You’ve got your product and a whiteboard full of random phrases and ideas being tossed around.
Some names sound ok, maybe a few seem like a good fit, but no one on your team can agree on a winner.
So how do you choose the right name for your product?
Here’s where keyword research comes into play!
By understanding what people are searching for, you can optimize your product name to better meet their needs.
Not only that, you’ll also increase the odds that they’ll find and buy your product.
Stressed? Don’t be.
I’ll show you the ins and outs of product naming to make the process a breeze.
What Makes a Good Product Name?
In general, you want your product name to be easy to remember, easy to understand, and easy to say!
Think about it.
If I can’t even pronounce your product’s name, how am I going to remember it?
And if I can’t understand what your product does through its name, I’m probably going to go see what the competition has to offer instead.
So before you release a product, it’s always a good idea to research online marketing challenges that could arise.
If you don’t, it could limit your team’s ability to make the right branding strategy. On the other hand, using SEO hacks to discover your next brand name works surprisingly well!
When someone searches for something online, their intentions become clear through the words they use.
Looking for reviews? You’ll probably add the word “best.” Searching for someplace to eat? The words “near me” might be used. Search engines like Google have gotten great at inferring user intent based on the queries they enter and the context around them.
The point is, you can also search your own product’s name or product category and see what keywords the top ranked results share. Those first few results likely have things in common. Are your potential customers looking for a product that has certain qualities, like increased speed or strength? That might be a sign to incorporate similar words into your brand.
Don’t make the mistake of only looking for intent in the top search results. At least for Google, you can check out related searches and what “people also ask.” Both of these provide insights into what your customer base is thinking when it comes to your product.
Here are a few branding tips to think about when you name your next product:
Make it Relevant
Ask yourself, what category does your product fall under? It’s likely a term that people also search for when looking for similar products.
That’s why you should include as many of your category names in the name of your product whenever possible.
Product names are also usually cited as anchor text in online articles, so including a category in the name can lead to more qualified clicks to your page. This is just one way of leveraging SEO to build your brand.
A clever example of this is the brand name for a project management tool for businesses called MOE Assist. This play on words hints at “more assistance” for projects by using MOE Assist.
Use Search Engines/Tools
Have trouble coming up with keywords in your field?
Ubersuggest is a useful keyword generation tool for honing in on the perfect name. It’s easy to use with a smooth interface and offers a ton of extra information about every keyword. Ubersuggest offers suggested keywords to use instead, as well as related words, SEO difficulty, and volume and more.
One cool bonus feature of Ubersuggest is each keyword search result comes with a list of content ideas that could give you a boost in SERPS (search engine results pages).
YouTube is also an excellent resource, as it is the second largest search engine in the world. To find popular keywords on this platform, use YouTube’s search bar to enter in your brand name ideas. YouTube’s auto-suggest feature will activate and show you a drop down list of related searches.
Google Ads can help as well, providing access to data on individual keywords, their search rates and suggested alternative words.
Stay Positive
You’ve probably heard of the phrase “guilty by association.” Product names are bound by the associations they elicit.
How many people would buy an Apple product if the company was named after something sour, like a lemon?
Words and meanings can shift across international lines. If you plan on selling your product all over the world, think about how your name will resonate in different cultures. You’d be astonished to find out how many corporate brands alter their product names in different regions. For example, in China Heineken Beer is instead called Xi li, which translates to “happiness power.”
Don’t be Ambiguous
Sure, that random word may sound catchy, but if it bleeds into another category then you end up diminishing your ranking on the organic SERPs. Ambiguous words are open to more than one interpretation. Let’s say you are starting a make-up company and use the word “Compact” in your name. While it can mean a make-up holder, it’s also used for all sorts of products trying to market a small size.
Keep your product names category-specific and direct.
Product naming may not be rocket science, but it does take time to learn how to do it right! Learn more about why SEO is so important for your brand.
Scout the Competition
It can never hurt to take a peek at the competition. Look at the reviews left for your competitors. It will tell you all about their strengths and weaknesses from the perspective of their audience. What are the most common complaints you see? You can use those reviews to differentiate your own product from the competition.
Dive deep into their publicly available data, like social media accounts and websites. What unique features do their products have?
Product Naming Success Examples
Look no further than two of the biggest tech giants, Microsoft and Apple, for examples of great success stories in product naming.
Well, around the time that Windows launched, all graphical user interfaces (GUIs) were being described as “windowed systems.” Rather than becoming yet another windowed interface, Microsoft flipped the script by claiming the window name for themselves.
In turn, this positioned Windows as the category definer instead of a reinforcer, with other companies now using Microsoft’s branded name to describe their interfaces.
Another great example of successful product names is Netflix. Simple, direct, and includes the category in the title: what more could we ask for?!
By combining the first half of the word “internet” with a slang word for movies, Netflix says what it is with minimal effort.
Find What Your Audience Wants and Thinks
You can save time and money by learning from your target market what they want, rather than guessing.
If you have a client email list, send them a survey and ask them a few questions to get to know your audience better.
Once you have results, look for repeating themes and common answers. Use these responses to reword your product name appropriately.
Don’t have an email list? Use your social media accounts instead!
Get insights on your followers by looking at what they kept watching and what they clicked on. Post mini-polls to gauge interest. Find audience members who are more engaged with your page and send a direct message.
Asking a few questions from engaged followers can give valuable feedback from the people most interested in your products.
Future-Proof Your Product Naming Strategies
You’ve jumped through all the SEO hoops and finally have a product name worth using. Secure that name for ages to come!
To avoid any future SEO or social ramifications, double-check to see whether someone has already taken your planned social media profile name.
If you don’t want to be associated with somebody who has a negative reputation, this is critical, particularly if there’s already someone out there with the same account name as your product.
Future-proof your product names by claiming social media accounts with your product’s name on all the main platforms. In addition, check web domains with your product name as well. If they are available, buying them is a good way to protect your brand name’s reputation.
FAQs
How important is my product name?
Your product name is vital to the success of your product! 77% of consumers buy products based on the name instead of the product itself. The name is one of the first things that potential customers will see. Product names without any association to the product’s category can make it hard to find on search engines. Names with negative associations to other words and social media accounts can hinder sales.
How do I know I am naming my product something people want?
By researching your audience through surveys and data analytics, you can help ensure that the product name you choose is something that people want.
Conclusion
The creation of catchy and unique product names doesn’t have to be hard.
Remember to pick a brand name that is relevant, has positive associations and is unambiguous. If you can include a category title in your product’s name, all the better.
You may think that sounds extreme, but it’s pretty reasonable.
In a digitally connected world, people expect a quick and easy user experience, especially on mobile.
Google agrees. Page experience signals such as page loading speed are now among the factors that help you rank on search engine results pages (SERPs).
In other words, you should be concerned with page experience. Google wants to make sure people get the answers they’re looking for and have an enjoyable user experience.
This Google metric measures the user experience that visitors have when they arrive at your page. As you rack up visits, you have the opportunity to convert them into sales and grow your audience.
Core Web Vitals are crucial to your website’s growth, no matter the quality of your content.
I know keeping up with Google feels like a full-time job. I’m here to help you through it.
If you’re struggling with Core Web Vitals, let me explain why you need to keep working on them.
Let’s get technical.
What Is Core Web Vitals and Why Is It Important?
Core Web Vitals are a little complex, so let’s break them down.
CWV affects algorithms based on Google’s page experience metric, which measures “how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page beyond its pure information value.”
Core Web Vitals take three metrics into account:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP or load time): How long a page’s primary content— including large elements like a hero picture or header—takes to load. A good score is 2.5 seconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS or visual stability): The amount a page’s layout shifts after loading. This is a measure of your site’s visual stability.
First Input Delay (FID or interactivity): The amount of time that passes from when a user performs an action on your site (like clicking a link or button) to when the browser responds to that action.
As a small business owner, digital marketer, or website developer, you can improve your Core Web Vitals to enhance your website’s user experience. If your page isn’t loading fast enough, visitors will bounce and you can lose your rank position to a page that loads more efficiently.
This is why Core Web Vitals are so key for small business SEO. Besides keeping your website organized and clean, strong CWV scores help your website rank higher and gain more recognition.
By prioritizing page experience, you can pass Core Web Vitals.
So, why is it important that you keep working to pass Core Web Vitals?
Reduced search performance is the clear result of a poor page experience in terms of CWV metrics. Even if your website has the best content ever, if users are having trouble accessing it or interacting with it, Google will respond accordingly.
Since Google is shaping the web, CWV and SEO for small businesses need to work hand in hand to help you boost traffic.
While the value of search traffic varies from business to business, CWV is incredibly valuable as a low-cost, natural way to draw interested visitors to your website. Because of this, Core Web Vitals must be a priority if you rely on this kind of traffic or believe it will increase in value in the future.
Give your audience a hassle-free experience while browsing your site to remain favorable with Google.
Google is getting more and more competitive, so continue to adapt and keep up with the changes.
Why Small Businesses Can Fail Core Web Vitals
How often are you monitoring your site’s user-friendliness?
If you’ve neglected your site’s performance, let’s make sure you pass Core Web Vitals.
Earlier, we talked about what Core Web Vitals measures—largest contentful paint (LCP), first input delay (FID), and cumulative layout shift (CLS). Now let’s put these concepts into real-life scenarios.
My team and I have collected data from different companies to show you why small businesses can fail Core Web Vitals.
Of the companies we collected data from, 50% did not pass Core Web Vitals.
Let’s look into what causes them to fail and what happens when you fail Core Web Vitals.
What Happens When You Fail Core Web Vitals?
First—don’t panic.
So much has changed since the initial rollout after the Core Web Vitals announcement.
I can get you to where you want to be, and along the way, you’ll see a boost in your rank.
In the meantime, let’s study the sites that failed. What are they getting wrong with page experience?
Core Vital Measurement
Failed
Layout Shift
81.24%
Largest Contentful Paint
73.49%
First Input Delay
91%
For the failing sites, largest contentful paint, or LCP, is the area that needs the most improvement.
For sites that fail LCP, I suggest looking at how large elements are loading. This includes videos, images, and fonts. Even how they’re maximizing on SEO for small business promotion plays a big part.
Of the components within Google’s Ranking Algorithm, 12 to 15% are SEO-based. The “page experience” improvement from Google have a direct impact on the SEO of your website. The largest portion of Google’s page experience signals are the Core Web Vitals. This is why fast LCP gives the user confidence that the page is useful, boosting the page’s SEO content.
Another interesting callout linked to SEO is that sites that did not pass Core Web Vitals in some cases ranked higher than businesses that passed. However, businesses that did pass Core Web Vitals had substantially higher monthly organic traffic metrics.
So, while competitors that fail CWV may rank better for certain keywords, passing Core Web Vitals will help the site as a whole and drive more traffic to the site.
Remember, it’s about the experience on the site overall, emphasizing being faster and well organized.
What Our Data Taught Us About Core Web Vitals for Small Businesses
From what our data taught us, small businesses that pass Core Web Vitals had higher domain ratings, more backlinks, and a larger pool of non-branded keywords.
To give you a clear picture of the brands we’re profiling, we used the CrUX Dashboard to track and trace user experience trends for each brand, and PageSpeed Insights to pull reports on their page performance on desktop and mobile view.
From the captured data in June 2022, we could see who failed or passed Core Web Vitals, offering variables as to why this was the brand’s outcome. Post-assessment analyzation, the following factors helped us understand what contributed to a brand passing or failing CWV:
Largest Contentful Paint
First Input Display
Cumulative Layout Shift
Mobile Users
Net Organic Traffic
Domain Rating
Backlinks
Referring Domains
Now let’s look at what contributed to each brand’s CWV status.
