Online marketing news and resources.

Too often businesses might think their website is a kind of magic bullet that just needs a polish up to boost monthly figures. Without a clear understanding of site design goals, the vague reasons given to refresh may be no more than a wasted opportunity.

There is always a compromise to be made between the look of a website and it’s practical function. Successful website design can skilfully combine the two into a powerful online presence that drives traffic, converts visitors and gains high PageRank. But the aim of breathing new life into a brand identity doesn’t happen simply because of rearranging furniture.

Implementing a website refresh should be planned carefully after thorough examination of website analytics in consultation with your website design and marketing team. A full and up-to-date diagnostic report on site performance should then be obtained. The data should pinpoint where the recorded visitor traffic and their precise behaviour is occurring, measured against expectation and site intentions.

Before embarking on a refresh, a company should truly understand the purpose of their website with direct reference to serving the updated, present needs of their particular customer niche.

In other words, two questions need to be asked: “What are the goals and what are you trying to achieve on the site? The answers need to be exactly formulated, e.g. increase general visitor traffic numbers or attract specific new customers from your existing market? Engage more closely with current database or reaching out to new market areas? The answers to specific questions will inform the direction and objectives of online marketing campaigns to desired website performance.

The call for a vague, and ill-defined partial site ‘spruce up’ as part of a spring clean or ‘back to school’ exercise, along with ordering in new waste paper baskets, can also often occur when there’s a change of management with the obligatory new broom sweeps clean approach. This may simply result in a new logo and bigger font sizes on the Home page!

Budget plays a governing role in decision-making but unfortunately, just tinkering with a site layout by moving a few text boxes around to ‘make it look good’ will only give the impression of a ‘work in progress’. Cheap but untidy add-ons put visitors off!

There is always a temptation for companies to partially play around with their site as a magic quick fix rather than address deeper business issues. Proper ongoing investment is the only real way to install a cohesive website refresh strategy, which will optimise performance, produce qualitative results and improve that bottom line!

Rumours that Google is looking to go into broadcasting have been leaking through online over the last few months, with Autumn set for the first appearance of Google TV-powered devices. The exciting crossover opportunities for businesses of all sizes and how website design and online marketing will be transformed, lies tantalisingly just weeks ahead.

According to the world’s No.1 search engine, Google TV will be an “open platform”, aiming to unite search and browse capabilities, integrating web search results and TV content, side by side. Google TV will support Flash and make the “full internet” available through set-top boxes and “integrated” TV screens.

Formatting website accessibility for the new channel could be an issue – the TV browser is Chrome – although Google TV is intended to work with existing TV screens but either TV or the set-top box will require an HDMI input or output, respectively.

Google TV ( GTV) will be built and remote controlled on the Android platform, not Chrome OS, and will run Android apps. Users will not require a cable TV subscription, although they will need WiFi in their home to access GTV and for those who simply wish to use Google TV to get internet content and web video as an alternative to paying for a cable subscription.

The present arrangements for advertising from traditional TV sources or existing internet sources/publishers/networks will continue but the likelihood of new and specific GTV ad formats to eventually be produced.

According to Google, there will be the same privacy options and controls as available for Chrome online and an indication that there will be tracking and data collection.

Partner companies involved, in addition to Adobe, will include amongst others, Intel (chip), Sony (TV) and Logitech (set-top box), Logitech says its box will have a remote which also integrates a keyboard. Google have yet to give any indication of pricing.

As and when Google TV finally hits a viewing screen, and we enter the next era of integrated online and broadcast interactive content, the possibilities for marketing strategies and optimising brand identity presence across the new interchangeable platform could be very attractive indeed!

Listening to what your website visitors have to say and the type of feedback they give is as much dependent on when you ask, how you ask and being trusted with a reply. Approaching at the right time in the right way is a crucial part of your online brand design.

Collecting visitor feedback is a delicate operation! Knowing how your visitors feel and respond to one or more aspects of the website experience offered is crucial. How they might view and possibly share their thoughts and feelings to their social media network communities can make or break perceptions of your brand identity – and consequent visitor traffic and ranking.

