Initial research provides the bedrock for all good decision making and drives your digital marketing across all disciplines.

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1 Example report

2 Research Initial research provides the bedrock for all good decision making and drives your digital marketing across all disciplines. Without the data a research project provides, you will begin by relying on hunches and guesswork and your live marketing effectively becomes your research. In some cases, this may be a good approach, for others it can be vastly more expensive. This document serves as the first step in the process of documenting your business goals and matching those with measurable digital marketing strategies. The information in this document is provided prior to any meetings or discussions and is intended to provide discussion points. It should not be used in isolation as part of a strategy review. Your website: Examplewebsite.com An overview report by nibbler is linked here: This indicates some key issues that should be resolved as a priority before any work is started. One clear priority is to connect to a Google Analytics account so we can measure visitors now, and measure the success of any work carried out. Local competitors: Competitor1.com (London) easily found when searching for this search term Competitor2.co.uk (London) Competitor3.com (Kent) Competitor4.co.uk (London) These competitors should offer better targets and may offer up clues on quick wins. For this initial report I have shown their respective Alexa ranks. This is a good indication of traffic, one of the first problems we need to solve. Competitors displayed on Google first page with search term targeted search term : competitor.co.uk competitor2.co.uk competitor3.co.uk competitor4.co.uk competitor5.co.uk competitor6.co.uk competitor7.com competitor8.co.uk Page 1

3 These are listed for initial reference, not to directly compete with these companies are likely to offer plenty of clues on how to succeed. User testing: Not recommended to engage any user testing at this stage Page 2

4 Website Your website is the centre point of all your marketing efforts. This does not mean to say it wins you customers of course - in fact the website often only plays small part in making a new sale. However, all other marketing hangs off the website and uses it as its base. The vast majority of your sales and marketing communication will touch the website at some stage so, although it may not be instrumental in closing a sale, it can very quickly lose sales. Design The overall design is often the first element to be examined because it s the first thing your audience will notice, and the design theme should be present throughout every experience with your brand - on the website, on s, in all your communication with customers and prospects. The brand itself may be reviewed at an early stage and an objective view should be taken on any action recommended. Decisions here will affect every other element of your marketing, both online and offline. Initial thoughts on design, firstly on desktop: Homepage: The overall design is poorly considered. Little attention is paid to aesthetics nor to the user experience. Most importantly, there is no focus on what the user should do there is no clear call to action, rather a collection of ads via the slideshow and right hand modules. There are at least 3 different typefaces in use, plus variations, e.g. Italics and this exacerbates the confused feel. The images used in the slideshow seem to be entirely from stock libraries, possibly Fotolia. These should be avoided as they look insincere and create mistrust. This can be catastrophic on a commerce website where gaining the visitor s trust must be at the heart of the experience. The key USP, low cost, is below the main slideshow in a subheading below a welcome title. It is unlikely to have any impact in its current form as the user has to work too hard to find it. The logo then follows (unnecessary) then a block of small text. Again, this creates more noise that is of no value. The Twitter feed on the right continues to create noise. You may feel that there are reasons for the text and the social media feeds and this will form a good starting point for discussions on what will or will not be useful. It is worth bearing in mind that these points are all related to conversions. As your current traffic is so low there will be almost no useful data to refer to at this stage so any design changes must be based on more generic rules and using other successful sites as reference, along with principles of good interface design. Page 3

5 The About Us page is a mess of different fonts and font sizes. This instantly creates mistrust. The very first claim on this page will fall on deaf ears and may even simply highlight the feelings of mistrust further. Relating these issues to our first problem, traffic, I can say that any success in search marketing (appearing prominently on Google search results) is reliant on several factors the behaviour of visitors when they reach your website is one factor. I can expand more on this point when we discuss the report. Finally, the shop itself uses a standard shop layout. The Twitter feed and Our Customers on the left column are unnecessary and distract users. The font used to name products is far too small. This is the most effective part of the site which is a real positive. This is certainly because the CMS used is specifically designed for e-commerce. Responsiveness Every website should be able to respond to the device or screen it is being displayed on. This means content as well as design should adapt to the device. When users visit your website on a smartphone (eg. iphone 4) they will need to be presented with information in a different way compared to the same person visiting your website on a desktop PC. Good work! The template this website uses is responsive and works well on smartphones and tablets. Page 4

6 CMS Your website should ideally be maintained using a CMS or content management system. This allows you (or us) to make changes to your content far more quickly and easily. This encourages regular updates so your marketing messages are fresh, and important information is up to date. There are many CMS systems available with features that suit different needs. Open source CMS software such as Joomla, WordPress and Drupal should be considered as the business case for enterprise level software that is free to download has obvious benefits! The website is running on Magento, the most popular open source CMS for e-commerce websites. This is a good choice for your site. It s not clear what version the site is running or if it is up to date. Blogging Why is this important? Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic and 70% more leads* than those that don't! Blogging is a great way to reach your target audience with the useful, educational information they're out there looking for. It often forms a key part of your multi-channel marketing, with new blog posts being shared across social media, and mobile marketing. Additionally, this helps natural SEO and gives you a boost in your search rankings. *Source: Hubspot The News Blog shows regular posts which is a positive. The posts are quite infrequent and don t seem to be shared via social media channels. Additionally, there is no mechanism in place to allow visitors to easily share the content. Whilst this may not have huge impact, it is simple to implement and may help boost social activity. Despite this, one of the posts seems to have directly generated an enquiry Page 5