Bearded Bastard: What Happens If You Fail Core Web Vitals
We took two beard grooming brands and two glow accessories brands to analyze what makes the difference for a brand that experiences failed CWV versus passing CWV.
For the beard growing brand that failed CWV, the Bearded Bastard, here’s what we saw in the data pulled:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) : Scored a 72% for good user experiences with 2.6s load time. The preferred time is 2.5s or lower, so this doesn’t pass, but it is close.
FID (First Input Display): scored a 90% for good user experiences for the website as a whole with 15ms load time. 100 ms or lower is considered good.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): scored a 75.69% for good user experiences with .1 second load time
Mobile Users: 81.5% find this site from their phones
Net Organic Traffic: about 11.1K every month, according to Ahrefs
Domain Rating: 35
Backlinks: 3.2K
Referring Domains: 360K
In June 2022, they ranked in positions 1-3 for 28 keywords related to their products which has a sum of 1670 for search volume. Yet, they net 277 visitors from these ranking 1-3 positions keywords.
The Beard Brand: Auditing and Learning from CWV Success
For the beard brand that passed CWV, the Beard Brand, we noticed a shift in numbers that contributed to their assessment.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Scored a 84.09% with a 1.4s
FID (First Input Display): scored a 97.23% with a 16ms
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): scored a 79.54% with 0s
Mobile Users: 74.6% find this site from their phones
Net Organic Traffic: about 316.2K every month, according to Ahrefs
Domain Rating: 73
Backlinks: 33.7K
Referring Domains: 3.4K
By June 2022, they ranked in positions 1-3 for 1,950 keywords related to their products while ranking in positions 1-3 for 1,910 non-branded keywords.
Other than mobile optimizations and providing quick page load times, domain rating and backlinks are the main differing metrics. These are potential variables that show why a site may be successful despite failing CWV.
The Secret Woods: Results from CWV Reporting
We also looked at two glow accessories brands and found what made the difference for each brand’s CWV results:
My Secret Woods received a passing CWV report, so let’s look at the numbers:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Scored a 87.36% with a 2.2s
FID (First Input Display): scored a 98.54% with a 12ms
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): scored a 71.34% with 0.9s
Mobile Users: 80.98% find this site from their phones
Net Organic Traffic: about 8.7K every month, according to Ahrefs
Domain Rating: 58
Backlinks: 6.2K
Referring Domains: 776
In June 2022, they ranked in positions 1-3 for 108 keywords related to their products while ranking in positions 1-3 for 76 non-branded keywords.
Carbon 6 Rings: What CWV Issues Are Most Common?
Unlike its competitor, Carbon 6 Rings did not pass Core Web Vitals. Let’s see why:
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Scored a 74.98% with a 2.7s
FID (First Input Display): scored a 92.05% with a 18ms
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): scored a 86.79% with 0s
Mobile Users: 84.57% find this site from their phones
Net Organic Traffic: about 18.2K every month, according to Ahrefs
Domain Rating: 50
Backlinks: 1.1K
Referring Domains: 237
For June 2022, they ranked in positions 1-3 for 114 keywords related to their products while ranking in positions 1-3 for 69 non-branded keywords.
What Can We Learn About Core Web Vitals and Site Success
Now that we’ve broken things down individually, let’s show these different metrics side-by-side.
The key differences we see with these competitors are the lack of ranking keywords in high positions like 1-3 for the failing CWV brand.
However, those businesses that passed CWV had substantially higher metrics for organic traffic per month. You’ll see while competitors that fail CWV may rank better for certain keywords, Core Web Vitals will help the site as a whole.
More traffic is then driven to the site since the experience is overall better quality attributed to speed.
So, if you want to look at your performance through the eyes of Google, use Core Web Vital tools such as Google Lighthouse.
These tools will help you improve your website performance in more areas than one.
To pass Core Web Vitals based on our learnings, small businesses need to improve their technical SEO in order to increase overall page speed. This is done through practices like progressively loading images and delaying third-party scripts.
The long-term success of any small business depends heavily on providing a pleasant website user experience. Core Web Vitals is a chance to enhance page experience and maybe see a bump in search engine results.
I know the recommendations for improving page experience in Core Web Vitals may sound quite technical. However, focusing on the metrics that matter most makes it less intimidating.
Core Web Vitals is just a place to start when trying to enhance page experience. As we’ve seen, Google is becoming more confident in the data as those metrics change over time.
It makes sense that small business owners would have a range of inquiries concerning technical SEO for small businesses and Core Web Vitals.
The most crucial thing is to start improving your online experience.
How to Start Passing Core Web Vitals
A Semrush study found that nearly 84% of URLs ranking in the top 10 on mobile SERPs in the U.S. were flagged as either “Poor” or “To improve” on Core Web Vitals reports.
So, before you get started with adjusting your current performance, check the metrics of your site with a Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console. It’ll list everything that’s good, poor, or needs improvement.
Now that you know which pages are impacted, you can move ahead with your strategy.
Take it section by section.
Start with LCP.
This is usually what makes a page score as “poor.” Optimize LCP by eliminating any unnecessary third-party scripts to speed up page speed or setting up lazy loading – deferred loading for non-critical resources.
Next, optimize FID.
Minimizing JavaScript enables users to interact with a page better and having the cache clear helps load page content noticeably faster.
Finally, optimize CLS by using set size attributes for all media. This means video, photos, GIFs, infographics, etc. Even ads need a designated spot on your site so they don’t alter the flow of your content.
There’s so much to the structure of Core Web Vitals. So, take each part one by one to improve your site.
The good thing is you’ll see results and be closer to owning a page that can pass Core Web Vitals.
FAQ
Does SEO work for small businesses?
Yes, SEO works for small businesses. SEO for small businesses can even be easier by using other tools like social media to build backlinks to your site. This will help with domain authority and help your rank higher on search engine results pages.
Because search engines utilize sophisticated algorithms to offer users the precise results they want. If you produce useful material with SEO, you can rank against some of your fiercest competitors.
What are the 3 pillars of Core Web Vitals?
The three “pillars” of Core Web Vitals are:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) refers to how long a page’s main elements take to load
First Input Delay (FID) refers to the time that passes from a user’s first interaction with a web page (like clicking a link or button) to when the browser responds to that action.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) refers to the degree to which a page’s layout shifts once it’s loaded.
What is a good score on Core Web Vitals?
Overall, Core Web Vitals is graded as pass/fail. For more specific benchmarks, you need to look at the specific elements of the system. For example, 2.5 seconds is generally the cutoff point for a “good score” for Largest Contentful Paint. For Cumulative Layout Shift, you should try to be at 0.1 second or below. First Input Delay should be 100 milliseconds or below.
How to improve Core Web Vitals?
Core Web Vitals improvement is a long-term process, so don’t get frustrated if it feels you have a lot of work to do. In general, you need to focus on any and all means to improve overall site speed and performance. This can include basic steps like resizing your existing images to speed out loading times, or more involved steps like moving from shared web hosting to a dedicated server.
Does Core Web Vitals affect ranking?
Core Web Vitals performance does impact SEO ranking in Google. While failing CWV doesn’t necessarily mean that your site will fail to rank for all keywords, it does ultimately impact both your rank as well as the user experience.
What are other technical SEO best practices?
Other technical SEO best practices to boost small business SEO are:
URL structure optimization: To organize content and use keywords
Page speed/Website speed: Fast pages = good page experience
SSL and HTTPS: Encrypted connection secure for users
Mobile friendliness: Efficient for users on the go anywhere at anytime
Establishing a preferred domain: A hub for users to find your brand
Conclusion
Customer experience, according to Forbes, is the new SEO, and the rollout of Core Web Vitals clearly supports their theory.
The launch of Core Web Vitals was a big move toward improving the web for every user. And it appears that these measurements will remain a big part of Google’s ranking algorithm.
Even if you don’t notice any problems now, you should continue to keep an eye on them.
Google won’t stop ranking pages if those pages don’t pass Core Web Vitals.
You can pass the assessment or have better results if your website is secure, mobile-friendly, features useful content, and doesn’t show intrusive ads.
Google’s idea is to help users find the most relevant and quality sites. So, make sure that site is yours by providing users with the best and most informative experience.
Are you struggling with Core Web Vitals and debating whether to keep working on them? Let us know!
But there is more to search than Google. And even with Google, if you want to succeed you have to think beyond traditional SEO and PPC ads because everyone is using traditional tactics.
You must think outside the box. And that’s what I am going to help you do today.
So, let’s first go over the trends we are seeing, and then we can go over how you need to adapt.
Search trends
Although no one really talks about search like they used to, people still find it extremely valuable.
According to an MIT study, search engines were valued more than 2x as much as email, nearly 5x as much as online maps, and +50x more than social media.
As marketers, this is important to keep in mind because we tend to focus on shiny objects. You know, the channels everyone is talking about.
But a lot of the old channels out there like search engines and email are still very effective and people place more value on them.
And here is a fun fact that you probably didn’t know about search either… 15% of all searches that take place on Google each day have never been searched before.
That’s kind of crazy to think about knowing that Google has been around for a while and so has SEO.
And according to Google people go through a handful of emotions as they search that lead up to a purchase.
So, what are marketers doing? Well, they create tons of content to appeal to each of the above stages in hopes of landing a customer.
They know it’s effective too because Google even tells you… 85% of people will purchase from brands that provide trustworthy information.
But marketers forget is that 63% won’t buy from brands that provide irrelevant information.
So, if your content doesn’t help people or even worse is off, it’s going to hurt you over helping.
Now when I first started off in the digital marketing world 22 years ago marketers didn’t have this problem.
When you created content, you stood out for one simple reason… there was a lack of content. But these days that isn’t the case.
Do you think we really need anyone else to write content on that subject? Not really unless something drastically changes within that industry.
So when you create content on a keyword you want traffic from, what do you think is going to happen?
There may be a slim chance that you have something new to say that no one else has talked about… the reality is you are going to regurgitate what everyone else is already talking about.
It went from being where your website was “waldo” and you stood out from the crowd, but now everyone is waldo and it is hard to tell one site apart from another.
So how do you stand out? Well, we will get to that in a bit, but let’s go over a few more trends. 😉
Google isn’t the only player in town
I want you to do a fun exercise. Think about all the platforms you use on a regular basis and ask yourself if they have a search feature.
Search is everywhere… it’s not just on Google or Bing.
Perform a search on each of the platforms you use on a regular basis. For fun let’s search for “Amsterdam”.
On Booking.com you may find hotels in Amsterdam. On Google you may find information about the city.
On YouTube, you may find videos about the movie and on Pinterest, you may find images from the city. And on Instagram, you may find pictures of restaurants and food dishes people ate in Amsterdam.
But here is where it gets interesting. According to Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP at Google, young people are turning to Instagram and TikTok for search over Google.
In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search… they go to TikTok or Instagram.
If you don’t pay attention to the trends out there and adapt to what people want, you will lose.
Heck, even Google pays attention to trends and they try to adapt.
Remember when they created the social network Google Plus? It didn’t work out, but they tried.
And now they have web stories, which will help them compete with Instagram and TikTok. Just like how they also created YouTube Shorts too.
I don’t think web stories will work as people don’t really see Google as a social network, but time will tell.
So, where’s the opportunity?
There are a few opportunities for you if you want to stand out from all the other waldos and be able to compete in a way that doesn’t mean just spending more than others as that is unrealistic.
Let’s go over them.
Go after the 15 percent of searches that have never been searched before
Remember how we talked about that earlier?
Using most SEO tools out there doesn’t solve this because they all focus on “popular” keywords.
