Author Archives: Michael Pignataro

About Michael Pignataro

Entrepreneur, family man and long-time magician, "Magic Man" Michael Pignataro is co-owner of 'corePHP' with his mirror-image twin brother, Steven. Michael is 'corePHP's Co-Chief Executive Officer - Operations. He's also got a wicked fast wrist at the foosball table.

7 Reliable Hosting Solutions for WordPress

By Michael Pignataro on August 8, 2017

Technology Advice

WordPress seems to be the way to go for those who want to build a professional, reliable website. But you can’t succeed in doing so without a host to help you get the job done. Some of the most experienced tech gurus agree that some hosts are better than others when it comes to hosting WordPress sites. But with so many options available, how can you choose the best one for you? We’ve compiled a list of seven of the best hosting solutions and broke down their services to help make your decision a little easier. Check them out below. Continue reading →

Top Online Shopping Days & How They Help Your Online Retail Business

By Michael Pignataro on August 4, 2017

E-Commerce

While it’s relatively simple to launch an online retail site, it can be difficult to maintain and grow such a business. Supplying consumers with regular content, monitoring performance, maximizing on trends and audience behavior, and developing key marketing strategies are just some of the major responsibilities placed on online retail companies. The good news is that e-commerce is a booming industry, with roughly 51 percent of Americans preferring to shop online and a year-on-year 23 percent growth, according to research conducted by BigCommerce.

‘corePHP’ paGO Commerce is growing every day as new business comes online and the power of them growing is now endless with the capabilities of an amazing software. But software can only go so far from a growth standpoint. It’s understanding the market and targeting your users and when to target them. Continue reading →

3 Common Business Communication Mistakes & How to Prevent Them

By Michael Pignataro on July 26, 2017

Companies today are experiencing a communications crisis. Sixty-three percent of business professionals report that they experience communications problems with other employees or customers that prevent them from achieving their work goals at least once a week. Fifty-three percent of employees would consider leaving their job over a negative communications exchange, and 13 percent of workers have actually experienced losing a co-worker over a communications issue. Thirty percent of companies have lost customers over communications problems.

As these statistics illustrate, communications problems are pervasive in the workplace, and they can be expensive when they lead to lost employees and customers. Here are three common communication mistakes companies make, along with some proactive strategies for preventing them. Continue reading →

The most popular use for a website marketing with popup is to gain email subscribers. That’s because list building is an important element in any online business. It’s the key to growing your audience and staying connected with them, and it’s a sign that you’ve earned their trust. When someone visits your website some make their way back, but many don’t. If you collect their email address, though, you can continue to communicate with them.

Even though popups are one of the best ways to grow your email list, they can also be used to promote various services, new products, surveys, and more. They’re a really great marketing tool for a variety of things and shouldn’t be overlooked.

But there’s a problem: a lot of people complain about them.

Popups are often seen as super annoying, but they don’t have to be. The truth is, most big blogs and websites use them because they work. So really, popups aren’t annoying in general, but because they’re often poorly timed. Continue reading →

Why Is Cyber-Security So Important to the Healthcare Industry?

By Michael Pignataro on July 19, 2017

'corePHP'

Healthcare is heavily reliant on technology these days, not just for hardware that can help cure illnesses but also when it comes to sending, retrieving, and storing data. Health informatics plays a crucial role in the healthcare industry because it makes it much more efficient. However, because of cyber threats, it means technology isn’t always reliable. Why do many healthcare entities concentrate on preventing cyber attacks by investing millions and why is cyber-security so important to the industry? Continue reading →

Get a Competitive Advantage with Project Portfolio Management

By Michael Pignataro on June 28, 2017

'corePHP' Other Technology Advice Tools

If running a successful business was easy, everyone would be doing it… As you know, it’s not easy to reach and maintain business success. It takes careful planning, attentive management, and a deep understanding of the potential obstacles and barriers to success. To do all this and still have time to breathe, you need to harness one crucial and powerful competitive advantage – effective project portfolio management.

