Thinking about a website for your business?
Check out our tips for successful online marketing.

How can I achieve Online Success?

  • Identify your 'Unique Selling Proposition' at the top of the home page - what makes your product or service stand out from the crowd?

  • Focus on the customer to inspire confidence in your product or service. Your website content should be about what you CAN DO for your customer, not all about you.

  • Respect the intelligence of your customers - avoid hype and superlatives.

  • Ensure your site visitors have the best possible user experience to make it easy to find what they want.

  • Get Found on the Internet - use search engines and other marketing media effectively.

  • Be patient - like any other business, it takes time to establish yourself in the online marketplace.

If you have a product that consumers don't want, you may have the best website design in the world, but it is unlikely to succeed. If you have a product that consumers really desire or need, even a poor website design may have some success.

But if you have a quality product AND a quality website design, then you have a winning combination.

Can I afford a website?

A well designed website is much cheaper than colour brochures, magazine or newspaper advertisements, roadside billboards, or TV commercials, with the advantage that it can easily be changed at any time, without the need for an expensive re-print.

What makes a website successful?

Internet users make up their minds about the quality of a website in less than a second. Unless the first impression is favourable, visitors will move to another site before they even know that you might be offering more than your competitors.

To attract and retain the attention of customers, your website should be attractively designed, easy to use, well presented and informative. The style should be editorial rather than advertorial.

It is important to keep the site fresh by making evolutionary changes to the site every few months.

What is a real turn-off for website visitors?

Excessive use of graphics and animated content distracts from the purpose of the site, which is convincing people to do business with your company. Check out the www.amazon.com website; probably the most successful retailing website in the known universe, yet the graphic design is simple.

Internet users have moved beyond being impressed with elaborate graphics and animations – what they want is ease of use and good quality content.

Spellinge and gramer misteaks undermyne the credebility of a websyte in less time that you can say Dikshionary.

A website will lose credibility if content and prices are not up-to-date.

How will customers find my website?

Reputable market research studies indicate that 90% of people with access to the Internet use search engines to obtain information before making a purchase.

It is critical to ensure your site is included in the relevant search engines. Unlike other forms of advertising, search engines such as Google provide an opportunity for you to connect with new customers at the precise moment when they are looking for your products or services.

How can I optimise my search engine listing?

It is essential to use text instead of images, graphics or animations to display important names, content, or links. Search engine web crawlers cannot index this type of content.

I recently attended a seminar organised by Google. They could not have been more specific: Google's primary objective is to provide the best user experience for their customers. They rank websites for quality and relevance of content. They don't like advertorial and they don't like websites that try to 'game the system' (their phrase).

A clean, user-friendly design with informative content will gain you a higher ranking. Attempting to manipulate their system will result in a lower ranking and could even get you black listed!

Avoid use of the phrase 'Click here' for links - Google software does not recognise the meaning of the word 'here'. For example, instead of 'Click here to visit our FAQs', you could use a phrase such as 'Visit our FAQs'. This wll help you to get a higher rating for content.

If you want advice on how to use search engines for marketing, it does not get much better than Matt Cutts , Head of the Google WebSpam Search Quality team that pretty much engineers how search engine optimisation works at Google. And his advice is not only free, it’s about how to get the best results from Google for free.

The first YouTube interview with Matt Cutts for USA Today should be fairly easy to understand. The second is a little technical, but most people should get the gist. Whilst there is some overlap, it is worth watching both:

Matt Cutts on SEO1 (non technical),

Matt Cutts on SEO2 (more technical)

What else can I do to promote my website?

Add your website address to all your stationary and signage. Not just letterheads, but you should also include the outgoing message on your answering service, order forms, invoices, fax cover sheets, envelopes and business cards, vehicles, roadside hoardings, and signs for special events, such as trade shows, etc.

Arrange for your website to be listed in all relevant directories, such as Yellow pages, as well as any relevant business or professional association websites, etc.

Your website address should become an integral part of your business or company identity.
Call Paul on 07-5427 0132 or email us for further information.
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