Hence, they show keyword volume. But there is more to the search universe than bottom-of-the-funnel, middle-of-the-funnel, or top-of-the-funnel search terms.
What about a strategy that involves going after terms that are on the cusp of becoming popular and people are starting to search for them?
These terms will be easy to rank for and will become more popular over time.
But how do you find them if SEO tools are focusing on already popular and sadly competitive terms?
You go after Google Suggest terms. These are terms that people are searching for that don’t really show up in most tools.
An easy way to get a list of all the Google Suggest terms is to use tools like Answer the Public.
Just type in a term related to your space, like “digital marketing”, and you will get a list of all the up-and-coming terms people are searching for.
Answer the Public will give you hundreds of keywords to target based on questions people are asking, prepositions, comparisons, and overall, what Google is showing as up-and-coming terms.
Take an omnichannel approach
You may have heard me talk about this one before but you don’t have a choice but to be on all the platforms these days.
It doesn’t matter if the algorithms favor you or not… getting some coverage is better than none.
Plus, omnichannel marketing helps with the rule of 7. When someone sees or interacts with your brand 7 times, they are more likely to evangelize and buy from you.
Now I don’t want to bore you to death with hundreds of marketing tactics for each platform, so I am going to break down 1 thing that each platform loves that you can use to get more traffic, views, and engagement.
And to be clear this one thing that I am giving you for each platform, should have a much bigger impact than other tactics, hence I focus a lot of my efforts on the exact tactics I break down below.
YouTube – this platform focuses on the first 24 hours. Videos that do well in the first 24 hours are more likely to rank higher and keep getting suggested. Right when your video goes live on YouTube promote it through push notifications, email blasts, and SMS messages.
LinkedIn – they really love comments more than anything else. Right when you post anything on LinkedIn, round up people in the first 4 hours that have similar audiences and have them leave a comment. The comment needs to be engaging and be at least 12 words long. For example, if I posted on LinkedIn about 5 ways to rank higher on Google, I may have a buddy or mine leave a comment on a 6th strategy to rank higher on Google.
TikTok – similar to LinkedIn they love comments. But the comments need to be engaging. For example, I posted a TikTok video on how blogging is more competitive than podcasting and that marketers should leverage podcasts. Someone left a comment on how I was wrong, even though the stats and data backed up my point. This created more controversy which caused over 138,000 views. So have people leave comments similar to what you would do on LinkedIn and ideally right when your video comes out.
Instagram – they have seen a 17.6% decrease in live video content yet users prefer live video over reading a blog post. And the demand for it is expected to grow 15x from what it was in 2022. If you create live videos on Instagram with other influential members and you make sure your content is amazing, it will help you get more reach which leads to more followers, and then when you post other forms of content you’ll find that it will perform better. So go live at least once a week.
Google – they love brands. As the ex-CEO once said, “brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.” An easy way to create a bigger brand is to release free tools on your website. It keeps people coming back and searching for your brand name, which will increase your overall rankings over time. You can find free tools that you can white label and put on your site from Code Canyon.
Facebook – they want you to create longer-form videos. Videos over 5 minutes long on my page generate on average 268% more views. To see if that pattern held for others, we analyzed 939 other company profile pages and found that their videos over 5 minutes generated 81.39% more engagement.
Follow the Peak-end-rule to build a brand
I talked a little bit about brand building earlier about how Google loves brands. And you can release free tools to help you build a brand.
That’s a great tactic to help with SEO.
But brands really are the future. Just look at Nike, more people search for the term “Nike” than they search for the term “shoes” which is crazy considering so many companies offer shoes.
You create a great brand by building an amazing product or service. But that is just the start of it.
It really comes down to how people emotionally connect with your brand. And this involves the Peak-end-rule.
Typically when people work with your brand they have positive and negative experiences. You want to make sure they typically have a good experience when they first start using your product and service. You also want to make sure towards the end they also have an amazing experience.
A simple example of this is riding a bike. When a child first gets a bike they are filled with joy and excitement and it creates a great first peak. But as they start riding their bike they may fall a few times and it can create negative peaks. But once they get the hang of it, they are off to the races, having fun and not falling, which creates a positive end peak.
With your product or service, continually survey your customers and figure out what you can do to continually delight them. It’s the best way to figure out how you can create those emotional peaks.
That’s what builds an amazing brand.
Conclusion
I love Google. It’s a big part of my business at my ad agency NP Digital.
But we don’t stop with Google. From social media to email marketing to CRO… there are many marketing channels that you should consider.
And when it comes to search, keep in mind search is everywhere. From Google to YouTube to TikTok… search is everywhere. Heck, my father-in-law does SEO on his Airbnb listing as people “search” when they are on Airbnb.
But if you want to stand out from the crowd and not be another Waldo, focus on the 3 main things I broke down above.
As a website owner, do you feel as if the line between a good user experience and optimal search engine optimization (SEO) is a tightrope?
It’s not uncommon to feel like you have to prioritize one over the other. When it comes to minimalist website design, that feeling becomes more pronounced. After all, search engine optimization requires ample content for optimization. Doesn’t it?
This article will explore the relationship between minimalist website design and organic keyword rankings. We’ll look at six websites, including one non-minimalist one, to answer the burning question: Do minimalist website designs help or hurt your SEO?
Why Are Minimalist Website Designs Getting So Popular?
A minimalist website is one that uses content sparingly. This may include words, but it can also include images, graphics, and videos.
So why are minimalist website designs getting so popular?
As more users use smaller screens, the desire for minimalist website designs increases. This is because you want the experience for desktop users and mobile users to be consistent. A minimalist website design means fewer changes for the mobile platform.
A minimalist design is also better for the user experience. With less content cluttering up the viewer’s eyesight, they can more easily journey through the site.
In addition, minimalist websites are prone to faster page loading times, and they are quick to respond to size or orientation changes (such as when viewing on a tablet or smartphone).
How Do Website Design And SEO Interact?
When you’re designing for SEO purposes, you may run into some elements that seem counterintuitive. The good news is that there are ways to ensure SEO doesn’t suffer for the sake of a good user experience and vice versa.
There are some elements of both website design and SEO that are so inextricably linked, it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins. Those are the best places to start if you’re redesigning a website with SEO in mind.
With the elements above, the needs of both website users and search engine crawl bots converge. That’s because what’s best for the visitor is what’s best for the crawl bots. That’s always the goal with an SEO-minded website design.
Especially as of late with all the algorithm updates rolling out.
If website design is something that’s seriously on your mind, you’ll be happy to know we have an in-depth guide to follow.
What We Found In Our Data About Minimalist Web Design
Before we dive into the analysis of minimalist websites, let’s define a few things.
First and foremost, our definition of a minimalist website is one with less than 700 words on the homepage. To determine the performance of each site, we analyzed various points, including:
The number of total organic keywords the website ranks for
The number of organic keywords the website ranks on the first page for
The number of organic keywords the website ranks in the first three positions for
The number of rich snippets a website has
The total organic traffic number
The revenue generated from organic traffic
It’s also important to note that any averaged metrics are the average over a 12-month period.
With a whopping 190 words on their homepage, Tiffany & Co. certainly qualifies as a minimalist website design. That’s even with the 20 images incorporated throughout the homepage, as it uses imagery only where needed and beneficial.
How has this worked out for Tiffany & Co.?
Tiffany brought in an average of 3.2 million visitors per month, resulting in an estimated traffic value of $2.4 million per month.
How is it drawing in such large organic traffic numbers? As you might expect, Tiffany & Co.’s keyword universe consists of 336 thousand total organic keywords. Of those, 22.2 thousand keywords ranked in the top three positions.
Coming in at even fewer words than Tiffany & Co., Becket + Quill has only 96 words on the homepage. They do also incorporate images, 18 in total on the homepage, including Instagram images just above the footer.
When looking at a 12-month of data, Becket + Quill brings in 632 organic visitors per month. This nets them a total of $434 per month in organic traffic value.
It’s no surprise they perform at a significantly reduced volume when compared to Tiffany & Co. After all, the Becket + Quill keyword universe consists of only 529 organic keywords, with only 28 ranking in positions one through three on SERPs.
Loveness Lee is another jewelry website with a minimalist homepage design. That means 115 words in total (including words in the navigation) and 14 images plus one video banner.
How does Loveness Lee fare when it comes to organic traffic? Over a 12-month period, on average, Loveness Lee has 358 visits with a $2 per visit traffic value.
That’s not bad, considering the website ranks for only 254 organic keywords on average per month. Only three of those rank in the top three positions.
With a very similar word count and image count to Loveness Lee, David Yurman has 104 words on the homepage (including words in the navigation) and 17 images.
Perhaps you’d think David Yurman’s keyword profile would be similar to that of Loveness Lee. If you take into account domain rating, though (David Yurman’s 69 to Loveness Lee’s 39), it’s understandable why David Yurman’s keyword universe is so much more robust.
David Yurman has an average organic traffic volume of 439.7 thousand with a traffic value of $271.5 thousand per month. This is thanks to the website’s robust organic keyword profile, including 104.6 thousand organic keywords with 3.2 thousand ranking in positions one through three.
Bringing SEO and Minimalist Design Together: Blue Nile
On the upper end of minimalist, Blue Nile is a good example of pushing the limits but still staying well within the boundary. Its use of white space, clean fonts, and clear typography make its robust word count appear minimalist.
The homepage boasts 616 words and 40 images including a mix of product imagery and graphics. Blue Nile has an average of 2.1 million visits per month with a traffic value of $2.9 million.
How does Blue Nile’s keyword universe fare?
Blue Nile ranks for 217.2 thousand organic keywords, with 28.8 thousand of those rankings in the top three positions.
While not minimalist by our own definition, we’ve included Taylor & Hart for two reasons.
First, it’s important for us to compare the minimalist websites above with a non-minimalist website in the same industry. This helps to give us a greater perspective when it comes to drawing conclusions.
Second, it’s also good to see that a non-minimalist website can still appear minimalist and clean with effective design.
So here’s how Taylor & Hart breaks down.
The homepage has 928 words (including words in the navigation). The majority of this is in the form of a testimonial carousel that allows users to click through without being visually overwhelmed. It also includes 46 images, including product imagery, graphics, and images embedded within the testimonials carousel.
The monthly traffic averaged over a 12-month period is 117 thousand per month with a value of $115 thousand.
Taylor & Hart also boasts a robust keyword profile consisting of 72.1 thousand organic keywords. Of those, 2.8 thousand rank in the top three positions on SERPs.
Is Minimalist Website Design Good or Bad For SEO?
Before we answer this question, let’s consider the “winner” in the analysis above.
Blue Nile was the most profitable site, even beating out Tiffany & Co. for traffic value by $500 thousand per month. It had more words on the page than Tiffany & Co. (616 versus 190), a lower domain rating (76 versus 80), and even a smaller keyword universe (217.2 thousand versus 336 thousand). However, more of its organic keywords ranked in the top three results.
Can we say with certainty that the amount of content on the Blue Nile homepage was the sole contributor? Of course not. However, more content (when presented well) does mean more opportunities for optimization and customer engagement.
But is having more content the be-all-end-all to better rankings? No. If that was the case, Taylor & Hart would have been the clear winner.
With all of that said, to answer the question “is minimalist website design good for bad for SEO?” the answer is neither. There are many other factors at play. So as long as you’re optimizing the content you do have, whether that’s 100 words or 1,000 words, you’ll likely find yourself in a good place.
FAQs
Here are some answers to frequently asked questions on the topic of minimalist website design for SEO.
Does a modern website design hurt my SEO?
A minimalist or modern website design is unlikely to hurt your bottom line when it comes to SEO. There are many factors that go into SERP rankings, and web content is just one of them.
