The design thinking methodology involves the following five phases:

1. Empathise

2. Define

3. Ideate

4. Prototype

5. Test

Each of these phases has been discussed in detail below.

THE 5 STAGES OF DESIGN THINKING

One thing you must keep in mind is that these phases are not always followed sequentially; they can be followed simultaneously or in any order that works the best in solving your problems. The main aim of the design thinking methodology is to gain the deepest understanding of what would be the ideal solution or product for the users.

Usually, these stages are followed in the following manner:

Stage 1: Empathize
Empathy is the first and foremost step involved in design thinking as it encourages design thinkers to put aside their assumptions. This helps the design thinkers to concentrate and give importance to the users and their needs. This stage involves observing, engaging, and empathizing with others to understand their experiences and motivations so that you may get a better understanding of the issue. During this stage, adequate information is collected that helps in a better understanding of the problem at the later stages.

Stage 2: Define
This stage involves the analysis of the information that was gathered during the empathize stage. After a thorough analysis of your observations and findings, all the core problems are stated as problem statements in a human-centered manner. Once this is done, you are ready for the next stage.

Stage 3: Ideate
Once all the problems have been identified and listed, you can work on generating ideas to find solutions for the problems. The designers are encouraged to come up with great ideas and think out of the box to provide solutions for the stated problems. Brainstorming is particularly useful in this stage.

Stage 4: Prototype
This stage usually involves testing on prototypes by the internal design team or people from other departments, or by a small group of externals. During this stage, a scaled-down version of the product or features is designed so that the design team can investigate the solutions that have been proposed during the ideation stage. This helps the design team to experiment freely so that they can come up with the best possible solutions for the identified problems. All the solutions that were proposed are tried out, after which they are accepted, modified, or rejected by the design team, based on the experience of the users. By the end of this stage, the design team will have a better idea about how the real users will interact with the final product.

Stage 5: Test
After prototyping, the design team will rigorously test the complete product using the solutions that were deemed the best during the prototyping phase. During this phase, the team can redefine problems, causing them to go back to the previous stages and make alterations to them.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Design thinking methodology is used by almost all businesses and organizations to help solve complex problems. Usually, these complex problems cannot be solved by the internal team and they require professional help. DigAptics is one team that can help you in solving these problems. Contact them today to discuss things further.

The post The 5 Phase of Design Thinking appeared first on Digaptics.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FUNDING OPTION FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Choosing the right funding option for your business is extremely important. Having a brilliant business venture but not the perfect funding source is the main reason why businesses do not start. Here is a list of funding options you must consider for your funding your venture:

1. Bootstrapping
Bootstrapping or self-funding is the most common funding source anybody opts for. If you are starting with your first-ever business, you will face a lot of hardships in finding investors. Therefore, you must try to fund your business yourself with your savings, or even ask your close friends and family for help. For anybody starting for the very first time with a business venture, family and friends are the best people to approach, as mostly, they tend to be flexible with the interest rate; neither are there too many formalities involved. It is a straightforward process than asking for funding from other investors.

However, this funding source is not a viable option for all the funding requirements of your business. The amount is usually enough to look after the initial investment of your venture only. If your business requires money right from the first day, then this will not be a viable option for you in the long run.

2. Crowdfunding
The second-best option for your business venture is crowdfunding. It allows you to accept funds from more than one person simultaneously. Crowdfunding works differently than other fundings. It requires you to add a detailed description of your business idea on a crowdfunding platform, and then various investors can read the description and contribute money towards your business venture. Those investing can either give a donation or promise to pre-buy your products, depending on what they choose. You must share your business idea and goal by giving a detailed description on these platforms, to convey your business idea to the people who can contribute to your idea.

Crowdfunding is not just a platform for generating funds; it can even serve as a platform for marketing your products or business idea. By disclosing your business idea to these contributors, you can judge to find out if your product or business idea will be well received by the general public or not. Thus, it can help you decide if you want to continue with your current business idea, or shake up things, or drop the idea completely. Furthermore, it can even help you to grab the attention of a big venture-capital investor, who is swooned by your business idea.

