In this XYZ Quarterly we’ll cover six helpful tips that you can use to develop a customer-inspired brand and recap XYZ’s Q1 2021 activity.
Evolving your brand to fit the needs of your audience is vital to its longevity. The world is ever-changing, and often unpredictable. From economic stumbling blocks and new health regulations, to environmental dangers, social upheaval, and demographic challenges, the needs of your customer are changing. A customer-focused brand is one that always identifies growing trends and serves their audience in the best and most current way. Being flexible and nimble when necessary can help your brand to achieve true staying power.
In today’s digital world, a thoughtful and purposeful online presence is one of the best ways to stay ahead of the curve. A website with a memorable domain enables you to promote your brand and your evolution of services. It can reach new audiences all over the world and you can showcase your brands exactly how you want to.
That’s the reason this year’s XYZ Quarterly theme is Staying Ahead of the Curve with .XYZ. Each quarter we will provide you with tips on how to develop and redirect your brand to stay two steps ahead. To begin, this quarter we’ll be showing you how to stay ahead of the curve by being customer-focused. We’ll offer you six helpful tips that you can use to develop a customer-inspired brand, as well as six .xyz websites that serve as prime examples of these tips.
Read on for Part 1: ““Six key ways to stay ahead of the curve by building a customer-focused brand”
Or jump down to Part 2: “XYZ’s Q1 2021 Recap.”
It may be necessary for your brand to pivot in order to better serve your audience. Making a pivot can help you to improve your results and make the best use of your efforts. Pivots can be made in many different ways, small and large. Consider narrowing your efforts to offer one fully enhanced service that is above and beyond the best in the field. Redirect your marketing to cater to a new audience or demographic that could benefit from your services. Consider surveying your audiences to discover gaps between your offerings and their expectations. You can make your efforts widely known with updates to your website.
HelloWorldRobotics.xyz is an example of a brand that pivoted to serve the market better. With a fleet of skillfully developed autonomous delivery robots fully designed, they recognized a greater need for their technology at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. They realized they could provide a way to help reduce imprudent physical contact. The company launched Project Care, a focused effort to provide contactless delivery of essentials and sanitizing services using the technology they had just developed. Their delivery robots can be dispatched to hospitals, quarantine zones, shopping malls, and gated communities; practically everywhere a person in need could be. HelloWorldRobotics.xyz made use of their existing technology to better serve the needs of their customers.
Adjusting your lens to see the greater needs your products or services could address can help them gain traction and put you ahead of your competition.
In today’s digital world, a strong website user experience can give your brand a competitive edge in attracting and retaining your audience. Designing a website that effectively communicates the value you bring to your audience will help you to generate brand advocacy and customer retention. Becoming hyper-focused on the needs of your customers is one of the keys to creating the most engaging user experience possible. Utilize varying types of media to communicate how your brand serves them, including images, videos, and gifs. Create opportunities to be interactive with your website visitors by sharing their user submissions and hosting topical quizzes or trivia. Be creative and consider surprising your audience with something new or unexpected.
Find inspiration from Foodism.xyz, one of the first-ever social media platforms centered on food. Their mission is to gather all food enthusiasts under a single digital roof, and they do so by creatively engaging them in all things food related. What began as an online presence for their print magazine evolved into a full-fledged platform with a pretty remarkable user experience. Foodism.xyz gives members reasons to log in at least once a day, including the promise of a user-submitted recipe of the day. Not only are viewers excited for a new recipe, but they’re eager to see if perhaps their submission was chosen. Members can also read user-submitted blog posts, mixed in with posts directly from the Foodism staff, covering everything from “desserts of India” to “why it’s time to change up your cooking oil.” Foodism.xyz has created an online atmosphere where viewers can spend considerable time. They make regular use of user participation to collaborate with and build their growing community of brand advocates, strengthening their position as a leading food-based social media platform.
Utilizing engagement and creativity to understand the interests of your customers can help you design an appealing user experience on your website and set you on a course of long-lasting favorability.
Taking the time to identify areas within your company that could be more effective or efficient can help you to develop solutions to improve what you have to offer. This can help you to keep up with the needs of your audience and ensure the longevity of your brand. Larger companies may not need to make a full pivot to keep up with their audience’s needs; they just need innovative solutions to fulfill new requirements. See if you can find ways to improve your customer experience. Streamlining warehouse functions can decrease the time it takes to send out shipments. Adding a chat service to your website can cut down on customer service phone call hold times for your customers. Optimizing the images on your website can decrease its load time and help your customers save a minute or two when online shopping. Improving your operations with your customer in mind can help you continue to serve the growing needs of your customer.