Does changing website design affect SEO?
Website design changes absolutely affect SEO, though how much will depend on the type and degree of changes that you are making. It’s important that you evaluate every change that you plan on making through an SEO lens so you can adapt accordingly.
How do I redesign a website without affecting SEO?
Chances are that site redesigns are going to affect SEO in some capacity, especially if you are making any changes to the site structure or UX. Because of this, it’s important that you audit your existing site and make changes that will allow for better SEO as part of the redesign.
Is a custom website better for SEO?
Most custom websites have better SEO performance than their free counterparts, largely because they are able to be built from the ground-up for search engine performance. With that said, custom websites can still have weak rankings if they are not optimized. Think of it in the sense that custom has the opportunity to perform better, but that opportunity still needs to be executed properly.
Does site architecture affect SEO?
Good site architecture is essential for SEO for multiple reasons. First, grouping relevant content together helps build context around the pieces, and helps search engines get a better idea of what your site is about. Also, a good site architecture makes your pages easier to crawl, so search engines can start ranking new content faster. Good site structure also helps with items like building backlinks and reducing keyword cannibalization.
What are ways to add more content without cluttering my website?
There are plenty of options for adding more content to your site without cluttering the design. These include carousels, accordions, and tabbed sections. You can also utilize more white space to offsite larger pieces of content.
Are accordioned or read more sections considered of lesser value to Google?
It does seem that Google crawls and indexes “hidden” content, like those in accordions or tabs. There is no clear answer on whether tabbed content carries less value. As long as you’re not purposely hiding content but are simply using it for the user experience, you should be fine.
Conclusion
Whether you have a minimalist website design, or you prefer a maximalist approach, you’ll be happy to know that what matters most is how you optimize the content you do have. There is not much difference between minimalist and maximalist websites in terms of SEO, as long as you’re following white hat SEO strategies.
Is a minimalist website design appealing to you but you already have an established website? A redesign is always a possibility. Fortunately, there are even redesign checklists available to ensure the project is a success.
Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.
Do you want to skip the read and get right to my top pick? The best VOIP phone services for most people are Nextiva and Ooma.
Buying VoIP for your business is going to save you money over a traditional phone line. And if you are already using a VoIP service from a clunky provider, you may be able to switch to something sleeker without losing anything except the frustration.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) may sound complex, but it simply means making calls over your internet connection instead of using the old analog phone line. If you are thinking about switching to VoIP for the first time, you are going to be blown away by all the advantages you get with making calls over the internet.
More than just saving money, VoIP has far more features, is incredibly portable, and very scalable.
To write a truly helpful post for my readers, my team got in touch with leaders who have used VoIP in different ways.
You can find about 80 percent of what you need to know about VoIP anywhere on the web—here’s the 20 percent you can’t find anywhere else.
We spoke with:
Gregg, who manages IT services for a living. He knows the good and bad of different VoIP options and helps businesses stay protected from hacks.
Jason, who has been working in call centers for nearly 30 years and just bought VoIP for his enterprise organization. He’s attuned to what’s important for your employees, whether they’re remote or in an office.
Makan, who’s set up dozens of high-volume telemarketing teams. He’s learned how to reduce the risk of regulatory fines and identify top performers in an industry with exceptionally high turnover.
Sarkar, who manages sales teams in the B2B SaaS space. He walked us through how to sync VoIP and CRM software with the fewest possible headaches.
Look, I know what works for a company like mine. By speaking with a range of experts, my team and this article can help a wider array of buyers with different use cases or situations than my own.
There are companies looking to outfit offices in 20 countries. Others have to protect patient data. Some folks just want to stop using their personal mobile number for work.
Here are the seven best VoIP phone service providers you can start using right away. After the reviews, you’ll find an in-depth buyer’s guide.
I hear a lot about the trends of working from home, but I don’t think anyone can say for sure what “office life” is going to look like two or three years from now. If you want your teams to stay functional no matter which way the wind blows, Nextiva is a solid choice.
It’s cloud-based VoIP, so your employees can come into the office, set up a desk at home, or use their phone on the go. Unlike an on-premises phone system, employees can use their phone without a VPN because they’re calling through Nextiva.
So, you have way less to worry about with security—which is definitely on the minds of managers who have people calling from hotels, coffee shops, and their home network.
The experts my team spoke with categorized it as a true plug-and-play system for businesses that want a dial tone without IT headaches. If your system is built on ten phones or fewer, you will have very little trouble getting Nextiva installed.
One thing that Jason pointed out, however, was that you’ll need to put some thought into compliance if you plan to take credit card numbers over the phone. But, for the most part, security is handled by Nextiva because everything is routed through their cloud.
Nextiva can scale to hundreds of phones if need be. There will be some backend configuration to get everything going, but Nextiva will help you deploy with a guided installation process.
And unlike some of the other companies that offer this type of flexibility, Nextiva can outfit your entire office. Fax machines, conference phones, multiple offices–whatever your setup, you’ll be able to transition it to Nextiva’s modern platform.
Level up your business phone by connecting it with email, text, and video—or centralize every channel within a single window for your employees.
All the call handling and user administration features you’d expect are included. And when I say they are easy to use, check out the Call Flow Builder that lets visualize how routing is set up:
It can be tricky to configure auto attendants in some platforms, but it’s drag-and-drop easy with Nextiva.
The company has done a lot to make everything as easy as possible on end users. If you’re wondering whether or not you have the necessary internet speed at your office, you can test it right now on Nextiva’s website. Simulate the traffic required for two or 200 phones. You’ll get info on speed, but also jitter and everything that goes into whether or not you can reliably make calls.
You can also use the site to test the speed of remote workers who need to be on call, which Jason highly recommended. If their home network doesn’t support VoIP, you may be looking at an expensive hiring blunder.
Nextiva offers 24/7 support for every plan. That’s not typical, especially for VoIP at such an affordable price (which is currently on sale too!)
Essential: starting at $18.95$11.95 per month per user
Professional: starting at $22.95$20.95 per month per user
Enterprise: starting at $32.95$26.95 per month per user
These are the annual prices—it’s a little bit more per user to pay month to month, but you don’t have to sign a contract.
The Essential plan is going to work for many teams. It includes unlimited voice and video calling, a free local and toll-free number, and 1,500 toll-free minutes. That’s a lot more than you are going to get with other entry-level plans.
Unlike RingCentral, there’s no user cap for the Essential plan. This means you can offer more people unlimited voice and video at a low price, rather than having to upgrade once you hit 20 users.
For conference calling and business SMS, you’ll need the Professional plan. This comes with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zendesk integration. Essential only has integration with Outlook and Google Contacts.
At the Enterprise tier, you get integrations with CRM software and single sign-on, which is a huge boon to remote workers.
Nextiva One is the company’s omnichannel solution. If customers reach out to you through a variety of channels in addition to phones, this might be a good idea.
Your employees can see all communication with each account, which is really helpful if people are logging help desk tickets, chatting, reaching out on social media, and so on.
Jason argued that omnichannel also makes administrators’ lives easier. “I don’t have 10 systems to manage,” he described to us, “it’s all within the same system.”
You can coordinate ecommerce with a call center or tie multiple brick and mortar stores into a single system.
You also have one bill as opposed to dozens and you’re not chasing down information across multiple platforms. If a customer has an issue, you can go back through the entire record quickly, regardless of how they got in touch.
Organization is just easier with Nextiva. Staying on the same page with customers and your employees is as simple as logging into the system, no matter where you are.
For teams that don’t have an office to coordinate activity, Nextiva is the best VoIP solution.
It’s a product that employees new and old can start using immediately on whatever device they have. Should they ever have an issue, Nextiva’s reputable customer service is there to provide support.
If you are looking at the way features break down in the different packages and you don’t find a perfect fit, just reach out to Nextiva. You can purchase any feature a la carte.
Build your system, your way, in less time with Nextiva. And for a limited time get 25% off, plus a free phone, when you sign up!
#2 – Ooma Office Review — The Best for Adding VoIP to Existing SMB Phone Systems
Ooma can help you include the benefits of business-class VoIP easily with no loss in productivity.
If you have a phone that works, it can hook right into the Ooma system. No phones? Buy them from Ooma at a discount and skip the preconfiguration nonsense. They are plug and play out of the box.
Employees can make calls and collaborate with their colleagues in the Ooma mobile app, whether they are in the office or on-the-go.
One thing Gregg pointed out was how expensive it can get to customize your setup if you have to pay per extension. With Ooma, every user gets a number of free extensions: one for conferences, one for online faxing, and one for a Virtual Receptionist.
Virtual Receptionist is Ooma’s term for an auto attendant. You can set it to play custom messages about business hours, let callers dial by name, select a preferred language, or route the caller to another extension.
With other vendors—especially ones that cost as little as Ooma—you often wind up paying extra to enable online faxing. Some VoIP phone service providers don’t even accommodate it.
When Jason sent his business requirement document to vendors, “two companies bailed out right away” because they weren’t able to set up fax machines. Most of the other vendors told him they don’t really do that, but they would try in order to get his business.
With Ooma, each of your users can set up their own fax extension for free.
Problem solved.
When it comes to integrating VoIP with existing equipment, Ooma minimizes the steps you have to take and maximizes your flexibility. Connect to Ooma Office via WiFi, ethernet, or use the base station to get analog devices on board.
Think of it as a cloud-based VoIP solution that’s really good at accommodating your existing equipment. It might take some time to configure a large office, but the administrator portal is straightforward. It’s not the prettiest interface of all time, but it’s stupid simple to use.
While Ooma offers solutions for enterprise, their VoIP phone services for small businesses really stand out from the pack.
There are no contracts—a rarity in this product space. But to get the best price on VoIP, you need to sign up for at least a year. For small businesses, Ooma pricing breaks down into three tiers:
Ooma Office: starting at $19.95 per month per user
Ooma Office Pro: starting at $24.95 per month per user
Ooma Office Pro Plus: starting at $29.95 per month per user
Upgrading to Pro, you get the desktop app, video conferencing, call recording, enhanced call blocking, and voicemail transcription. You’ll also be able to host conference calls of up to 25 people, whereas Ooma Office has a limit of 10.
You don’t have the choice of selectively upgrading users with Ooma Office—it’s all employees on one plan or all employees on another. But, at just $5 per user to upgrade, you’re still falling in the average range for VoIP.
The Pro Plus plan comes with advanced features like call queuing, Salesforce integration, and hot desking.
And, if you upgrade, you can set people up on their computers with a softphone, which means you have less hardware to buy.
You can avoid buying phones without upgrading by having people call from the mobile app (which is included with Ooma office), though Gregg warned us that VoIP can be hard on a cell phone. “Yes, you save money because you’re not buying physical equipment,” he said, “but it can drain the battery life right out of the device.”
Transition to the cloud at your own pace. Keep your equipment and manage it yourself with way less work than a traditional set up. Get a quote, sign up with Ooma, and start saving money today.
#3 – RingCentral Review — The Best for High-Volume Outbound Calling
RingCentral gives you unlimited calling, texting, and video conferencing at a competitive price. If you just need the phones and texting, you can get an even better deal.
Forget about per-minute charges and set up employees with VoIP that’s easy to use. For call centers, customer service, sales—anyone who has people on the phone constantly will appreciate RingCentral. This is especially true if you have to train new employees all the time.
First off, they’ll be able to use the interface. It’s intuitive to anyone who has used a computer. Administrators and managers will find they can shorten the time it takes to turn rookie hires into skilled ambassadors for your company.
“You save a lot of money because you can identify hires that aren’t doing a good job and wasting their time,” Makan told us. He’s set up a lot of telemarketing call centers with RingCentral and has really valued the ability to “tell right away who’s worth the money.”