The number one action is to tell visitors immediately on arrival to your site that they are invited, if they wish to spend a few moments, to provide feedback after their visit. By inviting on arrival, you avoid interrupting visitors during their experience.

Under no circumstances interrupt potential customers in the middle of their visit with a request for feedback that was clearly triggered by some action they took.

Research shows that survey interruptions yield four to five times fewer replies than on-arrival invitations, and will significantly increase the annoyance among all of the visitors involved, whether they participate or not. On average, 2 to 6 percent of visitors will opt in to a well-branded, on-arrival invitation, with more than 90 percent of those who agree to take the survey, actually providing feedback at the end of their visit.

Inviting feedback during or at the end of a website visit has been proven to produce a more negative feedback. On-arrival invitations tend to provide a representative sample of both positive and negative feedback.

Remember - timing affects visitors’ motives to take the survey, and people are quicker to complain than they are to compliment!

To gain visitor confidence, it is vitally important that visitors understand immediately that a feedback request comes from your organisation only, i.e. as part of your online marketing,  and not by an outside source. The invitation should be branded to make it clear that you are the one conducting the survey and must have a clear and easy to use opt-out button.

The facts are that most visitors will not want to participate, and it is equally important to respect their decision, and avoid asking them again for at least three months.

It’s also important not to overdo the feedback requests. For most sites, 750-1,200 responses per month is enough to address most information needs, e.g. for 100,000 unique visitors per month, an invitation rate of three in 10 should be more than adequate to gather new and relevant information on an ongoing basis.

Are you optimising your website for search engines or for people who use search engines? Many businesses tend to think of search engine optimisation as simply keyword crampons levered in to place to scale the PageRanks of Google mountain! But in fact human friendly sites are equally key to driving traffic and page indexing.

The application of SEO to careful campaigns of PPC and link building around the sites, blogs and social networks is there for one reason only – to attract human traffic to click onto your site, build your brand identity and ultimately convert from search visitor to paying customer and regular subscriber /newsfeed reader.

Search engine ranking obviously helps greatly in the online marketing process, conferring both substantive authority and establishing long term value, but once a visitor lands at your site, the next crucial part of the conversion process has to immediately begin.

Search-engine friendly design is often talked of in terms of ‘crawlability’ or the ability for a search engine spider to crawl a site, and ‘indexation’, i.e. the ability for website’s most high-quality pages, videos, and images to be available to rank. But it is equally as important to be constantly aware of human site search goals, behaviours, and expectations, as registered by website analytics and monitored daily.

Established patterns of site navigation and positioning mean searchers have very clear mental models of how site pages should be constructed and where items should be placed. If those items are not in the right place or aren’t there at all, then the likelihood is that site visitors will be confused, very quickly lose patience and just leave. For eCommerce sites, this is clearly cyber suicide!

In the age of instant social media communication and rapidly evolving mobile apps and tablet readers, human ‘onDemand’ search results will not wait on issues of website accessibility.

SEO linking should be relevant, valuable and genuine – and take visitors to exactly to their expected destination.

Today, the proliferation of multiple search platforms means it is absolutely imperative that a website must be easy to navigate, and quickly arrive at the object of the search. Assuming that searchers will instinctively know what is clickable and what is not clickable on a site page layout is still a problematic issue, alongside unchecked, broken links.

Remember – if a website is confusing and difficult to navigate, visitors will not wish to subscribe or engage, traffic drops off, bookmarking ceases, and site content is no longer retweeted or linked to via social media.

The fear of leaving something out! The old problem of trying to say everything on a website will only show your visitor that screen skim and scan reading have not been understood! Faced with walls of print or a busy Home page, they will lose patience and promptly leave!

The art of website design is to successfully finish the online marketing process. Visitors have clicked on to your site Home page and expect to be able to see clearly how to navigate their way directly to one or more items of search interest, aided by clear ‘calls to action’. By removing non search urgent content, or demoting it to a much less prominent status, you focus visitors on what is important.