Byld.xyz specializes in providing solutions for this kind of strategic internal optimization. Their website states that “61% of CEOs expect a startup competitor to disrupt their industry at any moment” so they help big companies create innovation internally to keep up with the growing needs of their customers. Byld.xyz determines a solution through three main growth phases: Insights, Labs, and Startups. The Insights phase focuses on identifying trends and detecting opportunities. Based on learnings from the Insights phase, possible solutions and minimum viable products (MVPs) are created during the Labs phase. Finally, these MVPs are put to the test during the Startup phase. Once an MVP is considered ready to become a startup solution, Byld.xyz assigns internal teams to take care of essential functions like marketing and sales, operations, product, and IT.
You can take inspiration from Byld.xyz’s startup process to help improve your own operations. New internal processes can help your brand stay relevant and in demand.
Technology has freed brands and professionals from many location constraints. Email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and messaging platforms make it possible to connect with and serve customers all over the world. Associates are working remotely, enabling them to move freely about the world and still get the job done. While businesses are utilizing digital solutions and operating remotely, they can also rethink how they conduct business. You and your customers can become fully acquainted digitally, with no need to have them travel any distance to meet with you. This helps you to expand your customer base and own your niche. A well-designed website has become an essential way to inform your audience of how your brand operates, your mission, and examples of past projects.
Take note of Wave.xyz, a creative agency that offers complete promotional and branding services to their clients. Their website clearly communicates that they handle everything from the development of a complete strategy, material creation, and campaign management. Wave.xyz sets themselves apart from other creative agencies by choosing to be “nomadic.” Their employees go to their client and work from the front line. Visitors to the About Our Collective tab will find a quote from Jason Syptak, Wave.xyz‘s founder, which identifies the forward thought used in their operations. “We set up shop, work and deliver at the point of impact, or Impact Point as we call it.” Their goal is to immerse their team in the environment and create the most meaningful final product. They don’t have a headquarters because Wave.xyz was born with the idea of traveling to their clients, demonstrating a unique dedication to their audience. Wave.xyz uses their website to inform potential clients about their methods to illuminate the fact that geographic location does not limit their ability to do business.
Eliminating limitations and boundaries created by distance is easier than ever. Being flexible and showing willingness to serve a global audience can position you as an industry leader.
Analyzing your niche’s marketplace may lead you to create a completely new product or service. World events, newly developed technologies, and changing attitudes are all opportunities to create brand-new services, projects, or communities. An evolving marketplace continually provides new opportunities to work towards improvements, and increase efficiency and convenience. Many brands find a problem or pain point and solve it in a new way. Being innovative can assist your continued relevance and position you ahead of the curve.
Learn from KetoChow.xyz, who addressed an obstacle in the trending ketogenic diet lifestyle. KetoChow.xyz recognized the growing desire for a healthy and convenient meal-replacement option to serve the ketogenic community. There are ample protein shakes and meal-replacement shakes on the market, but KetoChow.xyz wasn’t seeing any that met the trifecta of requirements to make them perfectly ketogenic: high fat, moderate protein, and very low carbohydrates. Founder Chris Bair has been following the ketogenic diet since 2014. As a customer himself, it was easy to center the customer in his strategy. He took something that worked for him in his journey and developed it to make it available for the mass market. KetoChow.xyz created a shake mix of their own. Customers can add water and heavy whipping cream or avocado oil to create a convenient ketogenic meal replacement. KetoChow.xyz created an innovative solution for the ketogenic community, positioning themselves at the forefront of ketogenic meal-replacements.
Creating a brand new product or service that fills a gap in the marketplace can create incredible value for your audience and establish you as a forward-thinking brand.
Expanding your services can help you to provide more value to your audience. You can develop a second leg of your main service to combine two services in one offering that hasn’t been done before. Increasing your services can increase the size of your brand and demonstrate your awareness of the growing needs of your customers. Once you have developed your unique combination, you can add new pages to your website and/or launch a sister site to work in conjunction with each other. Many companies have fully reinvented themselves to take advantage of digital opportunities — online stores and applications can put all of your existing services at a customer’s fingertips, at any time of the day.
