Even when technology is central to a company’s value proposition, it isn’t all they do. No company is solely a tech company. Ultimately, every product or service is intended for people’s use: to save us time or money, to make our lives better or easier.

At the same time, businesses whose core value propositions aren’t inherently technical still rely on technology for sales, marketing, operations, finance, and more. At my company, for instance, we’re revolutionizing the property management business by using technology to optimize rates and improve operational efficiency. Thinking like a tech company — regardless of your value proposition — can set you up for success with customers and investors.

Here are three pieces of advice for building a strong business, whether you’re focused on tech or not:

Assess Your Co-Founder(s)

We recommend making sure that at least one of your co-founders has a strong background in software development. This early investment in technical expertise establishes you as a tech company, regardless of your product or service, and ensures that decision-makers are well-versed in technical challenges and solutions. Also, you’re going to start vetting outside vendors sooner than you think, and you’ll need someone at the executive level who can make a realistic assessment of the costs and advantages of those offerings.

What if you are the technical co-founder? Be honest about your ability (and your bandwidth) to handle the other responsibilities of leadership. Can you build relationships, reach out to investors, identify customers, map your buyer’s journey, create a marketing strategy, support sales efforts, and establish operational processes? If not, find someone who can — even if they’ve never written a line of code in their life.

The key is to write a strong story for both sides: the technical and the operational. It’s tempting to emphasize one side over the other when appealing to different audiences, but the truth is that no business is entirely technical or purely operational. Your company will intertwine the two, using technology to support operations and vice versa. Co-founders who reflect this intertwined approach will make a powerful team.

Invest in Technology Early

Just as it’s important to find a co-founder with some technical prowess, it pays to invest in a strong technical team at every level. Whenever you can, hire employees rather than contractors as your engineers, developers and analysts. A substantial and early investment in technology (in human capital as well as tools) will help you scale effectively.

Because we don’t sell software, we buck the traditional definition of a tech company. However, we’ve always employed many talented software developers and invested heavily in both out-of-the-box and purpose-built software solutions to meet our evolving needs. And even though we’re vacation rental property managers, technology is at the core of our value proposition. It only makes sense that we would make such consistent and significant investments in it.

Consider Building Instead of Buying

Our company went from using no external software services to using many external solutions. This evolution happened naturally, as a consequence of our rapid growth. As our business model became more advanced — and as our needs became more complex and more narrowly defined — we realized we needed a more diverse toolset.

Eventually, however, we became a “build” company, using our own purpose-built property management system. We simply couldn’t find an out-of-the-box solution that could keep pace with our unprecedented growth and swiftly evolving business needs. Which brings us back to the importance of investing in technology, from the technical co-founder to the development team: If you have these experts in place, you can properly assess your company’s technical needs at every stage.

Every company is a tech company. The more you think about technology and its essential role in your business, the more successful you’ll be.

Here are a few trends to watch for as the year progresses.

1. Virtual and Augmented Reality

In recent years, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have emerged as sought-after technologies with the power to impact virtually every vertical, including social good.

When it comes to social good organizations, VR can have significant impacts. Facebook currently owns a company called Oculus, which recently debuted a “VR for Good” program which has seen a lot of success. This program joined a handful of nonprofits and filmmakers to create material for various virtual reality experiences, which premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in late January 2018.

Much of what we’re seeing now is 360 video rather than true interactive experiences, but it’s a start. Charity Water recently launched a VR experience called “The Source.” According to Adweek, the experience helped them raise over $2.4 million, reporting that one donor originally committed $60,000 but after seeing the video donated $400,000.

VR is unique in that it can create connections across borders and oceans. It has real and tangible implications for the social good atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, the space has a ways to go before it is widely adopted but, in my opinion, we have hit a tipping point and we’ll start to see exponential growth in terms of development and usage in the coming decade.

2. Mobile First

With the rise of mobile devices, more people are accessing the internet from their phones instead of their desktops. In light of this, websites must offer a mobile-friendly experience. If they don’t, your organization could miss capturing critical audiences.

Mobile-friendly sites feature things like responsive design, “hamburger” menus, high-resolution images and no default zoom. As someone who spends most of their day in front of a desktop computer, it is easy to forget that a fair number of people access the web mainly from their mobile device.