If you emphasise everything, then nothing will stand out as important. By including, or emphasising too many items on the page, a visitor may feel confused and overwhelmed; their ability to find key information is actually lessened and they will just not want to continue. For an eCommerce business, website accessibility is crucial to online survival and this kind of info overload must be urgently addressed.

The problem may simply have grown over time. More content is added, but nothing gets taken away! All sites need to be archiving content such as blog articles, news, videos, free downloads, product launches and services, as they are being regularly updated. An important item announced on a Home page should be automatically archived to its relevant category archive with a visible link for visitors to click onto.

Active website housekeeping should be constantly seen to be happening by the regular site readership who have opted to receive RSS feeds, Twitter updates and blog alerts. Remember – your online brand design directly informs the perception of your online brand identity. Readers and visitors who opt to engage can quickly opt to disengage too!

The purpose of the homepage is to focus on key conversion actions which have a measureable impact and thus, the true purpose of the homepage is to direct visitors quickly from the homepage to the relevant object of their search, if they did not arrive by a direct incoming link.

The homepage should act as a signpost to make visitors aware of the existence of important information or options for them to consider – and then should direct them deeper into the site towards more targeted content. The basic role of the home page should be to let people choose for themselves what your site wants them to accomplish.

The rule should be that unless the content or a graphic element directly supports a key conversion action, it should be removed or repositioned elsewhere on the site!

So you had your website ‘done’ a few months back! So you think that’s it? Google will not rank and your intended traffic won’t drive unless you ensure daily activity and updated content. You need to check performance and audit your website – refresh as well as engage, constantly.

Don’t assume you know how your visitors are really behaving on your website, so it’s essential that you make a periodic audit to check if your site pages really do meet customer needs, are not being abandoned and clicked away from, as well as engaging with them through social media and blogging.

Visitor behaviour can be fickle, and your site analytics different very time you look! Your visitors may be telling you one thing and doing another! You do need to keep a regular picture of how your brand identity is perceived by what is going on within the different pages of your site.

Visitors tend to look for a number of reassuring items when making vital decisions over who to follow, trust, bookmark and retweet! When you check your own site, be sure to check the following basic essentials: (more…)

It is fairly common knowledge amongst many of the website design and marketing agencies, there have been recent changes to Google’s algorithm, influencing optimised content, link building, and ultimately, visitor search results. In short, Google looks at site pages for signals of human activity in the form of regular, fresh content of relevance, influence and authority.

After two decades, the web resembles Mount Everest. Countless explorers have visited, leaving behind a detritus littered landscape. There are simply thousands upon thousands of dead or automated websites left unattended or simply not being looked after and updated on a regular basis.

This begs the question of how much – or how little – online marketing the site owner companies are actually doing? What would be the incentive, value and interest for a return visit? Aside from an eCommerce business alerting their database via an email marketing newsletter to a few price changes, the content remains unaltered, and means visitors will not be staying at the site to engage further. In other words, a brand identity is formed of a price–driven attitude, which offers potential customers nothing further in terms of added content value.

Google is always changing, and some important changes are now more evident than ever before. Relevant back linking from niche market sites is now more important and valuable, even if the sites are lower ranked. It had always been assumed that the top ranking factor voted by Google was always keyword-focused, anchor text from external links. (more…)

Website design constantly adapts to the needs of consumer search – or so you would think! It’s remarkable how still many businesses online still view their sites as little no more than a virtual brochure with a visitor enquiries and info capture page.

For a website to succeed today and attract and retain regular traffic, it must offer multiple compelling content as a self publishing portal of niche industry sector news, information, interactive visitor engagement and social media conversation sharing.

A web based business or eCommerce website needs to be simply more than products or service selling. Search visitors primarily look to the web as an information resource. A site needs to offer two types of web page: a sales page and a content page, often referred to as the ‘squeeze’ or landing page and the article page.

