Choosing a web design firm for your company’s website may seem simple. You can choose the lowest cost website design company, or you can make a list of what you need for your website and choose the website hosting company that is best able to give you what you need. Though the list may be more time consuming, a bit of research can help you rest assured that you’ve made the best choice for your company.

One of the first things that you need to consider is the type of information that will be on your website. Some companies might only need a simple brochure type website. Other companies may need something more involved, like a shopping cart system.

You should make a list of the information that you want on your website, so you are prepared when the developer asks for content. A good developer can help you make sure your web content is optimized for the search engines. Search engine optimization works in conjunction with your website’s keywords to help bring your website to the top of the search engine results pages.

Another consideration for a new website is how the interface will look. If your website’s interface isn’t intuitive, then your customers may not find what they need. If a potential customer can’t find what they need, they may go to a competitor’s website instead. Though you may be able to find your way around your website, verifying that others can find their way around your site can help you be sure that your customers are finding what they need.

With the abundance of build-it-yourself website kits out there, it may seem like aesthetics aren’t as important to a website as they once were. However, research has shown that people still form a first opinion of a company or person by what they see. If your website isn’t visually appealing, the poor first opinion may carry through to your customers’ opinions on your company in general.

In web design, careful evaluation of the user interface, the information on the website, and the aesthetics of the design can help you get the best value for the money you spend. You should be sure that your website hosting company understands these design aspects as well. Choosing the least expensive company isn’t always going to give you best results for your money.

There’s nothing worse than a website that looks out of date. Sites whose last news entry or blog post is dated 2008 really make a site look unloved and somewhat dilapidated.   Conversely, a website whose information is bang up to date gives the impression that the site is alive, vibrant and valued. When you consider that many people will gain their first impression of your company from your website this is a very serious issue.

I was moved to write this article by 2 clients that I’ve recently been dealing with. Both were using our fantastic, cutting edge content management system (sorry about the shameless plug!), one wanted the news function activated and one wanted a blog installed.

On discussing the issue of relevancy and keeping these areas up-to-date, both clients were sat here committing to between 1 and 2 hours per week to keep their site up to date. This is great in principle but realistically we’re all very busy and that kind of commitment would soon wain leaving their stunning, cutting edge, content managed website (there I go again!) to quickly become out of date.

In my professional option it’s far better to put aside 30 minutes a month and approach this task strategically than trying to dedicate time you don’t have to updating the world in respect of your business. Unless you have the resource to do it, there’s no real need to update more than once a month, after all it’s not like we’re running the BBC news website!

So, here are my tips to strategically updating your website using only 30 minutes per month.

1. Diarise your time: It’s a pretty common phenomenon to commit to things that you never get round to. By booking 30 minutes per month in your diary for the next 12 months, you’re far more likely to achieve your goal.

2. Don’t be too precious about your material. Obviously it needs to be well written and interesting but you can write blog articles and news about pretty much anything – here are some ideas

- Something that recently happened in your company
- A new client that’s recently come on board (like a case study)
- A story about something that has happened to a client
-  Something that’s recently happened in your industry
- A comment on a news story that is relevant to your industry (search BBC News for such an article)

3. Focus your article on your audience, so if you’re writing for the benefit of business owners, keep this in mind when writing the articles, write professionally and remember what drives them. If you’re writing for the general public then a more chatty tone of voice may be appropriate.

4. Feel free to use someone else’s material! So long as you reference it correctly and fairly this should be fine. There are many sources where you can pick up free content for your website (see our Free Website Content article).

5. Finally, fresh content has a search engine pay off, in general the more words on your site the better your chances of getting listed in the search engines so bear this in mind when writing an article. If you like pick a key phrase that relates to your business and the article and see how many times you can repeat it without making the article sound like it’s just been written for keywords.

NB This is a critical point, your primary focus is on people that read it – search engines are important but if your website text gives the impression that you are illiterate then your website will give a negative impression of your company.

6. Get yourself a guest writer. As business people we’re all looking for publicity so to be listed on someone else’s website (especially if you’re offering a link to their own website) is beneficial to them and to you as it gives you a free and easy article – a win win!

So there you have it – follow these steps and you will be writing focussed, search engine friendly, customer centric articles quickly and easily using just 30 minutes per month. As a great meerkat once said…”Simples”.

Why not set up a series of quick tips and email them to everyone on your email contact list and put them on your blog – if they’re short enough they’ll probably be read and they won’t take more than a couple of minutes to put together. They will also help to promote you as an expert in your field and help you to be remembered when the recipient is in need of your product or service.

I thought I’d share with you a great source of free website content – WikiHow. This is how they describe themselves:-

wikiHow is a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. With your contributions, we can create a free resource that helps millions of people by offering solutions to the problems of everyday life. wikiHow currently contains 56,164 articles — written, edited, and maintained primarily by volunteers.

wikiHow allow you to reprint their articles at the price of a few embedded links and a direct backlink! They feature articles covering a massive range of subjects so there should really be something to suit everyone.