3. Impact Investing

Impact investing is an investment made to a company or organization with the distinct purpose of creating a measurable social or environmental impact, as well as a financial return. Impact investing has been on the rise in recent years, and will continue to balloon in popularity throughout 2018. We’re seeing more companies incorporate a triple bottom line — aiming to turn a profit but also make a positive impact. And the Case Foundation, a client of ours, is among players bringing transparency to impact investing data with its Impact Investing Network Map.

This presents a great opportunity for social good organizations. In 2017, investors committed upwards of $22.1 billion to impact investments, and that number is only projected to rise this year.

4. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

We are seeing private corporations double down on their corporate social responsibility programs. Whether it’s baking this into their core business model (TOMS) or launching a separate division dedicated to CSR (Dove’s self-esteem project), this movement is on the rise.

While this is good for society overall, it is also creating more competition. CSR programs are typically well-funded and backed by very savvy marketers and technologists. Remember, your supporters have limited time and money, and these CSR programs provide new competition for traditional nonprofits.

5. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

As AI advances, nonprofits can expect to see AI integration across the board. At Creative Science Labs, we have used tools like Crystal, which determine a person’s DISC (dominance, influence, steadiness, compliance) profile and recommend communication tactics. These tools are becoming more popular and are ideal for any nonprofit that wants to personalize its message to individual supporters.

More nonprofits will also be using chatbots in coming years. Not only are these a streamlined way to communicate with and capture potential donors, but they’re also a great way to engage supporters and donors without having to staff the conversation on the back end.

As 2018 progresses, the nonprofits around you will be taking advantage of advancements such as artificial intelligence, mobile-first web design and chatbots. The only question now is, will you be prepared to follow suit?

A version of this post originally appeared here.

Exploring Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is defined by Live Science as a technology that adds another dimension to how we view the world by layering information onto what we currently experience in the form of visuals, sounds and other sensory experiences. As opposed to virtual reality, augmented reality changes your reality to a certain degree but does not immerse you in a different world.

Companies such as Google Glass have developed devices to incorporate augmented reality into their product. Now, they are seeking additional ways to create new experiences for their customers and prospects with this technology. While you may not be at the point where you can develop the technology, you can think of ways to use what’s already out there in your own marketing strategy. Here are some ideas.

Content Marketing

Think of augmented reality as adding another dimension to what you are already implementing with your content. It allows your audience to upgrade the content they are interacting with by adding or subtracting filters or visual stickers you can create and provide. Empower them to customize the content how they like before sharing it with others.

Both you and your audience help create that dimension. For example, you can use it in your product catalog. Allow the user to lay a product over a certain environment to see how it would fit or work for them. Consider how augmented reality can provide that “try before you buy” feeling so buyers can experience more realistic online purchases. In this way, augmented reality content could be the solution for a challenge that has plagued industries related to selling furniture, makeup and clothing online. Focus on the fun, accessibility and visualization aspects within your augmented reality content, keeping in mind what your audience wants to see and how it will help them.

Advertising

This strategy in content and messaging doesn’t have to uniquely apply to your website. You can incorporate the “try before you buy” approach into advertising campaigns. Think about taking gamification in advertising. Enhance interaction and immersion using augmented reality. Give the user more control of what direction your advertising will take them without losing the ability to get your message across. Make the user feel empowered and less like they are being sold to.

You can incorporate virtual tours and case studies that the user manipulates to navigate to the offer that is of the greatest value to them. That also helps enhance the personalization aspect of what you are trying to achieve.

App Development

If your budget and technology talent can accommodate it, the next step in leveraging augmented reality within your company is developing your own apps that allow your audience to interact with your brand more directly.

Using this strategy, some brands have already found that they can convince users that their app provides superior interaction features over existing social media platforms. As a result, others have joined users on these apps and created a social-media based community around that brand. Encourage users to share their augmented reality experiences in terms of how they are using the app and what it can do for them.

Things to Ponder Before Adding Augmented Reality

Like any marketing technology or social media platform, you shouldn’t toss augmented reality into your marketing strategy because it seems like the thing to do or because everyone else is doing it. This type of technology may not yet be ready or relevant to every industry. Make sure you can effectively use augmented reality in one or more of the aforementioned ways. 

Before launching any use of augmented reality, test it again and again until you know it offers a truly unique, engaging experience for your audience. This may mean investing in user testing, which is well worth the return to ensure you get it right. If you can get the audience excited from the start, the virtual enthusiasm will rise incrementally. That will give you something to build on with your other marketing efforts and potentially increase the number of shares and likes you receive through social media.

Take it slow. Stay attuned to further developments in augmented reality so you can add the technological innovations as you continue using it throughout your marketing strategy and beyond.