The two different formats enable both online marketing and email marketing campaigns to be sharply focused on drawing visitor segments with their known areas of interest to the relevant site pages. Targeted organic SEO and its essential link building process aim to drive visitor traffic and raise search engine ranking.

Businesses may readily understand the purpose of a landing or sales page. It is to either sell a product or encourage visitors to opt in to a mailing list or preferably both! This page will dedicated strictly to achieving either or both of these aims and will not include any other type of content that would likely to distract a visitor from its purpose.

The main function of an ‘article’ page is to add fresh, valuable written content, which will be of genuine interest to their target market. They should be original and as unique as possible to obtain higher ranking. Today’s search engine algorithms seek out decisive and relevant content – not just voting on SEO terms alone – to index and return site pages to visitor search.

Content pages can be linked to all the other pages on a website, making it easy and straightforward for visitors to navigate and comfortably explore products and services on offer. Keyword phrases which describe the purpose of the target page can of course be hyperlinked. It’s important to always include links to the most recent blogs, articles and news updates as well as the products/services sales pages.

In addition, info sharing buttons via the social messaging networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as bookmarking sites, are now expected to be found not only on the homepage but accompanying key content throughout an entire website.

SMEs are not the only businesses who focus on niche markets in localised areas. Established online firms will segment and identify regional needs and target known demographics. Finding and building brand identity with a community in close proximity is key to social marketing strategies.

It’s obviously, somewhat optimistic to assume that just being on the web means your business reach goes global! You may get some overseas enquiries but the reality is that your business online is most likely to engage with specific groups and areas. Knowing the region where you are based will precisely shape both your online marketing and offline advertising activities.

Raising your company profile to drive localised traffic is equally competitive but being local means you have a ready-made network, with whom, your social media messaging can immediately engage.

The importance of Google Places (formerly Google Maps Local Business Centre), is essential and your first priority. Add to this Bing Local Listing and Yahoo Local. The rise of iPhone, mobile apps and mobile maps in general, means for your business to get returned at all on a local area search, you have to be listed – with an information rich profile! Search engines will index all your info and ensure you will rank highly in a map search.

Google maps enables you to be placed under a total of five categories so you have the opportunity to optimise your website in different ways for localised/regional area visitor search traffic, e.g. Cheshire Website Design, Online Marketing Cheshire, Website Design Manchester, Cheshire Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Cheshire, etc

Accompanying organic SEO link building, social media engagement is today’s leading edge to traffic driving and potential visitor to customer conversion. Designed to reveal the human face behind your company and thus, encourage confidence and repeat visits, b2c Twitter conversations are commonly accepted.

Local businesses often start their own online groups, rather than just rely on a Facebook page, and which can also be promoted through Twitter. Likewise, try using Twitter to offer promotions and ask group members for feedback. Remember – the focus is on involvement! The more you get them talking the more they’ll be likely to visit you and your site and add links to their own sites.

A company blog, updated at least a couple of times a week with genuinely newsworthy content of real interest to your targeted niche is now an established format. Google algorithms love great content and will rank highly. However, writing content for today’s savvy readership and satisfying SEO needs, takes time and skill!

By becoming adept at local level exposure to drive traffic and build online credibility, creates a proven track record, scalable to different applications. After all, going ‘national’ depends on knowing how to engage with the different needs of the different regions. Learning with your local area is a great foundation to build upon!

Nope!

Seems the message has not been getting through! A new 2010 study finds that nearly half of the UK’s SME websites contain little or no SEO, are not indexed with search engines and thus, fail to make any visible impact on driving visitor traffic, whatsoever!

According to a recent State of UK Business Websites Study, of a sample 1,000 SME websites analysed, around 47 per cent contained little or no SEO content.

It beggars belief that nearly twenty years since the start of the web, in today’s highly sophisticated online marketing environment, fast forwarding into mobile internet and social media led customer engagement, a staggering half of business websites defeat the purpose of their existence in the first place.

Why bother having a website if you are not prepared to invest in it’s growth and development? Learn to understand how it should properly function to enable it to perform properly so your business brand identity stands a chance of succeeding online? (more…)