However, if you do not earn enough funds through crowdfunding does not mean that your business idea will not be well received by the general public. As the crowdfunding platform is very competitive, your business idea might not be able to receive the attention it deserves. It is a bit unfair for the entrepreneurs to be judged on a few images and some text, as the investors cannot see any product demos.

3. Angel Investors
If your business setup does not require a big investment, then you must consider angel investors. They usually fund the business during its startup phase, and they even offer mentoring services for entrepreneurs who are just about to start with their business venture. Angel investors usually expect equity for unto 30%.

4. Venture Capitalists
Venture capitalists invest in those business ideas whom they feel have a lot of potentials to go big. They thoroughly evaluate the scalability and sustainability of the business before they take a plunge. They invest against equity and exit whenever there is an IPO or an acquisition. Since venture capitalists are willing to fund a big amount for your business, they are a better option for businesses that have already established themselves in the business world.

With the bigger funds comes the problem of recovering the funds in a period of 3 to 5 years. Thus, if your business idea will take a lot of time to establish itself in the market, the venture capitalists will not invest in your business. That is why they see through your business idea so well; they work for their interest first, i.e. recovering the money within 5 years. For this reason, if they feel your business idea can be changed around to help recover the money quickly, they will force themselves down on you to make the changes they want.

5. Business Incubators and Accelerators
Incubators, as the name suggests, help to future the business till it can sustain itself on its own. Accelerators are similar to incubators, but they help the business to take a bigger leap. They help entrepreneurs in finding the right contacts the would be beneficial for their business. The duration of these programs is short; usually around 4 to 8 months. These connections are made between investors, mentors, marketing experts, etc.

6. Bank Loans
Banks provide two types of loans:

—Working Capital Loan
This loan is the loan required for the completion of one revenue-generating operation cycle, with the limit set by debtors and hypothecating stocks.

—Funding
This requires sharing all the details about the business idea. The decision for funding is taken accordingly.

Banks have certain minimum requirements that you must fulfill before you qualify for a loan.

7. Win Contests
Winning contests is a challenging, but good way of receiving funding for your business idea. Al you have to do is prepare your product or business idea for the organizers conducting the competition, and wait to be elected. Due to so many entries for the competitions, it might be difficult for your business or product to stand out.

APPROACHING YOUR INVESTORS

Since the investors get approached by numerous applicants for funding, they are only willing to give you a bit of their time only. Therefore, when you approach them for the very first time, you should have all the main and important features of your business ready.

You must take the following approach before presenting your business idea to the investors:

1. Identify the niche of your product
You must know who is your target market; who will be using your products and gaining some benefit from them. Once you know this, then only you can work on your business idea.

2. Branding your product
Creating a color theme, a logo, purchasing a domain name, etc. give professional touches to your product. It also shows your investors that you are very serious about your business idea.

3. Creating an Elevator Pitch
Since the investors do not have all day for just one entrepreneur, they opt for elevator pitches. An elevator pitch is a summary of all the important features and aspects of your business, particularly emphasizing the fact that how your business plan is different and unique from your competitors. Investors would like to invest in something that is not there in the market. If the investors are impressed with your elevator pitch, they will call you for a second meeting, where your business plan will be discussed in detail.

4. Creating a Pitch Deck
The pitch deck is a presentation of not more than 15 slides, talking about your business idea in great detail. This presentation should have a lot of visuals and limited text. You must not read out the text from the slides as the investors can read that themselves. Your script should be descriptive and should explain to the investors your app idea in detail.

If you have a product demo ready that would also give a professional and serious look to your business plan in front of the investors.

STAGES OF FUNDING

Funding can be done during the various stages of starting with a business plan. Stages of funding are known as funding rounds, and they refer to the business idea as a seed.