The ability to track calls, KPIs, and listen back to recordings was like night and day for him compared to working on a landline. Teams can listen back to calls that went well (or poorly) to get a sense of how to better capitalize on each opportunity.
The reporting features aren’t going to take a data scientist to glean insights from. Find your top performers and figure out what they’re doing. Identify people who aren’t a good fit and let them go.
I hear a lot of marketing word salad like “this tool optimizes performance,” all the time. RingCentral walks the walk.
“You can actually predict your sales,” Makan said, “I know it’s difficult to fathom, but it’s true.”
He was able to figure out that 2,500 calls lead to one listing. This told him the number of minutes people needed to be on the phone in order to stay profitable. Over time, he could see how many listings an employee should be generating in their first month, second quarter, and so on.
You’re likely going to measure different KPIs, but it’s the same idea. With the kind of visibility that RingCentral provides, you can distill the numbers to simple metrics that hold employees accountable. You know ahead of time what your sales are going to look like, and you can scale up or down accordingly.
There’s a lot about RingCentral that’s well suited for large-scale calling. Admins don’t have to be IT wizards to add new users and give them access to specific resources. They’ll be able to provision new hires quickly. When someone leaves, they’ll be able to switch around accounts and recycle the number, so you don’t wind up paying for lines you’re not using.
If you have turnover—as many high-volume calling occupations do—you need to be mindful of your database integrity. RingCentral makes it easy to limit access to resources and revoke it if need be.
You’re definitely going to be using a CRM (or some form of database) to call at scale. RingCentral integrates with a lot of them. You want to keep that information private.
Another liability for call centers that RingCentral helps you navigate is compliance, which is crucial if you are making a lot of cold calls or using an auto dialer. There’s a TCPA safe dialer, which helps agents avoid bringing a “robo-call” lawsuit down on your company. Instead of worrying about messing something up, they can focus on the person they are talking to.
The DNC list features are also easy to use. Integrate with third-party tools to constantly update your list, and quickly show your employees how to maintain your own internal list.
RingCentral is HIPAA compliant, which means the standard for privacy and security is incredibly high. Fines for HIPAA violations are very steep, and that’s not the worst that could happen.
Selecting from RingCentral’s range of packages, you can replace your phones with VoIP and save a little money or completely outfit an omnichannel call center.
RingCentral MVP (formerly RingCentral Office) has four tiers to choose from:
Essentials: starting at $19.99 per month per user
Standard: starting at $27.99 per month per user
Premium: starting at $34.99 per month per user
Ultimate: starting at $49.99 per month per user
These are the prices if you sign up for a year of service, which reflect a 33% discount on the monthly rate.
The Essentials plan is capped at 20 users. You get unlimited talk and text, as well as document sharing, which can be helpful for sharing sales and customer service scripts. You also get team messaging, which is especially helpful in the days where not everyone is coming into a physical office.
With Standard, you get unlimited fax, video conferencing and integrations with Google Workspace, Microsoft 365. There’s no cap on users, either.
But if you are going for high-volume calling, I really recommend getting Premium. You get the CRM integration that is so important for dialing into your metrics and communicating effectively at scale.
At $10 above the average cost of VoIP, Premium is a steal. Remember, that VoIP average is for voice only and with RingCentral MVP you’re getting texting, video, and advanced call handling features that other “average” plans do not include.
Managers will be able to listen in on live calls and “whisper” advice. The employee can hear them, the caller can not. From what I found, features like this from other vendors were usually reserved for plans that cost upwards of $50. So in that sense, I’d consider RingCentral MVP well below the average price-wise.
RingCentral offers contact center software, as well, which will unify your communications. Your agents will be able to see a complete record of a customer’s history. When did they call, when did they chat? It’s all right there. You’ll have to get in touch with RingCentral for Contact Center pricing.
This is my number one pick for people who have to make a ton of calls. RingCentral helps you protect yourself from a number of the liabilities that come with outreach at scale. It also gives you the viability and tools to stay efficient and maximize each employees’ ability to contribute.
#4 – Phone.com Review — The Most Affordable Professional-Grade VoIP
Phone.com is a smart choice for businesses that are looking for budget-friendly VoIP. You can have unlimited calling or pay less for a set block of minutes each month.
One of the cost-effective features of Phone.com is that you can mix and match plans. Give your sales team unlimited plans while saving money on the employees that only use the phones occasionally.
And, with the Basic plan, you’re still getting most of the standard VoIP features like call handling, auto attendants, hold music and so on. You’ll have to upgrade to get HIPAA-compliant video conferencing, for example, but you can host up to 10 people in a regular session with Basic.
With most other vendors, you have to upgrade the plan for all your users. Phone.com can really help you keep costs down by giving users the features they need. This is one of those licensing irregularities that Gregg told us about, where it can work out well if you know what you’re doing.
Phone.com lets you pick what you need. Call recording and inbound faxing is extra, though you’ll be able to send faxes from your phone with any plan.
Nextiva and RingCentral are a little bit more robust, especially when it comes to reporting and analytics. And, in terms of CRM integration, Phone.com is limited to AllProWebTools and Zoho.
But some businesses just need a reliable phone with call handling capabilities they can manage themselves. Phone.com does more than that, and it’s just enough cheaper than those other options to net your company serious savings without settling for a unreliable solution.
Offer your customers the ability to text when they have questions. Phone.com keeps all of your employees’ messages organized. Come for the phone system, stay for the messaging.
To use IP phones, you’ll have to be on an upgraded plan. The company offers really great prices on popular phones of all styles. You can use what you’ve got, too, as Phone.com supports a range of hardware.
Using your own equipment will definitely lessen the initial outlay, but in talking with Gregg we learned that older phones can get hacked. Just make sure that the processor isn’t too far behind what Phone.com is trying to sell you, and get ready to do some of the configuration yourself. You really can just plug and play if you buy equipment through Phone.com.
Pricing for Phone.com is low across the board. You’ll get the prices below with an upfront annual commitment, which are 20% lower than opting for month-to-month billing.
Basic: starting at $11.99 per user per month
Plus: starting at $15.99 per user per month
Pro: starting at $23.99 per user per month
Basic comes with 500 minutes, which are pooled for all your users. This just means Basic users share minutes instead of having to worry about going over individually each month.
Each user also gets 1,000 pooled text segments. A segment is limited to 160 characters, which is way less than most phones can send in a normal text message these days. So it’s not 1,000 texts per month, unless you like to keep things brief.
Volume licensing brings the price down, both for users and for additional phone numbers. With 25 or more users, the price of Basic drops down to $8.99, Plus to $14.99, and Pro to $21.99.
Considering that Pro can hold its own with many of the call center VoIP solutions I’ve looked at, it’s worth checking out if you need a lot of phones on a tight budget. With HIPAA-compliant voice and video, it could be a good option for medical practices looking to support telehealth.
You really have to get input from every person and department using the phone system. Figure out the technology and functionality you need to support. If Phone.com fits the bill, it’s going to be a smaller one than you’ll find anywhere else.
Phone.com gives you a low price that scales up better than OpenPhone, Grasshopper, and other lightweight VoIP solutions.
I wouldn’t use it to set up a call center—you’re going to have to fully rely on your CRM for all but the most basic reporting and analytics—but you’ll be able to get plenty of phones set up for normal business needs.
If you are thinking about cutting the cord with your traditional phone line, this option is going to save you the most money. Sign up with Phone.com today, no contract necessary.
#5 – Grasshopper Review — The Best If You Need More Extensions than Phone Lines
Grasshopper is a great option for small companies that want to establish a professional identity without buying a very complex system.
I’m thinking about the restaurant owner that wants numbers for a few locations without having to pay for a traditional phone line going to each one. Or maybe the law firm that wants a few numbers with lots of extensions.
If you outline your business requirements and it turns out you only need the essentials, don’t pay more for things you don’t need. Grasshopper is going to set you up with everything you need for one flat rate each month.
You’ll get a suite of features designed for the daily work of a modern business, without the clutter aimed at larger organizations. There’s no need to upgrade just to access a particular feature. Every Grasshopper plan comes with unlimited calling, as well as every feature the company offers, such as setting up a phone tree, personalized greetings, call routing, and more.
There are even a few features, like instant response, that you won’t always get with other providers. If you miss a call, Grasshopper will automatically send a text message.
Simultaneous call handling and call forwarding lets you pass off calls to teammates when you’re busy. Voicemail transcription makes it easier to catch up on calls after hours.
Manage everything I just listed directly from the mobile app. Route calls exactly where they need to go—it’s just a few swipes on your cell.
You also get unlimited extensions with Grasshopper Small Businesses plans, and several free extensions with their other plans. Route calls to other numbers, mobile devices, informational extensions to answer FAQs, or a polite out-of-office voicemail.
Getting charged for extensions was something Gregg said people should watch out for in the contact they sign. The total cost can “go up real quick” if you have to pay for an extra line just to set up a voicemail extension.
With Grasshopper, you don’t have to worry as much. The entry level plan comes with one number and three extensions—perfect for the sole proprietor or founder to greet their callers with a professional menu and connect them with the right person.
Let’s take a closer look at your three options with Grasshopper.
Solo: starting at $26 per month for one number and three extensions
Partner: starting at $44 per month for three numbers and six extensions
Small Business: starting at $80 per month for five numbers and unlimited extensions
As I said, it’s really just the basics. There’s no CRM integration or call recording, so think about Grasshopper as a way to replace your phone system rather than revolutionize it.
That said, if you’ve been trying to work magic with free VoIP like Google Voice, the ability to set up call routing may feel downright revolutionary.
It’s also going to cost less and be way easier to set up than it’s more robust competitors. Toll-free numbers might take a day to start working, but typically your number is ready to go when you sign up.
If you want to add an extra line, it’s $10 per month. That’s a lot more than Phone.com for extra lines, which is why I don’t recommend Grasshopper if you need a ton. Plus, the interface isn’t built for handling a big system anyway.
But for the small office, it’s perfect. It doesn’t matter where you or your business partners work—people can be out in the field when a call comes into the office, or in a different city altogether. Grasshopper makes it easy to ensure your calls get where they need to go.
This product is a little different than the other VoIP options on my list. It’s a sales engagement platform, so it’s not designed to replace your phone system. Rather it’s designed to give outbound reps the perfect tool for prospecting, selling, and closing deals.
Is the team remote? Do people like to work out of the office? Not a drama. Your users can phone in from anywhere and start working through your hottest contacts.
It contains a CRM and auto dialer software built into the platform. You’re not trying to make technology play nice—it’s all set up when you open the box. You can integrate with your own CRM if you want, or simply import your leads and start making up to 80 calls an hour.
I don’t know what your reps’ pace is now, but 80 calls per hour is smoking. There’s no “telemarketer” delay when the call connects, just crisp conversation like it’s over a phone line.
And, because the CRM is tied in, reps can see exactly who they’re talking to, what stage of the pipeline they’re in, and any notes left in the account.
Sarkar said that pretty much everyone in the B2B SaaS game is telephoning through sales engagement platforms now. The auto dialer makes your agents far more efficient by eliminating the busy work of dialing. “You barely have to click anything,” he said.
With PhoneBurner, you’re not manual dialing, tabbing through pages to find a number, or copy/pasting emails frantically before the next call. Instead, you can drop voicemails without waiting for the beep, send an appropriate email, or move a prospect to another folder with a single click.
For Makan, auto dialer software was crucial for large-scale outreach in telemarketing, but it was a pain to set up. You have to specifically program the CRM and the auto dialer. From there, it’s expensive to get the CRM software tuned to your industry. He mentioned one popular CRM option that cost $25,000 and $50,000, “just to get you all set up with the phones.”