After years of working in web design and successfully managing more than 1,000 projects, I’ve discovered one truth: Your website requires certain pages to be successful. These are the five key pages that are the most visited and most important for a typical service-based business:

“Services”

Content is the driving factor behind search results. If you have no content, it’s hard for search engines to find and index your pages, which means you show up less often in search results – not ideal.

One of the most effective ways to increase your footprint on the web is by creating detailed services pages. Be sure not to list your services on just one page; break down your services into specific pages and categories. Go even deeper and write subpages on those specific categories. The more detailed content you can provide, the better.

Moreover, you should tie your services pages to your blog and resources. Whenever you write a new article, and it’s categorized as a specific service, it should automatically appear on your services page as related content.

“Why Choose Us”

Your “Why Choose Us” page should be a clear explanation of your unique selling proposition and value to your client. Why should they choose you? Do you have three key reasons? Five? Seven? More? Make a list and create a detailed page out of it. You can even incorporate that content into various parts of your services page.

“About Us”

It’s no secret that people are coming to your website because they want to know more about you and what you do. Therefore, an “About Us” page is a must. The name of the page can change based on your industry and business. You could call it “Our Team,” “Company,” “About Us” or something of the like.

When writing copy for this page, be concise but thorough: Why did you start your business? What are you offering clients? What makes your services special and different? Including a mission statement that people can rally behind is always a plus, too.

Think of this page as your personal introduction to every client who may walk through your door. What do you want to leave them with? Decide, then write it down.

“Testimonials/Case Studies”

Nothing speaks to your skills and abilities quite like the words of satisfied customers. Showcasing a few five-star reviews is an effective way to let new visitors know that you’ve got what it takes to deliver great results. Testimonials go a long way in earning trust. Give potential clients peace of mind and showcase just how happy your former clients are on a separate page or as a design element throughout your website.

Sometimes, websites include testimonials on every page. If that is the case, it may be redundant to have a testimonials page listing them all. Instead, focus on a few key clients and write specific case studies on how you helped them. Include their logo, bio, what their core issues were, and how you helped resolve them. If you want to get even more detailed, include charts, graphics and illustrations of your process.

“Contact Us”

A website would pretty much be useless without a contact page. After all, how else would potential clients let you know they’re interested in learning more or becoming a client? It’s important that this page is clear and accessible. Your contact page isn’t the place to experiment with fancy fonts and strange colors. Whether you choose to have a full contact form or just list the important things (phone, e-mail, mailing address), make sure the information is simple and clear.

You might even consider listing your hours of operation and social media accounts on your contact page, too. The more ways to connect, the merrier. Don’t leave people in the dark about how they can find you.

Your Website Is a Living Document

Whether you’re in the middle of a redesign, creating a completely new website or thinking about a new internet marketing approach, understand that your website is never complete. It grows and changes as your business does. There’s nothing wrong with starting small, but remember, these five pages are the backbone of your website.

What is It?

Bitcoin is a currency. It can be sent digitally. It can also be stored securely, either digitally or on paper. Unlike traditional money, it can’t be easily forged. Unlike traditional currency, bitcoin transactions are both public and largely anonymous.

Why is Bitcoin Valuable?

Bitcoin does a number of things that traditional money, gold, credit cards and checks do, but it does it without a central bank. Bitcoin also does it digitally and in a way that is very difficult and arguably impossible to forge. These characteristics are so desirable that many people are trading traditional currencies for bitcoin. In fact, so much of this is happening that it’s causing the price of bitcoin relative to traditional currencies to skyrocket, creating an investment opportunity for many people coming into the currency.

Like other currencies, bitcoin’s value is driven by supply and demand. Bitcoin has a limited supply (today there are only 16 million bitcoins and the currency will only ever have 21 million coins). This is a limited global supply but an in increasing global demand. Bitcoin is becoming more widely accepted and easily transferable. It’s now possible to send money from person to person and country to country, without it going through a bank.

While this may seem basic (that’s the point), it’s transformative. It’s was previously impractical for people to be their own bank. You could store money in a vault or under your mattress but it was difficult and impractical to do so because ease of transfer and portability are important. This is why centralized digital payment companies like credit cards, PayPal and Venmo took off. They made payment easy and portable. But these methods are centralized. Anyone who has had their credit card stolen or had their PayPal account locked up knows how crippling this can be. The differentiator of bitcoin is that it’s decentralized.

Why Does Society Think Bitcoin is Valuable?