These funding rounds are:

1. Pre-Seed Round Of Funding
This funding starts with your close family and friends who are willing to help you out with your business venture. The funds from this round are used in the initial research and getting things started off the ground. If it does not involve close family and friends, then it is the founders themselves.

2. Seed Round Of Funding
This funding is used in the growth of the business, to help determine what the final product will look like and how the target market will perceive it. This funding usually comes from angel investors.

3. The Series Round Of Funding
The series round of funding usually involves funds that are used to make the product even perfect for the users. If you have reached this level of funding, then you would be delighted to know that your product is successful.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Getting funds for your new business venture is not as easy as it seems. It involves a lot of rejection too, which you should not take to your heart. Apart from investors, there are bank loans available too, and are good options if you cannot find yourself a good investor. However, once you have found the perfect investor for your business, you need a reliable team for marketing your business too. DigAptics is a dedicated team of professionals, who work closely with their clients, to understand what their goals are. Then they implement all the relevant strategies to your marketing campaigns, to help you achieve the desired goals. Contact them today to get a free estimate for your business.

The post Show me the Money – Getting Funded for your Business Ventures appeared first on Digaptics.

HOW DOES GROUPON WORK?

Groupon works by selling vouchers and coupons for brick-and-mortar locations, to local customers. The prices that customers avail of these coupons on are much lesser than purchasing from the business directly. The deals offered by Groupon are unbelievable, attracting numerous customers to itself. Recently, Groupon has started working on shifting its business model towards creating better and ongoing relationships with businesses and customers. Thus, they are not offering such heavily discounted deals, but are keen on making Groupon a marketplace.

Groupon attracts countless customers to its website, allowing better brand visibility for a business. Of course, just like any other ecommerce platform, Groupon too charges a fee from these businesses in exchange for brand visibility and recognition. Businesses provide discounted deals and do not earn much from the services they provide, but they get to reach out to an enormous number of customers through Groupon. Thus, Groupon serves as a big advertising platform for businesses, without charging them an additional fee for advertising. Businesses pay Groupon a split of the total revenue earned, usually around 50% of the total revenue earned.

Groupon works with businesses on a revenue share model. When a customer purchases a deal, all the money directly goes to Groupon, and then Groupon distributes the money to the merchants via scheduled payments. However, there have been some cases where Groupon has given a better cut-off to the merchants, but this happens very seldomly.

HOW TO GET STARTED ON GROUPON?

Before you start with Groupon, you must be well aware of the fact that it is more of an advertisement platform for small and struggling businesses, rather than big well-established businesses. Groupon is completely free for any business to sign-up and posts a deal they would like to offer to their customers. There are certain steps involved in starting with Groupon. These are:

1. Signing up on Groupon as a merchant
By doing so, you would be required to provide a few details regarding your business so that Groupon can help you accordingly.

2. Creating your Groupon campaign
This depends on how many customers you would like to pull in and what is your maximum capacity. You can work on it by using the Groupon Deal Builder or talk to a Groupon representative.

3. Preparing your business and staff
You need to train your staff on how to swiftly deal with the response you receive on Groupon. They should also be trained to market your Groupon deals on other social media platforms.

4. Your campaign’s launch
The day your campaign goes live, you should be ready to receive a large volume of queries and sales. You should be ready to answer these queries promptly.

5. Track your progress
Monitor the insights of your voucher with Groupon Merchant Center to understand your customers better.

The deal you decide to post will have a big impact on how many deals you can sell. Since Groupon is a big competitive platform offering similar deals, customers are looking for the cheapest most option they can avail of. Therefore, you must be very careful in chalking out a deal for your customers. Moreover, you should add restrictions to your deal, such as an expiry date for the promotion, the maximum number of vouchers a customer can purchase, or the total number of vouchers available for all customers.

Instead of offering discounts on products and services, you should offer a predetermined discount on your products and services. This would help you to attract customers who are genuinely interested in purchasing from you, rather than somebody who just wants to avail a deal. Moreover, you should structure your deals in such a way that it encourages customers to purchase from you again, rather than just making it a one-time purchase only.