With PhoneBurner, a lot of that work is off your plate. It’s not going to groom your database for you, but the fundamental CRM/auto dialer integration is already in place.
The company takes it a step further by offering one of the most comprehensive onboarding packages that I have seen for any product. Their team works with you on goals before you set up, runs you through a test session, and then trains your team on how to use the platform.
You also learn how to build reports so you can track performance. It’s easy to do this wrong, on any platform, but your PhoneBurner advisor is walking companies through the process, week in week out. They’ll get you set up with dashboards, leaderboards, and all of it is going to be customized to your goals.
Leads are distributed automatically, based on rules you set. Toggle between pre-set configurations, like Round Robin or First Come First Served, or customize your own settings. Make sure leads get to the right agent every time, with only a small amount of work on the manager’s part.
PhoneBurner isn’t cheap, but remember that this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison with the other VoIP providers because you are getting the auto dialer and CRM built in.
Standard: starting at $124 per user each month
Professional: starting at $149 per user each month
Premium: starting at $166 per user each month
These are the prices if you sign up for a year, which basically gives you two months for free compared to paying monthly.
You’re getting unlimited dial minutes, which is obviously important if your reps are making a thousand calls each week. With PhoneBurner, that’s not hard to do.
Call recording is stored free for 30 days with the Standard plan, 60 days with Professional, and there’s no limit for Premium plans. There are also limits on the number of contacts you can store, which start at 10,000 on the Standard plan.
You’ll need to upgrade to Professional to get softphone capabilities. It’s not a big deal if you already have phones, but I imagine that’ll bother folks that want to use their tablet or computer.
With Premium, you get a dedicated inbound line, as well as some of the handling features. I would not recommend using PhoneBurner for serious inbound traffic—the other VoIP options are going to be way cheaper—but some teams will appreciate having a custom voicemail and the ability to forward calls.
On average, a rep can make 233% more calls with PhoneBurner than they can with a regular line.
Does the math pencil out for you? For Makan, it took 2,500 calls to generate a listing. What’s your metric?
#7 – OpenPhone Review — The Best Way to Run Your Business From a Mobile Phone
Jason warned us about going with the “newest and cheapest option,” so I was a little bit skeptical when I heard about OpenPhone. It’s only a few years old and it’s $10 per month.
That’s way less than the average cost of VoIP, cheaper even than some of the “budget” options I looked at.
But the more I discovered about the company, the more I liked it. OpenPhone is new, but certainly not fly-by-night. It’s a recent graduate of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator that helped launch AirBnB, DoorDash, DropBox, and Reddit.
Like those companies, OpenPhone has come to market with a new set of assumptions about how people are living and working. Instead of trying to replace a business phone system, as many Cloud-PBX’s claim to do, OpenPhone simply turns your mobile into a better phone for business.
It’s really aimed at the modern startup or small business, especially if the owner is one of those people who steers the ship from their phone. You’ll get a business number for your mobile phone. Go local, toll-free, or keep your own number, you choose. Porting your old number is 100% free.
Set up an auto-attendant so callers can get the information they need and connect with the right person. Establish a professional identity for your business in minutes. You’ll be reaching people on a stronger footing because you always know if an incoming call is business or personal.
There’s no hardware necessary and no more giving out your mobile number. Keep your privacy. Get numbers for your team and let them keep their privacy, too.
Where OpenPhone really steps away from the crowd is the shared inbox. You can have multiple people call and text from the same number. They can even make calls from that number at the same time.
A lot of phone systems don’t include text messaging, let alone allow multiple users text in the same thread. With OpenPhone, you can text the way you normal humans do:
Tag users with @mentions to bring the right people into the conversation quickly. Group messaging is really helpful for collaboration, especially since you can send files, videos, and GIFs.
You’re just not limited with texting the way you are on a lot of other VoIP phone services. You can send snippets from templates as part of a campaign or auto-reply to missed calls and texts.
Managing contacts isn’t hard either, as you get limited CRM integration with Google Contacts or via Zapier. You can use HubSpot for a more robust CRM solution as well, which allows you to store recordings and view message histories with ease.
Keep in mind this is not going to be a full-blown CRM solution the likes of which I’ve described with PhoneBurner and others. You’ll need to get into HubSpot to make changes to contacts, for example.
Because it’s a young company, there will be additional and deeper integrations “in the future,” which I know can be frustrating. But if you are a young company as well, HubSpot’s free CRM software plus OpenPhone is just about the cheapest way I can think of to deliver the essential benefits of connecting VoIP and your CRM.
Standard: starting at $10 per user each month
Premium: starting at $20 per user each month
Enterprise: contact sales
Standard has most of what I’ve mentioned already, along with unlimited calling and texting. Bear in mind that it’s unlimited within the fair usage policy. According to the terms of service, for the Standard plan, you’re looking at 1,000 texts and calling minutes per month.
Though it’s not truly unlimited, that’s pretty generous. For example, Phone.com caps their entry level plan at 300 minutes and 1,000 text segments, which is likely a smaller number of texts.
The Premium plan tier recently saw a price drop, which makes it an even better value. It comes with HubSpot integration and more collaborative features, like the ability to transfer calls and an advanced auto attendant that gives you a wider range of call routing features.
You also receive analytics and the ability to generate reports about your calling statistics in the Premium tier. OpenPhone promises to include a group calling feature within the Premium tier at some point “soon.” As I mentioned earlier, waiting for key features can be frustrating, but it’s just part of the process with a newer company.
Extra lines are $5. So, for the price of standard VoIP (around $25 pretax), you could get a company of four set up on the Standard plan.
There are other free ways to get a business number for your mobile phone. Go for it. Getting off the ground you need to save every dollar—I get it—but there’s a point where the inconvenience of trying to work around something like Google Voice starts to cost you money.
OpenPhone solves most of those problems for $10 per month.
How much does a single missed opportunity cost you? For a barber, maybe it’s a call from a stranger who would have spent thousands of dollars as a regular over the next few years. If only you’d been able to catch them.
It’s well worth checking out, and I have a feeling you’ll be hearing a lot about this company in the future. Try OpenPhone for free today.
What I Looked at to Find the Best VoIP Phone Services
I’ve been a small business owner who has needed the cheapest possible business line before. Like having a real number that people can connect to by using the “Contact Us” button on my Facebook page. I think it was still TheFacebook.com back then.
Now, I have people reporting to me about our VoIP options in Brazil.
Growing from a one-man show to a global operation, I’ve been on a few sides of this conversation. We’ve built a marketing machine and I know how we use VoIP—but my team wanted to get a wider picture of what’s going on to help more of my readers.
Some of you have on-call IT support and months to demo the best options. Others are completely on their own running a business and can’t sacrifice more than a weekend in order to find the best VoIP phone service.
Either way, you need to be able to separate the options that are working well for other businesses from the one that’s going to work best for you.
My team reached out to other leaders in the field to see what things looked like from their perspective. We don’t sell VoIP, for example. So, it was really interesting to think through buying VoIP with Gregg, who runs a managed services provider.
VoIP is just one of the IT services Gregg’s company manages, but over a few decades, he’s seen plenty of things go wrong, helped people out of bad contracts, and restored their business integrity after hacks. He offered a lot of insight on VoIP security and what people can do to make sure they’re not spending money on stuff they don’t need.
Technically, Gregg is a competitor with some of the services I recommend, but he was very frank and offered advice you are not going to find on any review site.
We also talked to Makan, who set up call centers for telemarketing in real estate. These are call centers where each employee is making something like 1,000 calls each week. His practical advice is hard-won in an industry that has a staggering attrition rate.
“You’re going to let go of eight out of every ten people who work for you,” Makan told us. New hires have to be brought up to speed, coached, and—when they have to go—be safely de-provisioned in order to prevent your database from leaving with them.
And simple employee mistakes can cost thousands of dollars in legal fines because telemarketing is so highly regulated.
But if you can do it right, the payoff is huge. Makan was able to use call center analytics to surface important metrics that guided his hiring, onboarding, and training. “We no longer have to keep employees for like a year and a half to see if it works or not,” he said.
In searching for the best VoIP provider, you’ll read a lot about using analytics to optimize performance. It’s not just marketing lingo. Makan explained how you can basically predict your sales with VoIP tied to a CRM, and scale hiring up or down accordingly.
Sarkar, a sales manager in B2B SaaS, also pushed the importance of VoIP/CRM integration. We talked a lot about how your sales strategy informs the buying decision.
Are you in a mature market that needs to handle inbound inquiries, or are you selling a novel product that requires you to hit the phones and educate prospects over a cold call?
Configuring a CRM to work with your VoIP, can be a ton of work. Sarkar helped us see how some companies save a lot of time and effort by using a sales engagement platform like PhoneBurner.
There’s just a lot to think about, depending on where you’re coming from. Jason has worked in call centers since 1992. He’s seen the market evolve from desk phones to headsets to AI. His eye for distinguishing meaningful advances from shiny objects that get you nowhere is unrivaled.
Talking through his experience with purchasing enterprise VoIP was extremely helpful in understanding how buyers have to work through their options methodically and coordinate with multiple departments to find a VoIP service that works across the entire organization.
And even though the scale is different, a lot of his guidance serves as practical advice for the small business owner. How do you know if remote workers have good enough internet for VoIP? How do you evaluate the quality of integration between VoIP and your key business software?
You may not have to buy as many phones or connect as many locations as Jason, but these questions still matter.
We covered a lot of ground in the interviews and research. Here are the three biggest takeaways that I think will benefit anyone shopping for VoIP:
The ability to self-manage is crucial: It used to be that you had to call your service provider to make any changes to your phone system. Want to add a user? Change a call path? The options I chose are simple enough to administrate without having to loop in IT. Admins won’t need technical support to accomplish their daily work. The problem is that some of the “bigger names” in the industry are stuck in the past. “It’s very cumbersome and convoluted,” Gregg told us. “End users are not making changes to it.” Avoid those and go with something you can manage yourself.
Identifying all of your business requirements early will save a lot of pain: Check in with every department that’s going to be using VoIP. What do they need, what would be nice to have, and what’s superfluous in their eyes? Your solution has to cover executives and receptionists, who will be using VoIP in different ways. You may be able to replace equipment like fax machines and conference phones—or you may have to find something that plays nice with inventory you want to keep. Jason created a detailed business requirements document and sent it to vendors. A few dropped out right away, which saved everyone time.
VoIP plus your other software and channels is the key: I’m really going to hammer on the CRM integration below because it was so important to almost every expert we talked with. But let me emphasize here the opportunity you have by connecting VoIP to your other business software. If your voice communication is tied in with live chat, email, texting, video, and social media, employees have everything in one place. They are looking at a complete relationship during every conversation, regardless of where it started. It also makes your billing a lot less complicated, especially if you have multiple offices. One bill for all your communications.
I looked for VoIP you can use right away. Admins will be able to make sure everyone is set up, and new hires will gain fluency quickly in the modern system. No more six-month deployments.
Companies like Ooma, RingCentral, and Nextiva can set up large offices very quickly. And if you have a small office, you may be able to get started this afternoon.
I wanted to find a few different products that work across every channel. These omnichannel solutions are more expensive, for sure, but they were worth it for virtually every expert my team talked with. It makes everyone more efficient because they’re not logging into different accounts and losing track of conversations.
I also looked at products that have a more limited selection of integrations and channels. These are way cheaper. Not everyone is trying to run a call center with VoIP—it could just be they want an 800 number on their ecommerce website. As long as their callers are routed correctly or greeted by a professional voicemail after hours, it’s all good.