Free text – nice and easy. You can find wikiHow here:- http://www.wikihow.com.

Enjoy!!!

This is the fourth article in the Supercharge Your Website series. Most of us have written something about what we do at some point in our careers. This may have been in the form of a brochure, fact sheet or even in an email or letter to a client. It shouldn’t be a great deal of work to put this into an article format of around 400 to 1000 words.

The reason behind this is that there are numerous sites on the internet that offer free articles for people post on their site. The only stipulations are that they are not allowed to remove the credit, remove the link to your website or change the article in any way. By submitting an article you will generate a significant volume of links to your site (remember a link from another site is considered by Google to be a recommendation) as well as immediately becoming a ‘published author’ which could help potential clients view you a leader in your industry.

There are 2 ways to get your site published, you can use automated software to submit your site, there are many of these available. One of these is Article Submitter which can be found here:- http://articlesubmitter.imwishlist.com/. If you want the ‘Platinum’ edition, feel free otherwise just bypass all the heavy american marketing and get the free one (which is absolutely sufficient for most peoples needs).

The other way to get your article published is to type the words “free articles” in to Google. This will produce the main article sites. Just go into these and follow the on-screen instructions.

NB Don’t think for a minute that your industry or specialism is too boring to be published – if you’re in doubt just take a look at some of the stuff on the free article sites!

Once your article has been submitted you will find that the internet will soon be awash with your article! Well maybe that’s a bit optimistic, but you should certainly have some more links back to your site than you had before.

This is the third post in the Supercharge Your Website series which is focussed on increasing traffic to your website. I’m still a little surprised at how many people still aren’t putting their contact details at the foot of their emails. For those that do, many of us have our web addresses subtly placed at the foot of our address – why not use this as an advertising opportunity and turn it into a ‘call to action’? Here’s one from one of my favorite clients:-

We have just launched a wonderful new website – www.icon-interiors.co.uk – do take a look at the Emporium section for our new range of bespoke furniture.

Far more compelling than a simple link.

This method is great, you’ll get loads of links to your site, but what we’re really after (if we can get it) is people who are actually in the market for our product or service, so let’s get a bit clever about it.

The word Vertical Portal is a bit of jargon that basically means a doorway (or in this instance a web site) that is dedicated to your market (in our case web design) or even to your area. The most powerful links will come from vertical portals so let’s start here. Type your industry into google followed by the word directory –  so for us it would be “web design directory” – this should produce a plethora of vertical portals in which you can list.

Next let’s look at your area, for many products and services potential clients prefer to use local companies so by listing in local directories you not only improve your standing in the search engine rankings but you’ll also stand a good chance of generating a stream of genuine enquiries. The method is the same, type in your region followed by the word Directory e.g. Hampshire directory.

First, your web site needs to be found by your target market. Whether this is via the search engines, through email shots or via other marketing activities is going to be a strategic decision based on your individual circumstances, but even the best looking web site is rendered impotent if it’s never been visited. This may sound obvious but it’s surprising how many people I’ve met who have spent large sums of money on a web site that has never been advertised in any way.

The second element to supercharging your web site is all about conversion. Your web site could be right at the top of Google, you may have a pay per click campaign and send regular e-marketing emails but if your website looks tired and dated, if it looks unprofessional because when you started you got your neighbours son to knock it up for £5 and a packet of smarties or  if it no longer accurately represents what you do, then much of your marketing effort has been wasted. 

We’ve written a series of posts that focus on the first issue, how to get found – if you feel that you’re struggling with conversion via your website then we really need to speak, call us on 0845 6121199 and we’ll discuss what we can do for you.

 So…down to business. There are a variety of ways to get your web site found, some are easy some require a bit of time investment. In this post, I’m simply going to point you in the direction of one of our articles.

Search Engine Optimisation 

If you have a system that allows you edit the various elements of your website then you are in a happy a place indeed. With the help of our article on understanding how search engines work, you can set your website up to be found and recognised for important key words. 

Nearly half of small businesses that use the internet to advertise their firm increase turnover by one fifth, according to new figures released by the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

The FSB”s biennial survey of 8,700 members found that 43 per cent of respondents improved their sales after linking to suppliers and using their website to advertise their firm, showing the ever-increasing value of the internet to business transactions, particularly during an economic downturn.

The survey also revealed that the number of small businesses who have their own website has leapt by a quarter to around 70 per cent since the last survey.
Dr Gary Packham, Head of Enterprise at the University of Glamorgan, where the report was compiled, said:

“These figures show the very clear link between new technologies and business growth. If the country”s 4.7million small businesses are to take advantage of the internet to grow their businesses and the economy, they will need good quality services to be in place, as well as good information and education about how to use them.”
John Walker, FSB National Policy Chairman, said:

“The number of small businesses who have their own website has grown over the past two years, which indicates that small firms are becoming increasingly internet-savvy. Despite the onset of an economic downturn, all small firms should look to the internet to maximise their sales and increase efficiency.”