MEASURING RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)

ROI can be calculated easily on Groupon. The number of vouchers you sell on Groupon should be able to give you an idea about the ROI. One thing to keep in mind is that the merchants do not spend on the advertisements; Groupon, itself, is responsible for the email marketing and marketing on other social media platforms. Thus, no additional costs are paid for advertisements by merchants who are selling on Groupon.

PROS OF USING GROUPON FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Groupon is considered to be beneficial for small and struggling businesses by providing them that exposure. Some of the pros for using Groupon have been listed below:

1. Better exposure for your business
We all want to avail good discounts, therefore, customers look out for places that provide goods and service at a cheaper price. Customers who use Groupon will get to know about your business if you post up a deal on Groupon. It is a big and famous platform that provides your business the visibility it needs to do good.

2. Attract more customers
Groupon is a place where amazing discounts are provided. The deals you provide will help you to attract more customers than usual.

3. Clear your inventory
Provide discounts on those products and services that are not purchased that frequently. By offering those goods at a much-discounted price, you will do some business on them.

4. Incremental revenue
A Groupon voucher can help generate extra revenue for those businesses that run on a low-cost or fixed-cost structure.

5. Build relationships with customers
Use your deals in a way to help build relationships with your customers.

CONS OF GROUPON FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Just like any other ecommerce platform, Groupon too has some cons for businesses. These cons include the following:

1. Damage to your image
Deals make customers habitual of paying for goods and services at a discounted price. This makes them less likely to pay full price for the products and services you offer.

2. You do not get loyalty
With Groupon, you are very less likely to get repeat customers. The customer purchased a voucher from you because they got tempted by the price and not by your brand.

3. Groupon is not profitable
The deals you post on Groupon are already at such a discounted rate. In addition to this, Groupon takes half of your revenue, leaving you with no profit margin.

4. Too much competition
Groupon is an ecommerce platform where almost all brands are offering the same products and services. The customers try to get a voucher from that merchant whose rates are the lowest amongst the whole lot.

IS GROUPON WORTH IT?

If you are a business that is struggling to get customers, then try your luck on Groupon would not be a bad idea. At least you would end up getting some customers to serve, who can turn into your permanent customers. Moreover, Groupon would be a good platform for creating brand awareness and visibility amongst Groupon customers. Singing up for Groupon is no harm as it is completely free. The best part about selling on Groupon is that there are no additional costs paid by merchants for advertisements, until and unless the merchant wants to do it on their own.

However, if you are already a well-established business, you must steer clear of Groupon, as it could damage your brand image. A well-established business should work on its marketing strategies that could help them to get a higher ROI. Any goals that you have in mind can easily be achieved if you work with the right people. DigAptics is a team of professionals, who work tirelessly with their clients, to help them achieve their desired goals. Whatever goals you have in mind, feel free to discuss them with these dedicated professionals. Contact them today to get a free estimate for your business.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Groupon can be the only option a merchant can have if they are struggling to pay for the marketing for their business. It is a big American ecommerce platform that allows various businesses to gain popularity and visibility. If you are striving hard to gain customers for your business, then you can give Groupon a fair shot and see where you land. You do not have anything to lose here if you are a small business trying to gain customers. However, if you a big or medium-sized business, and are doing good, then you should work on your marketing game to get more clients.

The post Should I be using Groupon for my Service Business appeared first on Digaptics.

SELLING ON AMAZON

Just like any other ecommerce platform, Amazon too requires sellers to sign up for an account. Currently, Amazon offers the following accounts:

1. Individual
This account is good for those sellers who are just starting and sell less than 40 units in a month. This is a very basic plan and does not provide you with any advanced selling tools or advertisement options. The seller is expected to pay $0.99 for every item sold, in addition to selling fees.

2. Professional
If you sell more than 40 units in a month and want some advanced features, then this is the account for you. Most professional sellers opt for this account. The seller is expected to pay $39.99 per month, in addition to the selling fees. If you plan on products that are o Amazon’s restricted list, then you must sign up for the professional account.