Continue reading →

5 Tips to Protect Your E-Commerce Business from Cyber security Threats

By Michael Pignataro on June 23, 2017

'corePHP' E-Commerce Security Web Security

As large corporations continue to harden their defenses against hackers, cyber criminals have turned their attention to businesses that are more vulnerable to attacks. In fact, in the last 12 months alone, hackers have breached half of all U.S. small businesses, according to a report by the Ponemon Institute.

Bombarding systems with ransomware is attractive for cyber thieves because the activity is easy to deploy and hard to trace to attackers. It’s also quite a lucrative venture, as ransomware is expected to cost victims a total of $5 billion this year in repair or new spending costs, according to Cybersecurity Ventures. Continue reading →

How Cloud-Based Predictive Analytics Can Up Your Marketing Game

By Michael Pignataro on May 30, 2017

'corePHP' Digital Marketing Marketing Automation Tools

Predictive analytics is not always easy to understand, despite being a relatively simple concept. In its most basic definition, predictive analytics mines data to find patterns and assess the probability of people’s actions. In business, your marketing team can use predictive analytics to better understand your target market and devise campaigns to better suit their needs.

However, there is no guarantee that your customers will act as predicted — no pun intended — or that the pattern will continue. The following are just a few ways you can better understand predictive analytics and how your marketing team can use it.

Prioritize Leads

One of the main ways marketing teams are using predictive analytics is to comb big data for patterns on leads and sales patterns. You can use your data to see who is buying your product or service. But, more importantly, you can finally determine why. You then can use this information to target other prospects, or upsell or cross-sell current customers with additional relevant products or services that fit their needs.

In an interview with PC Mag, Allison Snow, senior analyst of B2B marketing at Forrester, explains that predictive analytics enable marketers to use science and math to prioritize their leads through specific criteria and weightings. Snow explained how this helps companies identify productive accounts, target upsell campaigns, and spend less time on accounts that don’t have a good probability of buying.

Identify Similar Customers

Once you identify how your previous and current customers are buying, you can extrapolate that data out to reach new customers. While it’s not an exact science — and results can vary — recognizing patterns and customer behavior can help you predict how similar markets, audiences and industries will behave.

A good example of this type of data and campaign is Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences. With this tool, you’re able to upload data about your current customers or target audience and then find prospects who resemble that buyer persona. You also can track individuals who visit certain Web pages or who like your page and find similar audiences that way. Facebook uses your data to target people who behave in similar ways or fit into a specific pattern, all of which helps you more effectively grow your customer base.

Personalize Campaigns

Another way you can up your marketing game with predictive analytics is to create personalized campaigns for your target market. By understanding patterns in their buying behavior — and what they expect from your product — you can use that specific information in your campaigns to make sure every piece is relevant to them.

Companies can create a more relevant and informed content strategy for their advertising, email, social and content marketing campaigns when they have greater insight into what their customers are after. Become an expert in several areas that best target your various audiences and hit on the information they want to know.

Predictive analytics can be used in many other ways, both in your marketing department and in other areas of your business. With enough data and the tools to recognize patterns, you can better forecast sales, stocking needs and production costs. Even though you’re extrapolating data and can’t guarantee success, predictive analytics is a good starting point to improve your processes in understanding your past, current and future customers.

Generate Successful Leads for E-Commerce with Smart Designs

By Michael Pignataro on May 19, 2017

'corePHP' Digital Experience E-Commerce Front-End Design SEO User Experience Web Design

Everyone knows Google is the world’s most successful search engine, and companies around the world strive to achieve top Google rankings. But not everyone realizes that Google.com is also the world’s highest-ranking website. According to Alexa, Google’s own SEO performance outranks Google’s subsidiary YouTube, Facebook, top Chinese search engine Baidu and Wikipedia, which hold the next four top spots. Google’s SEO success is a byproduct of its design as a search engine, since web surfers typically visit Google in order to find other sites. This has helped turn Google into an e-commerce giant as well as a successful search engine. Here’s a look at some other web design approaches that successful e-commerce sites use to generate leads:

Amazon: Generating Organic Traffic with Keywords

Amazon is the world’s most successful e-commerce retail site, valued at nearly $100 billion at the end of 2016. Like Google, Amazon’s marketing strategy revolves heavily around its SEO-oriented design. Amazon draws traffic with keyword-rich product descriptions that use the exact phrases prospective buyers are likely to be searching for on Google and other leading search engines.

