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Blog posts tagged website
Be honest - is your website up to scratch?
June 17, 2011
There are so many ways a website can be used as a business tool. To start with main business objective should always lead the brief for any website design project. Write it in capital letters at the top of every page if you have to!
To give you an idea of how powerful a business tool your company website can be and get those creative ideas flowing, your website can: free up manpower, answer questions at all hours, provide simple information for people to find you, publicise events and products, show off your awards and news, take orders online and much more.
In any way that you look at your company website, it should shadow the effectiveness of any referral, direct marketing or advertising campaigns.
The real question is what your website should be doing for your customers?
Service! A good website should provide a good service, the same as a good employee. Think of your website as your show room or shop window, it’s a representation of your business.
Your company website is how people find you, where they go to find more information and make comparisons. Just like a first date, those first impressions are very important.
Track and measure feedback
Use your website to track your visitors and measure their feedback, this will help you to make decisions about additions, changes and upgrades too. Here are some of the measures we recommend are part of your company’s quarterly review and KPIs:
- Number of visitors (new vs. old)
- How long does each visitor spend on your website
- What pages are viewed the most
- Where visitors are from
- What are your biggest referring websites
These are all important and part of the bigger picture — do you know how many visitors on average translate into an enquiry and how many web enquiries convert into customers? This is the first step in calculating your website’s return on investment.
Your website must encourage people to act
Encourage action. It’s important to define this first and the creative brief of any website should be based around:
- What you want your visitors to look at on the website
- What you want them to do when they leave your website
- What you want them to remember most about your website
Once you’ve answered these questions, you can begin to develop an action-oriented website right from the home page. Take a peak at the Microsoft home page, every piece of text is written with the objective to bring you deeper into their website.
It may sound like common sense but it’s crucial to make sure it’s easy for customers to get in touch with you. Put your phone number in a clear and obvious place and provide several different ways for people to get in touch (your website is open 24/7). Usability research suggests that users are accustomed to finding a phone number within the footer of the website on the right hand side.
Is your website a star or should it be heading for retirement?
Answer the following questions and be honest with yourself, no one is judging you:
- Does your website communicate everything about your business that it should?
- Do you regularly measure your website’s success?
- Does your website have your current products, services and pricing?
- Is your address, phone number and email address easily visible?
- Does your website provide a positive brand experience? Is it professional and well-suited to your business image and values?
- Does your website answer all known questions easily and clearly?
- Does your website stand head and shoulders above the competition?
- Does your website include current job vacancies and openings posted?
If you can answer yes to all these questions, then you get a gold star and your website gets two gold stars! For the rest of us (yes I mean us), it’s great to wake up and smell the coffee from time to time and refocus on what’s important.
Typically small to medium sized businesses make their website when they first open up and it never gets a look in again. Maybe your website is one your cousin made for you or one of those cookie cutter websites you hashed together. Let’s face it, this isn’t how you’d treat your star sales person.
What your website won’t do for you
It won’t generate content by itself, it won’t analyse your business and intuitively know which product or service to promote and it won’t be able to discover what makes your service unique and better than the competition.
This is my rather long-winded way of saying — “what you put in, is what you get out.” So make the most of it and understand that not just any old website will do… your website needs to be worthy of your business image.
Sian Lenegan is account director at Sixth Story.
Read more on developing your website:
But what about us?
June 13, 2011
Chances are the most viewed pages on your website are About Us and your client list. Who are you, and who trusts you with their business? Two key things that potential clients want to know before getting in touch.
Client lists are self explanatory — names, logos, testimonials, and soundbites all linked to case studies add credibility to your business.
But what about your About Us? The section is a chance to let potential clients see the real you, and to show a bit of personality. But what bit of you, and how much personality? There are infinite ways of doing it, and we thought it would be useful to outline an approach we like.
Tips on creating a powerful About Us page
Do see the page from your potential client’s point of view. Your golfing prowess might be awesome, but how does that help them? Write about your approach to the business, not your hobbies.
Do think about the page as part of your business story. Write about how your role fits and contributes to that story. “Before joining x I worked as a sales consultant for fifteen years. My understandings of what can make or break a sale help my clients succeed.”
Do share your mission. What do you believe, and why? Define your audience — what kind of people can your business help?