Amazon charges a referral fee, on both accounts, for every item sold. This usually varies between 8% and 15%. Furthermore, for shipping your orders, if you opt for Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), there would be different charges for each shipment unit.

BEST PRODUCTS TO SELL ON AMAZON

Certain products come under the category of restricted items and can only be sold with a professional account, only if certain requirements are met. Apart from this restriction, you can sell almost anything on Amazon. A few of the most famous product categories are:

1. Home and garden
2. Apparel
3. Kids and toys
4. Electronics
5. Pets

AMAZON SEO

Since Amazon is such a big ecommerce platform, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays an integral role for sellers. SEO is not just relevant for search engines; ecommerce platforms, too, have their algorithm that they follow to yield better search results. With better SEO practices, your products will stand out in the search results and will prompt the buyers to purchase from your store. The search result on Amazon yields numerous pages, which the buyers do not have the time to go through them all. Buyers usually try to search for the perfect product within the first 5 result pages or even less than that. With SEO techniques, your products will get a higher rank in the search result pages of Amazon, helping you to boost your sales.

Amazon’s search results page allows the buyer to add filters to the search results to get a better match with their search query. Since there are countless sellers on Amazon, Amazon lets the sellers advertise their products in the form of sponsored products. These sponsored product posts are seen on the top of a search result page, and even on other product pages.

The filters available for the search results are designed similarly to the product listings page. Thus, when organizing your product listings through Seller Central you must specify all the product details so that your products get shown after the buyer applies the filters.

Since Amazon is an ecommerce platform, the sales rank is an inverse ranking system. This means that the products with the lowest sales rank come last and the product with higher sales rank get higher search visibility.

HOW DOES AMAZON’S SEO WORK?

Amazon relies on the A9 Algorithm to display search results for a buyer. How Amazon ranks the search results is not clearly known, but it does rely on the following criteria but is not limited to:

1. Sales volume
2. Relevance to the keywords entered by the buyer
3. Customer shopping behavior and pattern
4. Stock supply
5. Price

Furthermore, Amazon SEO does not just work for the betterment of the sellers, instead, it also helps the buyer to get relevant search results. At the end of the day, customer satisfaction is also important for Amazon. To explain this further, some factors have been split into two categories:

1. Desirability
These factors help to create a better experience for the buyer. These are factors that encourage the buyer to take some action. Usually, these factors are:

—Better quality product images
—Product title
—Pricing
—Positive reviews and ratings
—Precise product description and specifications
—Conveying the message of how your product is different from the other sellers

2. Discoverability
These factors focus more on how the product is viewed as a whole- more like a bigger picture. These factors include:

—Fulfillment method
—Pricing
—Stock quantity
—Shipping cost
—Keywords

IMPROVING YOUR AMAZON SEO

From the factors mentioned above, by now you should have a general idea about how you can improve your Amazon SEO results. To sum it all up, all points have been discussed below:

1. Product Title
This is the first thing that a buyer reads. Therefore, you should include all essential details in it, such as the brand name, product, material, color, etc. Amazon gives a word limit of 100 words for this.

2. Keywords
These keywords are the words that are entered by the buyer when they are searching for products. Thus, it would be a good idea to update your keywords list timely and also monitor the results you get from any modifications.

3. Pricing
Amazon is a platform where numerous sellers are selling the same products, giving the buyers a long list of sellers to choose from. Therefore, you must price your products at a nominal price. Something much cheaper than the normal rate is also considered to be too alarming by the buyers.

4. Product images
Having a few pictures that are clear and of good quality helps the buyer to decide better. Since the buyer relies heavily on the pictures of the product posted, these pictures should be sufficient for the buyers in every aspect. Moreover, the pictures must not be edited too much as the buyer expects to get the same product upon delivery. Minor adjustments are acceptable.

5. Product description and features
A detailed product description helps the buyer to decide better. All details must be listed in bullet form as that is much simpler and easier to go through as compared to long paragraphs.

