your husband’s and your own annual CGT allowances (£12,000 each in 2019/2020) against the sale proceeds.
You could possibly inform the Land Registry of your intentions without incurring any legal costs, but I’d suggest that you speak to a solicitor to make sure that everything is handled properly.
While you are there, this would be a great time to review your wills to ensure that should you die before selling the property, your intentions of how it should be passed on are clear.
If you split the tenancy into a 50/50 (or other) percentage ownership, this also means that on the first death you could pass on the deceased partner’s share of the property to someone other than the surviving partner. Depending on your circumstances, this can be really helpful for IHT planning.
Owning the property in different percentages can also be helpful for income tax planning while the property is rented. This is because you can assign more income to a lower earner and potentially save some income tax legitimately.
While I wouldn’t expect this work to be more than a few hundred pounds, do get some quotes from a few solicitors and read their reviews before you make your decision on who to use.
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