Do interpret your data with your offer clearly in mind. So don’t just say, “I worked as an accountant for 20 years before starting my payroll business,” write “20 years in accountancy showed me how crucial payroll services are to business success.” Keep asking yourself “why is this relevant?”.
Don’t write too much. Remember the rules of good web writing. Short and to the point is good. Strong headlines will draw people in, so link to further pages if there’s more to say.
Do make sure the whole page links well to the rest of your site. Relevant About Us copy will make natural links to your clients and services and approach, so embed them in the site. Fire enthusiasm, and lead people seamlessly to the rest of your content.
Do use good professional pictures of you and your team. People like to see who they will be working with.
Don’t be too obscure. You might feel that you’re best represented by a picture of a lovely smooth pebble or a snap of Kermit the frog, but not everyone will get it. (However if you do want to go down an alternative visual representation route, make sure your explanation is easy to find and written with wit.)
Don’t be boring but…
Don’t be “wacky” or “zany” or anything that could be remotely interpreted as something Timmy Mallet might do. Nothing along the “you don’t have to be crazy to work here…” lines, please.
Do ask for help. An independent view can be really valuable in helping you see what’s most relevant and most compelling for a potential client.
Sharon Tanton is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut, a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant and a Valuable Content associate.
Blog on a domain vs blog on a website
February 07, 2011
It’s a question I am often asked — whether it’s better to have a blog that sits within your main marketing website or to have a blog that sits on a separate domain.
As ever, you need to have a plan, look closely at your objectives, your brand and how your customers want to receive useful information from you and interact with you.
If you have a good website, one that enjoys many visits and conversions to leads, then it is feasible to integrate a blog within your main sales website. Keep it between your own goal posts! This is what marketers call reinforcement and endorsement. Potential customers can see other customers commenting on your products and services and your marketing messages are all in one place.
If, on the other hand, you have a website that needs optimising in the search engines, one that remains static or that you wish to leave as your main sales funnel, you could consider a separate blog domain. A separately hosted blog allows you to extend your marketing messaging further and it can enable you to create freer marketing information — such as blogs that are aimed at educating your audience. This option effectively gives you two websites – and you can register a keyword rich URL which can set you apart from your competition!
Alison Davey is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut and runs Real Eyes Marketing, a London-based consultancy that specialises in advising small businesses.
Your valuable content tool kit
January 27, 2011
Using the right tool for the job is important in any business, and it is no different in the world of content.
Valuable content is an essential part of any marketing strategy. From basics like websites through to business books, a portfolio of good content can become a valuable toolkit for your business.
Not every business will need all the tools, it’s about getting the communications mix right for you and your customers. Understand how your customers like you to communicate with them, and talk to them that way.
Website: Pack it full of value. Make it a hub of useful resources for your clients. The answers should all be there. Needs to engage. Keep it up to date.
Articles: Give away some of your hard-earned knowledge and show thought-leadership. Generate interest and understanding in return. A business blog is a fantastic way to publish and share your articles.
Whitepapers: Positioned somewhere in between a magazine article and an academic paper, this powerful form of content can super-charge your thought-leadership efforts.
Newsletters: Keep in touch. Short, sweet, relevant. Should be regular.
Social media: Join the community. Be seen. Social media offers a good way of showing what you know. Interact and make yourself useful. Twitter and LinkedIn are among the best.
Email marketing: The best campaigns are targeted, responsive and useful. Email can be a clever way of carrying on the conversation with potential buyers.
Case studies: The kings of content. Make sure yours show potential clients exactly how you help people like them.
A business book: If case studies are the kings of content, business books are the Masters of the Universe. Sure fire way of positioning yourself as an authority in your field. Big commitment to create, with bigger pay-off if you get it right.
What collection of content tools is right for your business?
By Sonja Jefferson and Sharon Tanton
Sonja Jefferson is an expert contributor to Marketing Donut, marketing consultant for Valuable Content and also works with Valuable Content associate Sharon Tanton.
Ten things to consider before your website goes live
October 07, 2010
Before you launch your new website make sure you get these ten fundamental tips right. This checklist will ensure you are maximising your web presence by having a strong search engine ranking position for targeted keywords in your industry.
