How to use your website to support referrals

Thursday, 04 March 2010 07:39

A fortnight ago a site redesign for a client was launched, and this week they reported that they got their first enquiry from the website.

It was a referral (ie someone had told the person about the company), which initiated a discussion about the vital role your website plays in supporting referral business.

A visitor might know there's a good chance you have what they need - but why would they chose you over your competitors?

Use your longtail keywords to drive traffic

Thursday, 25 February 2010 12:13

We are working on search and conversion optimisation for a client (which in plain English means more traffic and more sales) and this has illustrated the importance of long tail keywords.  (Also online directories but that's for another post!)

How do you take advantage of your long tail to get more traffic?

Website mistakes three - offpage mistakes

Monday, 08 February 2010 00:00

This is the last post in our series about common mistakes small business make on the web.  You can read the previous ones: Website Mistakes Part One and Website Mistakes Part Two.

Off-page or off-site tactics are things you do that involve other websites or web based tools (ie are not to do with your site).  These are primarily about stuff that drives traffic (ie visits) to your website.

Social media wolves in sheeps clothing

Friday, 29 January 2010 12:56

'Social Media Guru' is the latest cool job to have.

Posts and articles are starting to crop up all over the web, to help people avoid the sharks.   So, how do you know if you can trust the web/marketing/comms person standing in front of you with your social media communications?

A website that supports your brand

Wednesday, 20 January 2010 09:28

Does your website support your brand personality?

Your website needs to reflect your brand image and personality. It must reflect what you stand for - your values and culture. This takes more than displaying your logo and having a design that matches your brand colours. 

Dooh! Practise what you preach

Wednesday, 20 January 2010 00:00

In some previous blog posts we lectured about spelling and grammar, and how important it is.  And then found all the spelling mistakes in that very blog post.

How embarrassing.  No good saying that we've only just discovered the spell check in the CMS we recently moved the Essentee site into. 

Website mistakes part two

Friday, 15 January 2010 13:24

Following from the previous post "Five website mistakes", we continue talking about common problems with websites.   These are on-page mistakes.  Other issues that relate to off-page activities will be included in the third and last post!

Website mistakes part one

Monday, 11 January 2010 17:05

Recently we had reason to review a bunch of small business websites.  Similar things came up, so we're sharing these as real problems we observed. This post includes the first five, and we'll post the others in bite-sized chunks.

Whatever your website challenges, at least make sure you're not doing the following.

Marketing wakes up

Monday, 21 December 2009 07:38

Recently there has been quite a bit of noise in the form of blogs and articles about how 2010 is going to be the year that social media overturns traditional marketing promotion approaches.  Ad agencies will focus on^*:

• Engagement instead of interruption
• "One to one" marketing instead of "one to many"
• Creating consumer-to-consumer communications instead of brand-to-consumer communications
• Robust analytics and tools to measure effectiveness
• Channel plans instead of media plans.
• Charging for value created instead of hours worked

There seems to be an awful lot of fizz and excitment around.  It all comes down to a basic premise that it's now all about consumer's conversations, rather than selling them messages and information. The TV news last night had a piece about small retailers abandoning traditional promotional methods and utilising Twitter to talk to their customers.

All this will come as no surprise to account managers, good sales and customer service representatives - who have know for years that it's all about forming relationships with customers and talking to them (not at them).

As an aside, this brilliant piece Olivier Branchard Basics of Social Media ROI should be required reading.

^*From "16 Risks Small-to Mid-size Ad Agencies Can't Afford to Take"

How many websites?

Saturday, 12 December 2009 16:43

According to Netcraft, there are approximately 233 million websites in the world.

The total number of web pages indexed by Google is estimated to be 9 billion.

Internet users numbers is estimated at over 1,730 billion.