Really, a lot of people get VoIP because they don’t want to give out their personal number for business anymore. OpenPhone will do just that. Grasshopper is perfect for the small office that needs the essentials covered and nothing more.
Alternatively, you can find a great deal on basic plans from some of the larger VoIP service providers. Ooma Office is a good deal no matter how you slice it. The Essentials plan from Nextiva is well within the small business price range, and can completely remove the need for an expensive traditional phone line.
Let’s walk through the big factors you have to consider. Evaluate your options like an expert by taking in the perspective from industry veterans and sales leaders.
Baseline VoIP Features
I want to focus on what makes these products different, not overwhelm you by describing every feature for every product. Once you start digging into VoIP, you’ll find that 30-40 different features is the low end in terms of what you get.
Every option I picked covers what I consider the baseline VoIP features, with some minor exceptions. You won’t hear me call them out unless there’s something superlative about how a vendor does it.
To be make my list of recommendations, the providers had to include:
Call handling features like call forwarding, call transferring, call waiting, and extensions, so that you never miss a call, no matter where you are.
Menus and auto attendants that let callers dial a certain department, listen to business hours, and so on.
Call recording that provides a history and playback of all calls, which is useful for training and sometimes necessary for legal reasons.
A mobile app that turns your cell phone into a business line
Online fax to replace the need for traditional machines while also digitizing documents automatically.
Softphone capabilities to let you make calls from desktops and tablets with just a headset.
Video calls and conferencing for meetings, webinars, telehealth, and more.
Voicemail transcription that turns your missed calls into a quick read by text or email
Some of the “entry-level” VoIP packages aimed at companies with five to ten employees only come with limited versions of these features. You may have to pay extra for call recording, for example, or go with a more expensive plan to get unlimited online fax.
Plans vary between basic business phone systems and premium solutions for call centers. The latter come with much more customizable call handling features, multi-level auto attendants, and deep reporting features that a small team isn’t going to miss.
Making a Cost-Effective VoIP Purchase
Traditional phone service, after tax, costs on average somewhere between $50 – $70 per month. However, in my research, I found many users switching to VoIP because they were paying much higher prices.
This is how people who switch to VoIP are able to “cut their phone bill in half.” If you have a reasonable phone bill, this may not be the case, but chances are good you’ll be able to save a fair amount of money
“It’s not some magic savings,” Gregg told us. “You’ll be saving a little, but not as much as you would think with your monthly phone service.”
But, since you’re probably going to be paying per-phone, even a $10 savings each month will add up quickly. The more intelligently you can select a provider, the greater your savings will be.
Let’s run through how to assess the sticker price, the real price, and everywhere you can cut costs by finding a system that fits your business.
Gregg said VoIP costs about $25 per user per month on average, which is essentially what I found in my research. It’s important to note that this price is if you are paying for the phones outright or using softphones. If you’re renting desk phones, you’re looking at about $10 per month extra, bringing the cost of VoIP to about $35 per user each month.
Let’s call that $40 per month after taxes and fees. It’s not providers padding the bill, just the unavoidable government-mandated surcharges for the Universal Service Fund, which brings telecom to rural parts of the country and supports 911 emergency numbers.
Now you are definitely going to see VoIP for cheaper than $25 per line. I’ve included simple VoIP solutions like Phone.com and OpenPhone that are less than half that.
Typically, the tradeoff with the really low cost plans is that you’re getting a set block of minutes per month, whereas plans of $25+ tend to come with unlimited calling in North America.
For sales, customer service, and other use cases that require people on the horn all day, unlimited calling is a must-have. When you go over your set block of minutes, your VoIP savings can disappear.
If you are using auto dialer software over VoIP, you should avoid per-minute pricing. Makan did the math out during our conversation: if you have 100 employees expected to make 200 calls a day, you’re looking at 100,000 minutes per week. That’s way too much call volume to survive being billed by the minute.
Some providers, like RingCentral, Ooma, and Nextiva, offer plans in the $20 range for unlimited calling. So you can pay below average, but not have to worry about massive overage charges.
Another factor that can potentially lower the total cost of VoIP is understanding the licensing. For instance, is it going to cost you extra to add an extension? Are you paying per user, per line, per call path? It’s important to not that vendors don’t all charge the same way.
Gregg cautioned us that a lot of people don’t understand exactly how they’re paying in the contract. They go to customize something on their end, thinking it’s free, and then get shocked when the bill comes at the end of the month.
With Grasshopper, even the cheapest plan they offer comes with three extensions for free. This is great for a small business that wants one line for a few departments, or a startup that needs a basic phone tree.
Phone.com costs less to add a new number than Grasshopper, but you don’t get free extensions. The different arrangements can be confusing, but if you take the time to understand what you need, you can play it to your advantage.
If you are really trying to get VoIP on a budget, Jason warned us that you have to be a little cautious. It’s really easy to spin up a VoIP company these days—the technology is not new—and he laid out some horror stories of bad apple vendors pretending to offer reputable service and dropping clients as soon as they get their money.
“And since it takes about 30 days to port over a number, you’re kind of out of luck if that happens,” he said. The U.S. Department of Justice has prosecuted these cases, clawing back millions of dollars from phony VoIP fraud schemes.
Better to be safe than sorry, and use a VoIP provider like Grasshopper or Ooma that’s been around awhile. Or, a household name like RingCentral that is a publicly traded company. “I can’t imagine they would dump you in 10 days or anything like that,” Jason said.
Cloud-Based or On-Premises System
You can get VoIP infrastructure installed in your office (on premises), or use the internet to connect to the service (cloud-based). Either way, you’re paying less than you would for a traditional phone line, but there are important differences to understand.
There is a much higher initial cost of equipment if you go with an on-premises deployment. You have to buy the PBX, phones, routers, switches, etc., whereas a cloud-based provider hosts all of that themselves.
You can buy desk phones with a cloud-based solution and many people do. But, you don’t have to so long as you outfit employees with a softphone or a VoIP mobile app.
“When it’s cloud-based, you don’t have the big outlay,” said Gregg. “But you’re not really missing out by not getting the equipment because these systems come with a ton of functionality.” Some of the key capabilities he talked about were:
Your employees can work from anywhere in the world with internet
You’ll be able to self-manage features menu systems and call routing
You can scale up without buying equipment, and scale down without waste
You don’t have equipment to maintain and monitor
These are four of the top reasons why I only recommended cloud-based solutions.
Like any solution someone else is hosting, you do sacrifice a little backend control. You are limited to the features they provide, whereas an on-premises system can be completely customized to fit your exact needs.
But the end user can do the vast majority of what they need to with Ooma or Grasshopper. A shop-owner with zero IT experience can add an extension for a new employee or make changes to information about holiday hours provided by their auto attendant.
Most people get the control they need without the responsibility that comes with maintaining a system. If you need hundreds of phones and super customized configuration, an on-premises system may be your only option. That’s going to require IT overhead—hiring an MSP like Gregg to install, maintain, monitor, and replace your equipment—or hiring an in-house staff.
For many business owners, it would be a dream not to stress about the phones. The cloud-based providers I looked at offered nearly 100% uptime, and some offer financially-backed SLAs.
Like Gregg told my team, “You’re not so worried about the end at the main office being up at all times because your employees are connecting directly to the cloud-based server.”
The simplicity here is even more important if people are telecommuting or working out of the office a few days a week. It’s much harder to secure communications between external users and an on-premises system.
I’ll say more about that in the security section, but modern employees need access to company services at all hours. As such, cloud-based is becoming a lot more popular.
Greg told us flat out, “If you’re SMB in the ten phones range—give or take—it’s not worth it to do on-prem anymore.”
Larger companies will have more to think about, but VoIP providers like Nextiva, RingCentral, and Ooma can help you get set up regardless of what kind of deployment you need. With these vendors, you can really get the best of both worlds or make the transition to cloud at your own pace.
What Kind of Internet Speed Do I Need for Clear Calls?
Calls have to be clear. You can’t compromise on that, or you’ll wish you had your landline whatever the price.
So how do you make sure your setup handles VoIP?
Here’s the nuts and bolts of what I found: VoIP is not going to work on DSL. Cable might be okay for a small office, but it won’t be the greatest.
Fiber is what you want. It has the bandwidth you need and the upload/download speeds are the same, unlike cable.
Everyone we talked to about VoIP told us that running low on bandwidth is going to start causing issues—dropped calls, echoing on the line, and terrible conversations.
Here’s the thing, VoIP doesn’t need a blazing fast connection.
Gregg said that 100 kbps is good. 140 kbps is “like the most ideal, pristine phone call.”
So, if you’re on a 1 mbps line, you could potentially make ten phone calls. “Granted, you always wanna overcompensate for fall offs and whatnot, but that’s all you need speed wise,” he added.
Nextiva and RingCentral have VoIP plans aimed at smaller companies that don’t have commercial office infrastructure. They will let you test your connection right on their website. You’ll get all the information you need to figure out if you’re ready for VoIP, or you need to upgrade your internet first.
We’re not talking about a massive pipe here, the problems you run into are the stability of the connection. If you’re downloading a song, who cares if it takes two or three extra seconds? You wouldn’t notice. But when you’re having a conversation, even a slight delay is going to be a huge pain.
Any delay over 150 ms (that’s milliseconds) and your meaningful conversation is now impossible. For reference, a call over a landline has a delay of about 45 ms, so 150 is definitely the upper limit of what you want.
Any higher than that, you’re talking over someone or they missed what you said.
Making cold calls, helping an irate customer—it’s hard enough already. No one wants to repeat what they’ve said. And it’s not going to be good if someone mishears a credit card number.
“Where it becomes an issue,” said Gregg, “is if you have a cable modem that only has 5 mbps on your upstream, and everybody in the office is uploading stuff to Dropbox, OneDrive, and things like that, eating up that bandwidth.”
Remember the dark days where someone couldn’t be on the internet and the phone at the same time? Don’t go back. Make sure you’ve got the bandwidth to accommodate all of your users with all of their tasks.
Network and Hardware Considerations
Now you can have all the bandwidth in the world and still get bad VoIP quality if your network isn’t configured properly.
Small businesses don’t have to worry so much about this. According to Gregg, “If you only have five phones, maybe even as high as 10 phones, sure you could just dump them in on a network.”
He advised running a separate VLAN for anything beyond 10 phones in a single location in order to avoid quality issues. Separate the phones from the computers and prioritize voice traffic in the routers. This way, whatever your employees are doing won’t affect the quality of your calls.
Even with the so-called “plug and play” systems, you’re going to want to put some thought into network configuration if you are putting in more than 10 phones. “I mean you can just plug them in,” said Gregg, “but I wouldn’t be too hopeful about the quality.”
But it’s not just phones to think about. “The fax machines in the conference rooms really threw me for a loop,” Jason explained. “I’m like: I’m just buying a phone system!”
You have to be methodical. Where do the phone lines need to go? Are they connected to the security system? If you have PoE, you can just plug the ethernet cable into the phones, but if not, you’ll have to make sure there’s power running everywhere you want a station.
With a cloud-based service, you’re going to have to let the vendor behind your firewall.
Jason had an issue where one of his guys missed a key thing about the firewall requirements, and it delayed his VoIP deployment by about six months. “I was not too happy,” was all he said about that.
If you have a lot of traditional phones and fax machines that you want to keep using, I’d recommend Nextiva, RingCentral, or Ooma. They offer analog telephone adapters (ATAs) that allow you to VoIP-enable landline devices.
This allows you to phase out your old system gradually, instead of trying to Hercules your company through a massive (and much more expensive) transformation. It’s going to be painful to switch no matter what, but how long can you justify investing more money in an old PBX that’s twice as hard to use for half the functionality?