1. Cross browser checks
Make sure you have done a thorough check on all popular browsers before your website goes live. The ones to check are IE 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome and Opera.
2. Check that all your links works
Although it may seem like an obvious tip, use a free tool like Xenu Link Sleuth to check for dead links on your website.
3. Create a custom 404 Page
Design a custom 404 page to ensure users aren’t clicking off your site if they come across a dead link. Use this page to give users popular links and a search facility for them to continue to find the right page.
4. Choose the right keywords
Keyword research is highly important when constructing content for your website. Pick two or three word terms as these are easier to work with and are known to have a higher conversion rate than single word terms.
For instant traffic to your website, use Google Adwords Sponsored Links. These ads are typically displayed across the top in a beige colour and down the right hand side of the search results. However, be aware that your campaign may cost you a lot of money if incorrectly set up and monitored.
Add a blog to your website but don’t use your blog to only talk about your products, instead discuss non-commercial topics which will help to drive traffic to your website i.e. a guide to buying the right widgets.
5. Make sure your title tag includes keywords
Make sure each page of your website has a unique <title> tag and that this tag starts with the keyword targeted to this page. For instance:
<title>Metal Widgets | Buy Aluminium, Brass and Steel Widgets for sale at Bobs Engineering</title>
In this example, the title tag has additional information such as different types of metal and selling messages like “for sale”. Also notice the company name is at the end.
6. Consider your meta description for high CTR
To attract a high number of visitors via Google, consider your meta description tags. Use this tag to display your unique selling point such as:
“Free next day delivery on our award-winning Leather Sofa – guaranteed to be the lowest price sofas for sale online”
7. Proofread and check your site
Get your family and friends to check all details on your website before it goes live – this includes phone numbers, email addresses, addresses and names. Ensure all your place-holer text has been removed!
Make sure each page of your website contains at least 50 words of exclusive content. Pay particular attention to product details and category descriptions and ensure you include the target keyword for that page.
Don’t be tempted to copy text from other people’s website or catalogues as this will incur a duplicate content penalty from Google. You can test how unique your content is for free at http://www.copyscape.com/.
8. Use a sitemap and submit to Google Webmaster tools
Generate an XML Sitemap and submit it to the Webmaster tools of Google, Bing and Yahoo. Using GWT, you’re able to diagnose any crawl issues with your website and get statistics on which pages on your site are broken and how many pages on Google have been indexed when the site is launched.
9. Use Google Analytics
To analyse and monitor the success of your website, set up a Google Analytics account. This way you can measure the traffic to your website and keep an eye on visitor retention. It is also a useful tool for checking the success of your keywords and highlights what people are searching for.
10. Contact authority sites for valuable links
Once your website is launched, the next stage to improving your ranking for a particular keyword is to have a significant number of links to your website using your target term as the clickable text link. This can take a lot of time and effort so it can be beneficial to get a professional SEO team to help you with this.
These tips were brought to you by Leeds SEO Company Blueclaw.
How can creating an individual customer view add real value to your data?
February 10, 2010
Companies are generally very good at collecting customer data. They have processes and systems in place to record every touch point a customer has with them. Whether it be in-store, online, through an email or direct mail campaign or via telesales and telemarketing, behaviour is tracked from various sources and saved into various systems.
However, all too often this data is not integrated, it is stored in different locations or departments (web databases/offline databases/telesales databases etc) and is never consolidated into one central location. As a result companies fail to create an individual customer view and ultimately miss seeing the value of their data.
This is because segmented customer data can’t be analysed for trends or buying habits and opportunities to cross sell or up sell are missed. Most importantly, you cannot build a relationship with your customer without knowing everything about them.
By using an intelligent data management solution that will automatically pull customer data from your various sources into one central database, you can start to build an individual view of each customer, learn everything about them and begin to build valuable, meaningful relationships.
When you can see, on one simple interface who your customer is, their browsing and buying history, what messages they respond to, how they respond, at what time, what they like and don’t like you can communicate with them in a relevant and targeted way, learn about them and understand how they interact with you. By doing this you begin to add real value to your data.
The next step needs to be taken in data capture and individual customer views need to be created to ensure trends and behaviours aren’t missed or ignored and businesses can begin to learn about every aspect of their customer.
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