Offering multiple products or services that customers need can help you to create a unique solution that positions you at the forefront of your industry.
Brands that stay ahead of the curve stay focused on their customers. Keep an eye on growing trends and the changing needs of your audience. Strive to offer them the best experience possible by adapting to new situations and perspectives when necessary. That could mean layering and increasing your services, developing smaller innovative solutions to improve what you currently provide, or making a drastic change that better utilizes your resources. Every improvement can be promoted with a website that is as adaptable and flexible as your business.
Following the examples of the six .xyz websites above can help to keep the customer at the center of every decision and help to ensure the longevity of your brand.
2021 is well under way. For XYZ, Q1 was filled with innovation, accomplishment, and anticipation. Here’s how we made a big entrance into the new year.
In our continued effort to help the next generation of internet users make their mark online, we changed the face of the beauty industry online forever. We proudly introduced the first-ever domain names made for the beauty industry: .Beauty, .Hair, .Skin, and .Makeup! These exciting domains allow beauty brands, professionals, and influencers to acquire affordable, memorable URLs that match their brand name, first and last name, social handle, or creative idea. We also introduced .Quest, the domain made for gurus, experts, and authorities in any field. .Quest is the perfect domain for internet users to show their website is the destination their audience is seeking. These new domains are affordable, unrestricted, and available to anyone looking for a head-turning brand presence.
Flawless beauty brands are getting online with .Beauty, .Hair, .Skin, and .Makeup domain names. Many smart brands and visionaries have already taken advantage of these exciting domain opportunities and exceeded our expectations. A .Beauty, .Hair, .Skin, or .Makeup domain can enable beauty brands, professionals, and fans to launch affordable, memorable URLs that match their brand name, first and last name, social handle, or creative idea. Some noteworthy early adopters have already realized the value of these extensions. To name just a few, we’ve noted registrations such as www.MaxFactor.beauty, www.Barbers.hair, www.Freckles.skin, and www.Glossier.makeup!
We also launched .Quest, the domain intended for gurus, experts, and authorities in any field. .Quest is the perfect domain for internet users to mark their website as the destination their audience is seeking. Some of today’s gurus are already on board, including Twitch co-founder Justin Kan who launched www.Justin.quest as the dedicated home for his podcast The Quest. New apparel brand www.GoldenAge.quest is paying homage to famous expeditions with their Explorer Series t-shirts. Each t-shirt design charts a different well-known voyage from history.
At the onset of March, eight of our domains joined .xyz in achieving MIIT accreditation in China. We’re thrilled to say that any owner of a .Rent, .College, .Monster, .Baby, .Security, .Protection, .Storage, or .Theatre domain in China can publish their site live to a global audience. Meanwhile, .xyz continues to enjoy its position as one of the most popular domains in China, having maintained MIIT accreditation since 2016. With adopters ranging from startups, individuals, and organizations, we’ve seen so many launch creative websites on their .xyz domains. Be sure to check out our blog to learn first hand from .xyz adopters and discover their inspiring websites for yourself.
We’ve been busy preparing for the relaunch of our latest domain acquisitions. We’re excited to continue to serve the real estate and transportation industries with .Homes, .Autos, .Motorcycles, .Boats, and .Yachts domain names. They make it easy for brokers, dealers, and service-providers to create memorable domains that match what their audiences are searching for. Starting in June, we plan to make these unrestricted domains even more affordable. Stay tuned for more information!
XYZ supported five student-focused hackathons in the first quarter of 2021. Participants at Hack BI 2021, UPES-CSI, UofT Hacks, SacHacks, Makeathon 3077 received .xyz domains to help them launch their ideas and projects online. Located throughout the United States, Canada, and India, the hackathons all celebrated technology with workshops and mentors that helped participants learn and grow. XYZ is proud to help participants share their ideas and solutions with a global audience via their new .xyz domains.
We also supported entrepreneurs and small businesses by partnering with business education platform StartUpStarter in March. Free .xyz domains were provided as part of their No Code Week, a 9-day event where leading companies in the no code space taught participants how to build apps, a website, and even entire businesses.
2021 promises way more excitement, and XYZ has continued plans for the year ahead. Stay tuned by subscribing to our newsletter, and following us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
XYZ is proud to share about the many incredible members that make up the XYZ community! We encourage you to do your own research before using the products and services of the websites we feature. The information about products and services contained in this blog post does not constitute endorsement or recommendation by XYZ.
