If you’re an online business and you have a reasonable active website (say 100+ visitors a day), then it’s about time you planned for (or fast-tracked) a mobile website.
There is a trend happening at the moment across every single website we manage for clients – the proportion of mobile visitors to the site is doubling year on year. Currently most of our client sites are averaging between 10 and 15% of mobile visitors. This is up from about 6% this time last year.
One of the main questions we often hear when talking to businesses is whether a particular website is well optimised for Search Engines.
This is a difficult question because it all depends on what ‘well’ is. Most websites have some half-hearted attempt at on site optimisation, but often that’s just about as far as it goes.
So, before you speak to anyone, here are four suggestions from us which will help you understand if your website really has had a good start.
One of the key areas where full value can be achieved is by co-ordinating all areas of online marketing as an integrated approach will reap dividends. The traditional view of ‘horses for courses’ which may have served offline activity well works less well when there is, in the most part, a single destination – a website (or a business sitting behind the website).
The Challenge of the Multiple Supplier Approach
Say, for example, you want to achieve more incremental business: you contact an email specialist, a search-marketing agency and even a social media supplier… as well as liaising with your incumbent web developer – the time investment alone needed to co-ordinate and measure all this activity is substantial and then, beyond this, it is often difficult to pull together the fuller reporting structures to identify which aspect really worked for the campaign. With all suppliers claiming effectiveness – it is difficult to work out what needs to change to improve. Read more
We come into contact with a wide number of businesses and find the vast majority have ‘historical’ websites which often need urgent attention or complete overhaul. So, we decided to compile a list for you: go on, check your site against these, see how you stack up! In reverse order…
5. To Neglect Copywriting
This problem is so common it should be framed and put up on everyone’s wall (or sellotaped to a their screen, or stapled to foreheads).
Copy is treated as the poor cousin of design and technology when it comes to web. More often than not a project will be led by a designer (who has little or no interest in good copy, let alone an aptitude to write) or a developer who finds grammer a challenge, let alone copy.
The only other alternative is when a client nobly tries to write the content themselves: yet it normally ends up being long-winded, unengaging and full of fact without any mention of benefit. At worst, it can end up being just impenetrable ‘industry-speak’ and copious amounts of unnecessary detail.
If you were sending a mailer, would you get the printers to do the copywriting? The rules still stand for online – use a specialist to write your site, otherwise it will show.
If design is the bait, then copy is the hook, so allocate proper budget and make sure your copy really hits the mark.
4. To Forget This is a Marketing Medium
When we ask: “What do you see your website doing for your business?” Most clients either say ‘I don’t know’ or reel off a long list which practically covers the entire UK population and beyond. Yet the focused website is the one that gets the business. Read more