For instance, if someone goes to Google looking for the DVD release of the latest Star Wars movie, typing in “rogue one dvd” will produce search results that include an Amazon product page listing for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story [Blu-ray + DVD + Digital HD].” The page’s full title tag includes other keywords naming the film’s top stars. The rest of the page includes supplementary product description information that mentions other relevant keywords.

Amway: Attracting Visitors with Content

Keywords work best for SEO when combined with relevant, valuable content that draws visitors interested in a particular topic, problem or question. In addition to doing SEO duty, such content can also be used for sharing on social media to attract followers and visitors.

An e-commerce site that uses this strategy effectively is Amway’s. Amway’s blog features practical tips on topics appealing to its target audience, such as tips on how to apply make-up, eat healthier, grow an organic garden or start a business. Blog posts are shared on Amway’s social media profiles, attracting followers, generating discussion, driving traffic to Amway’s site and ultimately turning visitors into customers.

Facebook: Capturing Contact Information

After you succeed in attracting visitors to your site, it’s vital to capture their contact information so you can pursue follow-up marketing efforts. It typically takes multiple contacts with a site visitor in order to convert them into a buyer.

Facebook’s web design exemplifies this approach. When a visitor lands on the home page of Facebook’s site, typically after installing Facebook’s app on their mobile phone, they see an invitation to sign up for a free account. The registration form requests information about the visitor’s name, mobile phone number or email address, birthday and gender. When the visitor fills this form out, they receive a free Facebook account, setting the stage for them to become buyers of products and services from Facebook and its advertisers.

YouTube: Leveraging Free Content

Requests for visitor contact information usually work best when some incentive is offered in return for the information. In Facebook’s case, the offer of using Facebook’s service functions as an incentive. In other cases, free content can be given away as an incentive. The content can be delivered in forms such as videos, emails and PDF files.

YouTube is the king of leveraging free content into business. As the second most-visited site on the internet after its own parent Google, YouTube gives away more free content than any other site. Visitors aren’t required to sign up for an account in order to watch YouTube videos, but registering confers visitors additional advantages, such as the ability to access more content, upload content and participate in discussions. Whether they sign up or not, YouTube receives revenue from advertisers who market to video viewers. YouTube also generates revenue by selling premium ad-free content to subscribers.

Expert Interview Series: Michael Pignataro of corePHP – Salesgenie

By Michael Pignataro on May 17, 2017

'corePHP' 'corePHP' Products Digital Marketing Front-End Design Marketing Automation paGO Commerce Technology Advice Web Design

The amazing company Salesgenie asked me to be apart of their Expert Interview Series and I couldn’t be more excited. We go inside the inner workings of ‘corePHP’, the digital world, where it’s going, and what inspires me to continue to grow ‘corePHP’. Click the link below to read the interview.

Expert Interview Series: Michael Pignataro of corePHP

Over the last several years we have seen massive change in the industry and here at ‘corePHP’ we are constantly staying on the cutting edge trend of technology to keep our clients current and ahead of their market. Hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed being part of it.

4 Ways to Boost Your Student Blog

By Michael Pignataro on February 28, 2017

Better Blogging Digital Marketing

Whether you’re studying for a degree in digital marketing, taking English as a major or even studying at home for your RN to MSN online degree, starting a student blog can be an amazing way to make some extra money. It also looks awesome on a graduate resume. But, with so many student blogs out there to compete against, ensuring that yours is a success will take some hard work and dedication. We’ve put together some top tips to help you boost your student blog.

Over the years building and maintaining WordPress for Joomla we have found this to be the right tool to help you drive your online blog business and have the power of Joomla for your CMS to grow to leaps and bounds you never imagine before. Now onward to the good stuff!