6. Product stock
You must always ensure that your product is always in stock in your inventory or Amazon’s inventory if you use Amazon FBA.

7. Reviews and ratings
Getting mostly positive reviews and ratings from your customers will allow your products to get a higher rank in the search results. It also helps to gain the trust of potential buyers who might be exploring your products.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Managing Amazon SEO can be a bit overwhelming for sellers who are new to this concept. If you feel you are struggling with getting a higher ROI (Return On Investment), you should consider hiring professional marketers for your Amazon store. One such reliable team of professionals is DigAptics, who can help you to get a higher ROI for your store. Having higher sales volume is the dream of every seller on Amazon. With the right SEO consultant techniques, your business will flourish and you will get more customers. Discuss your Amazon SEO requirements today with an expert from DigAptics.

The post Selling products on Amazon and Amazon SEO appeared first on Digaptics.

However, there are some issues with monitoring your stuff remotely; there are some ethical concerns that have been raised. Monitoring your staff’s computer use might be an example of invading their privacy; many concerns have been raised regarding this. If the right balance is found, it would be beneficial for the staff and the organization both. From the looks of it, it seems as if remote working is the new norm, and organizations cannot incur any losses due to the inefficiencies of their staff.

SHOULD I BE MONITORING MY STAFF REMOTELY?

Pre-COVID, when your staff was working under your nose, things were going smooth. You could easily track their emails, meeting records, social media accounts, timesheets, and the utilization of the workspace, but with remote working, it has become difficult. In the office, you were still monitoring your staff, but the way it was done, was different- it did not seem to be too intimidating. However, with these software and technologies, monitoring your staff does seem to be intimidating.

To ensure the employers and employees are ethically on the same page regarding remote monitoring:

1. Both parties must accept that working from home is the new way to work.
The COVID-19 situation is not getting better any time soon, therefore, the employers and employees should compromise and come to grounds that work the best for both parties. If employers want to monitor their employees, then they must compensate the employees by providing them with lesser working hours or a flexible schedule.

2. There should be dialogue to ensure that the employees are well aware of the benefits of monitoring the organization
Employers need to discuss with their employees how this monitoring is a modified version of the monitoring they experienced in the physical workspace. Employees must also be briefed about why the organization needs to monitor them.

3. The employees must be informed about sufficient safeguards to prevent any episodes of abuse
This is usually the main concern of employees, and they must be ensured that the data collected will be encrypted.

4. The level of monitoring depends on one’s designation at work
Although it may seem a little unfair, employees on higher posts will be monitored to a greater extent, than the junior level employees.

At the end of the day, an employer would ask for a certain level of efficiency from their employees. Since the employees get paid for their work, they would have to provide that level of efficiency to their employers. If the employer assures his staff that the data will not be misused and will be encrypted, the employees would be more comfortable with remote monitoring.

HOW IS REMOTE MONITORING DONE?

There are various software and tools that can be installed to help monitor the employees while they are working from home. There is a thin line between work-related surveillance and personal surveillance that must not be crossed.

Remote monitoring can be done in the following ways:

1. Time spent on apps, email, and other websites.

2. Take pictures through the webcam periodically.

Software installed can be logged out by the employee’s system, by the employee, to allow them some space to complete non-work-related tasks with full privacy. Before the installation of this software, the employees are given advanced notice for remote monitoring, promising to protect their privacy rights of the employees.

FINAL THOUGHTS

With trust and acceptance, employees and employers can work around and make remote monitoring possible. During this pandemic, the sales of remote monitoring tools and software have increased sharply. Companies and organizations could not compromise on the work efficiency of their employees and had to purchase this software. There are many companies available in the market that offer this remote monitoring software. One such reliable company is DigAptics, which provides the best software for remote monitoring, suiting every business of all sizes. Contact a member of their team to discuss things further.

The post Remote Monitoring Your Staff & Trust: The Right Balance appeared first on Digaptics.