• It can store your money.
• It can protect against forgery.
• It can be used to pay people securely.
• It can be exchanged globally for goods and services.
• It can appreciate in value (investment).
• It is decentralized so that no government or individual bank is in control.

Technological disruption often eliminates middlemen. It allows people to deal directly rather than indirectly. Bitcoin is eliminating the arbitrage of a bank. It allows people to control their own funds directly.

What’s Wrong With Bitcoin?

For all the things that are positive about bitcoin, there are a number of problems worth discussing. These problems are being worked on by teams around the world, and given the decentralized nature of bitcoin, will require consensus to solve.

• Bitcoin is slow. Transactions, sending money and receiving it is slow; currently too slow for real-time purchases. Bitcoin is faster and more secure than sending a check, but it’s often measured in minutes and hours, not milliseconds.
• Bitcoin uses a lot of electricity. Part of the algorithm of bitcoin is designed to make it difficult to create new bitcoins. This process is intentionally inefficient. Because of the rapid scale of the currency, it’s estimated to be using enough energy to power about 2 million homes.
• Bitcoin is currently an unstable currency. It’s so new that it changes price daily in 10 percent swings both positively and negatively. This can equate to even larger weekly fluctuations. I expect it will settle, but it’s hard to tell how long this will take. In the meantime, there will be investment winners, losers and inevitable bubbles.

The Future of Cryptocurrencies

Global wealth is measured in the $100 trillion range and up. Cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, are in the $200 billion range. I believe that the future will have more cryptocurrencies rather than fewer. My predictions:

• I expect cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin will grow north of 1 percent or $1 trillion in global value in the next year. Over the next few years, I expect it to be 5–10 percent.
• The decentralized encryption technology behind bitcoin (blockchains) will be used for many new things including accounting, medical records, insurance and more.
• New cryptocurrencies may begin to grow even faster than bitcoin as the performance and energy issues with bitcoin become more pronounced.
• When the growth rate stabilizes, we’ll see more personal payment solutions (similar to PayPal) as well as traditional banking solutions built on top of cryptocurrencies.
• Governments and tax agencies will begin to pay a lot more attention. Bitcoin is considered an “intangible property” by the IRS. Expect further regulation and taxes around cryptocurrency to measure and track capital gains.
• Exciting new technologies will become more popular. New currencies and blockchain tools like Ethereum will allow a new breed of apps to be built and run in the cloud. This is still in the experimental phase, but people are already using Ethereum for identity, crowdfunding, voting, and even breeding digital cats (yeah, really.) More complex and sophisticated apps will evolve to use the technology that will further digital currency and decentralized trust.

I believe that many aspects of cryptocurrencies will become inevitable. Not everyone wants to trust banks with their money, but to date, it’s been impractical to do otherwise. The collapse of Lehman Brothers, the fraud at Wells Fargo and others have created new opportunities for bitcoin and beyond. I believe the future is bright for digital currencies.

Warning: Never invest in something you don’t understand and don’t risk money you’re not willing to lose.

Blockchain was originally designed to facilitate transactions of the cryptocurrency bitcoin. But bitcoin was only the first large-scale application of the blockchain platform. Blockchain technology has immense potential beyond just cryptocurrency transactions. It could completely change financial and business transactions and real estate deals.

From a tax perspective, blockchain has the ability to disrupt global taxation.

What is Blockchain?

Blockchain is essentially a decentralized transaction ledger, in which digital information can be distributed and viewed but not copied or altered. As a distributed database, it lives across a network of computers, which makes it exceptionally secure.

Blockchain stores transaction records in groups called blocks. Each block is time-stamped and added to a chain, linked to the previous block. It is completely transparent and cannot be changed, eliminating the need for a third party audit.

A transaction can involve money, contracts, records and other information. Therefore, blockchain is not limited to financial transactions but can be used for anything of value.

The Potential Impact of Blockchain on Businesses

Since blockchain technology fundamentally changes how transactions are made and recorded, the accounting industry will likely see the biggest impact. But the disruption will not stop there. Real estate transactions could be greatly simplified using blockchain technology instead of manual paperwork. Distributed ledgers provide an easy way to trace the origins of goods (for example, fair trade products), thus simplifying supply chain audits.