One last thing about using old phones. It’s great if you can use what you have or get a deal somewhere rather than going through the vendor.
Yet Gregg has encountered problems with aging phones. Hackers will try and log into the phones to start making spam calls. “We were seeing upwards of 100,000 attempts a day on a single phone system,” he recalled. The processors on the older phones weren’t powerful enough to withstand all the incoming requests, and the attack crashed the system.
So, definitely be on the lookout for deals and try to make the most with the equipment you already own. But just be cautious about buying a phone that has an older processor, because it might be a vulnerability.
Plus, when you buy a phone directly from your VoIP vendor, it’s pre-provisioned. It’s got a secure connection out of the box. When you start piecemealing things, you may lose that desirable plug-and-play functionality.
Make Sure Remote Workers Are Up to Speed
Cloud-based VoIP gives you complete freedom to go remote with ease. Connecting external users to an on-premises system has a lot more hurdles in terms of cost and security.
But even if you go cloud, which I highly recommend, there are a few things to be thinking about.
Remote workers need a solid internet connection for VoIP. When Jason hires someone working from home, the job post says they have to have a locked and secure WiFi.
He also has them take a speed test to make sure that their connections are robust enough to be able to take phone calls. He requires a minimum of 20 mbps download and 10 mbps upload.
It’s just a generic speedtest, nothing fancy. He sends them the link, they send back screenshots to verify. Jason said most people “blow those upload/download times out of the water,” but you need to be sure.
With telecommuting employees, you also have to think about training and management at a distance. I know I’ve said that the premium VoIP plans from vendors like RingCentral and Nextiva are aimed at the call center crowd. Well it’s also true that those features become really important for collaboration when there is no office.
Sharing documents within the platform, like phone scripts, or the ability for a manager to listen in on a new hire’s first live calls—you can provide more support to develop your employees, even when people are working from home.
For a small team, OpenPhone can work really well. People can share an inbox, tag calls, leave comments, and ensure that no opportunities are missed.
People love to be able to work on the go, even if they’re not fully remote. One thing that surprised Jason was how important the mobile app was to the executives. They wanted everything forwarded to their cell.
Mobile apps are great, but they’re not without their downsides. Gregg said VoIP on mobile was great for saving money, but he wasn’t so keen on it as a full-time stand-in for using a computer or desk phone. “It’s nice in a pinch,” he said, “but if you wanna watch a cell phone battery drain out before your eyes, that’s a great way to go.”
Integration with CRM
My team asked Jason what the biggest thing you can do to help reps and agents is, and he said integration with your CRM.
This was a tune we heard from everyone, and it dovetails with my own experience. CRM software is a total game changer when it comes to growing your business and providing service to customers.
Look for a VoIP phone service that has integration with your CRM. If you don’t have one, Nextiva and PhoneBurner have one built in that you can start using immediately.
The technology’s not new by any means, but CRM software has gotten really good in the last couple of years, and a lot less expensive. When you combine a CRM’s ability to track customer information with quality voice communication, the resulting experience for your employees is amazing.
A customer calls and their account information pulls right up on screen. There’s no digging for a file or asking for a customer to provide their name, ID, order number, etc.
Sarkar talked with us about how it increased his sales reps’ efficiency. “You get to have more conversations by cutting out the extra time you spend figuring out who’s calling.”
Really, every interaction is streamlined, which makes your reps and agents way more productive. If a customer has an order, the rep can see where it is. There are no extra steps to verify who’s calling, or ask them to dig up a purchase order number.
Saving seconds on every repetitive task adds up quickly. Employees can click-to-dial numbers within the CRM. Account information is centralized and agents can leave notes about calls. Everything is stored in a way that makes sense.
Makan put it well when he said, “Compared to a traditional phone system, voice over IP integrated with the CRM is hands down like: before iPhone [versus] after iPhone.”
The ability to record calls within the CRM was a huge factor for a lot of the people we spoke with. “In the past,” Jason said, “the systems that I’ve had for recording were kind of separate from the CRM, so I had to go chase that down. If somebody called in, I’d have to be like who do you talk to? When did you call? And that would be kind of a nightmare.”
When Jason moved to a new VoIP provider, integration with their CRM was the deciding factor. His company communicated on so many channels, all of which are recorded. The integration makes the process of listening back much easier.
“If you complain about a rep or something like that,” Jason said, “I can take your phone number, plug it in, and find every single call you’ve ever made over the last year, every chat, every email, every contact. It’s super simple. [It] saves me on time tracking down calls.”
For Makan, call recording was essential for assessing employee performance. “Traditionally, you give someone a dummy phone,” he said. “You don’t know how many calls they made, who they talked to, or what the level of conversation was.”
With VoIP, you can do quality control much easier. Listening back to the calls is easy. What went right? What could be improved? Identify who needs training and who’s not a good fit.
Makan explained how it really helps managers conserve their time and energy for quality candidates. They know who to invest in and who to send on their way. “I mean, you can tell in like 60-90 days. Any excuse they give, you can just listen to the quality of the calls.”
Be on the lookout for VoIP providers that showcase direct integrations with your CRM (and other software, for that matter). You absolutely have to demo it to see how that integration drives and works on a day-to-day level. If you want that “super simple” experience Jason was talking about for recording calls, the integration has to be tight.
Also be aware that the initial setup of your CRM and VoIP is going to take some time, especially if you are tying in multiple channels like talk, text, and chat. You need to customize it to fit your industry and use-case because the software is fairly general purpose out of the box.
“You can really geek out on it,” said Makan, “and that’s the challenge.”
Sarkar was a big fan of sales engagement platforms because they have the CRM built-in and they are already tuned for the job. Obviously you don’t want to use them for customer service, but something like PhoneBurner is going to supercharge a sales team with a lot less configuration required.
Convenient Compliance Tools Employees Can Use Without Thinking
There are a lot of regulations protecting consumers from getting robo-calls or having their credit card information stolen. So if you are making a lot of calls or taking financial information over the phone, there’s going to be telemarketing and privacy laws you don’t want to mess with.
I’m glad those regulations are there, but new hires (or just plain carelessness) can break a law by accident and get your company a heavy fine. I found that a single call to someone on the national Do-Not-Call registry could result in a five-figure penalty.
A single slip up could cost anywhere from $11,000 to $43,000. And that’s per call, as in you could get multiple fines if one of your employees screws up. If it happens multiple times, I doubt the government’s going to hit you with a smaller fine.
Or think about HIPAA compliance for healthcare providers. Accidentally exposing a patient’s protected health information can result in jail time. This is true even if the company didn’t know a violation had occurred.
And yet companies make calls and share private information all the time without going bankrupt or winding up in the slammer. This is because they use good VoIP providers that make compliance convenient for employees. Your agents get the proper tools so that they can focus on the customer instead of how to stay in the clear of arcane compliance laws.
Regardless of how big a business you are, if you are making a lot of outbound calls (especially if you’re using auto dialer software), you need to update your DNC list and use it to scrub those numbers from your call lists.
RingCentral, Nextiva and include easy-to-use features to make sure your DNC list is up to date. PhoneBurner has integrations with DNC.com in order to keep people safe.
Makan, whose agents made thousands of calls a week, said that Zoho CRM in conjunction with RingCentral was the cheapest possible way to set your employees up for success. You just have to keep up on your DNC list grooming, “because that’s something you’re gonna run into a lot, and they need to scrub the numbers that they call up.”
Recording calls is another area where compliance is important. These laws vary state to state. In New York, you don’t have to tell people the call is being recorded. In New Jersey, you do.
Products like RingCentral let you automatically notify people that the call is being recorded, so you’re covered. This allows your teams to think less about how to make legal calls.
Jason told us about one of the features that sold him on going with their VoIP provider. It’s illegal to record credit card numbers, so employees need to remember to pause the recording while they take that information.
“And as you can imagine,” he said, “if you take 1,000 or 1,500 calls a month, you’re bound to forget that a couple of times, or miss it, or forget to pause, or forget to unpause, which is a big no-no in our area.”
The VoIP service he chose automated this process within their CRM so employees didn’t have to think about it. As soon as their cursor was in the payment info box, the call stopped recording.
“So my reps don’t have to remember to turn that off, and that’s just super easy,” Jason said. “I don’t have to worry about PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance. I don’t have to worry about, ‘Hey, if you forget, tell me so I can go delete the call out of the system.’ What if we delete the wrong call?”
Take every opportunity you can to automate compliance. The potential liabilities from a single oversight are enough to justify the cost of spending a little more each month on your VoIP, CRM, and training.
Security
No one wants to pay for $20,000 worth of phone calls they didn’t make. That’s what happened to a client of Gregg’s before they properly secured their VoIP. Someone hacked it and used it to start blasting out scam calls.
Security is a major concern for any internet-based service, and VoIP is no exception.
It’s pretty straightforward for on-premises systems if all your phones are in one location. Set rules in your router so that no one can connect to the phone system except the phone service provider.
Gregg said, “As long as that’s configured you’re solid, and you can’t get hacked because the traffic can’t get there from anybody else.”
Securing an on-premises system gets a lot harder if you have people working from home, which is why a lot of companies are opting to go the cloud-based VoIP route. Residential addresses don’t have static IP addresses, so you can’t set rules in your router.
“The only appropriate way to do it is using a VPN service,” explained Gregg. “If you leave the ports open so that anyone can connect, you’ll see that the phone system will get hammered constantly.”
With cloud-based VoIP, the provider is ensuring that the right people are calling into their system. You still have to maintain good security hygiene at your company—long passwords, principle of least privilege, and de-provisioning old accounts.
These last two points are really important. You need to make sure that employees only have access to the data that they absolutely need. If possible, they should have read-only access. And when employees leave, you have to de-provision them.
For one thing, you don’t want to pay for old accounts that aren’t in use. If you have high turnover, be careful to re-use old numbers you’re already paying for, rather than buying extra ones. You don’t want to be shocked by a bill that has dozens of lines you’re not using.
“People need to be aware of sabotage,” said Makan. “If you get a disgruntled employee, they can wipe out the database, if you don’t back it up. Or they copy it. Or they just start corrupting the numbers and changing things in there.”
If you adhere to the principle of least privilege and are on top of booting old users out of the system completely, the risk of sabotage is near zero. If not, you’re putting your data integrity in jeopardy.
VoIP phone services like RingCentral, Nextiva, and Ooma make it easy for administrators to keep track of who has what privileges. You won’t need an infosec credential to keep all the accounts locked down.
Conclusion
My top recommendations are Nextiva and Ooma. They are affordable, reliable, and easy to set up.
If you need a full-fledged VoIP platform on the cheap, consider Phone.com.
Grasshopper is great if you’re more worried about having enough different extensions instead of unique, dedicated phone lines.
Need something that’s more suited to support your sales teams’ efforts? Look at PhoneBurner for a sales engagement platform that includes an auto dialer.
If you’re a solo operator or just someone who is sick of having to use your personal number for running your business, OpenPhone gives you an easy and cheap way to get a professional number and VoIP service.
Recapping my top picks and what they’re best at:
Nextiva – Best overall (For a limited time get 25% off, plus a free phone, when you signup!)
Ooma Office – Best for adding VoIP to Existing SMB Phone Systems
RingCentral – Best for high-volume outbound calling
Phone.com – Most affordable professional-grade VoIP
Grasshopper – Best if you need more extensions than phone lines
PhoneBurner – Best off-the-shelf VoIP for sales teams
OpenPhone – Best way to run your business from a mobile phone
Don’t forget to consider your requirements, budget, and the criteria we talked about as you go through the process of choosing the best VoIP phone service for your business.
Are you currently using a VoIP provider? What’s your experience with using VoIP?
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