In the sharing economy, blockchain could enable true peer-to-peer transactions, thus eliminating the intermediary, like an Uber or Airbnb. Blockchain technology could take crowdfunding to the next level, potentially creating crowd-sourced venture capital funds. Using smart contracts, creators can protect intellectual property and sell creative work directly to their audiences online. Client verification, often a cumbersome manual process, could be simplified through cross-institution verification based on blockchain. This could also have applications in anti-money laundering efforts. In politics and governance, a distributed database could make results fully transparent and publicly accessible.

How Blockchain Could Transform Taxation

Blockchain’s core characteristics give it significant potential for use in taxation.

Transparent Real-Time Information

Businesses could see less cost and more efficiency, as blockchain technology could automate the manual processing of payroll tax, employment tax and any transaction-based taxes. Instead of self-reporting, every single transaction would be recorded and paid immediately, ensuring almost 100 percent compliance.

Blockchain could also help with verifying transfer pricing and valuation. Using this technology would make it easier to value what is the “fair market price” between a willing buyer and willing seller to ensure all related party transactions are valued appropriately. It would help make valuations more of a science than an art and keep these valuations supportable and up to date.

Increased Security and Fraud Protection

With blockchain incorporated into the tax collection process, audit detection occurs automatically and instantaneously. The digital ledger cannot be tempered with once the data is entered. Any changes are fully transparent to all identified network users, thus limiting the potential for errors and fraud.

Tax authorities would also benefit from that. The transparency inherent to blockchain would change how tax audits are performed. Some governments, such as Luxembourg, have already started to experiment with blockchain-based solutions for tax filings and audits.

While blockchain has its roots in cryptocurrencies, it has the potential and trajectory to profoundly impact financial services, taxation and global business in general. This is something that will impact 2018 and beyond. So the people who get involved now in learning, understanding and developing this technology and these solutions are not only boosting a trend, but impacting our society for years to come.

A version of this post originally appeared here. 

To that end, we’ve provided the seven elements of successful e-commerce landing pages so that you can grab their attention before it’s too late.

Transparent Navigation

Of the different types of web pages, an e-commerce landing page is the one that should offer the least resistance between the consumer’s arrival and their ability to act. A general rule of thumb for navigation is that it should take no more than three clicks of the mouse to get from any page on your site to their intended destination.

This means when you’re considering how your landing page will link to pages deeper into the website, eliminate any unnecessary detours that may lead them away from that all-important “buy now” button.

Substance Over Flash

Many web designers make the mistake of thinking you need blinking buttons or deceptive links to get consumers to buy things. If this is the case, then chances are their products simply aren’t high quality. Assuming yours are, your job becomes providing users with as much relevant information within the page as possible, as seen in this example for commercial fire extinguishers.

Be advised, however, that the key word here is “relevant information,” meaning that which will assist them in their purchase. It does not mean bombard them with sales pitches beyond the facts. Rather, strive for intelligent and compelling copy.

Use Space Efficiently

In landing pages or any web page for that matter, efficiency is measured through use of the available white space. Most users peruse a page from top left to bottom right, so you should have the most important bits of information in that order.

There should be opportunities for the user to go where you want them to along the way, either through links or buttons. As an example: Image-heavy landing pages with lots of white space use every opportunity to lead consumers toward a purchase.

Avoid Technical Issues

There is some leniency with other types of pages in terms of 404 Errors and the like, but e-commerce users usually have a low tolerance for those kinds of problems.

A link that leads nowhere or a button that doesn’t work can give the impression that your site can’t be trusted with their credit card information. Extensive testing is recommended.

Gather Reviews

The end-all for e-commerce pages is, of course, the conversion. This involves monetary exchange for either a product, a subscription, or a service. However, failure to convert isn’t a total loss. Much of e-commerce success is based on marketing, and much of online marketing is gathering consumer email addresses so you can approach them from different angles.

A potential customer may decide against a purchase at any given time, but they could be swayed by a landing page that features positive reviews from happy customers.

Use Social Media

This should be a no-brainer for any webpage in the modern era. Much of how you generate business online will come from visitors who share your products with their friends and family. Indeed, word-of-mouth is a powerful tool.

You can take advantage of this by making your landing page easy to share on the various platforms. In fact, sites like Twitter and Facebook have marketing tools available to target former visitors and remind them why they were interested as they browse their news feeds.

Choose Images Carefully

This is one of the more important aspects of an e-commerce landing page because product shoppers usually require visual confirmation of products before they make a purchase. Hosting platforms can limit the quality of your images according to available space, making smart compression and web-optimized file types a must.

Regardless of their quality, make sure the images match your brand and present the most attractive sides to your physical product.