7 Domain & Hosting Website hosting and security Your website must be hosted on a service that offers security and performance. If either of these critical elements are impaired, your website and all of your marketing will be impacted, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. A slow web page will cause irritation and often leads to abandoned website visits. A security breach can have long lasting implications, with your domain s reputation coming under fire, being marked as spam and your website may be marked as malicious by Google and other search engines. Web hosting provider: Example Internet System Details: Running on: Apache/ Powered by: PHP/ Security: Status: No Malware Detected by External Scan. Web Trust: Not Currently Blacklisted (10 Blacklists Checked) Malware: Not Detected, Low Risk Website Blacklisting: Not Detected, Low Risk Injected SPAM : Not Detected, Low Risk Defacements: Not Detected, Low Risk Website Firewall: Not Found, Medium Risk These scans are not comprehensive but offer a quick insight into the security of the website. Performance of home page: Page size is 2.7Mb Good. This is quite small for a homepage. There were 89 page requests Bad! serious room for improvement. Page speed: 5.1 sec slow. This should load in less than 3 seconds. Any slower and visitors will abandon your site, reducing conversions and sales. Page 6

8 Domain health The health of your domain may not have been considered before but it should be! The reputation, age and the way in which it is configured should be looked at as this can affect all of your digital marketing. A few examples: s may be more likely to be marked as spam, domain reputation can be damaged and SEO can be negatively affected by a domain that is close to expiry. On scanning the domain DNS setup, one error was found: Primary Name Server Not Listed At Parent ns.examplenameserver.com More information can be found here: There were 5 other warnings related to DNS setup: Local NS list does not match Parent NS list was reported by the parent, but not locally was reported locally, but not by the parent Name Servers are on the Same Subnet SOA Refresh Value is outside of the recommended range ns. examplenameserver.com reported Refresh : Refresh is recommended to be between 1200 and SOA Retry Value is outside of the recommended range ns. examplenameserver.com reported Retry : Retry is recommended to be between 120 and Open Zone Transfer Detected These are not preventing the website from running and some may be false positives but they are worth noting as they may impact on SEO and domain reputation. Page 7

9 Marketing Automation Marketing automation can transform a website into a powerful sales engine. Working hand in hand with your CRM system, many tasks such as processing contact information and progressing sales leads can be automated so you only intervene when you need to, usually when it s time to close a sale! The customer experience is at the heart of this so automation should always be considered as part of your long term digital strategy. No notes about your current marketing automation setup CRM The software and process you use to monitor, manage and follow up on sales leads generated by your marketing is vital in making sure you are being efficient and your prospective customers have a great experience. No notes about your current CRM Page 8

10 Marketing Sometimes still the best way to directly reach large numbers of prospective customers, marketing, when managed well, puts you firmly in the driving seat. marketing allows you to speak instantly and directly to your customers and is entirely measurable. It allows you to build trust and loyalty online; it s cost effective and, done well, it ensures your business stands out. No notes about your current marketing Social Media Marketing The reach of social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+, Instagram, Pinterest and so on, cannot be underestimated. Whether using paid advertising or using social media to communicate key messages, each channel has its own merits and often messages need to be carefully planned and differentiated for each channel whilst retaining a coordinated strategy across all channels. A scan with Nibbler showed Facebook, Google+ and Twitter activity. Facebook page is active but with no engagement. Your Google+ account has no engagement and 29 followers. Twitter shows some activity with 1042 Tweets and 894 followers. Twitonomy report below: Page 9

11 SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Organic search engine optimisation, or SEO as it is commonly abbreviated to, should always be considered as a key part of any long term marketing strategy. In most cases SEO is a slow burn approach that will not yield rapid results. If invested in and managed over several months and years, it can continue to produce sales leads with no direct cost. There are many ways in which SEO can be improved so only notes where there are clear opportunities to improve are detailed here. There may be many positives so the notes should not be taken as overly negative. General overview There are numerous problems on your page. The Page Analysis Score is 46.8%. In particular, you should work on the SEO, Design and Content. Priorities to solve: Add keywords in the title Use main keywords of the Page Title Add a Meta Description Add a canonical URL Configure a 301 redirection on " Increase Text/Code ratio Define a Sitemap Improve page execution time Configure a cache on pages Link the page to Google Plus Remove HTML code from HTML comments Put scripts in an external.js file Replace inline CSS by CSS classes Move to HTML5 Configure X-Xss-Protection header Configure Content-Security-Policy header Encrypt addresses in the page Replace underscores by links Hide Server Technology Optimize Facebook sharing Optimize Twitter Card Configure ipv6 compatibility Configure DNSSEC Full SEO report included with this report - analysis pdf Page 10

12 PPC (Pay per Click Advertising) Pay per click advertising, or PPC, in contrast to SEO, is all about generating immediate results. It is highly measurable and often simple to manage. It does need to be managed properly though - budgets can quickly be wasted without the proper initial research. Good SEO on your website will also help in reducing PPC costs so an overall strategy is vital to ensuring a good ROI with this method of marketing. Some PPC has been tried previously with little success. PPC should be used once key problems with the website have been fixed to test conversion capability. Mobile Marketing Mobile marketing is fast becoming a vital part of all online marketing and 2016 is set to see this form of marketing grow rapidly with mobile video and personalised mobile messaging at the forefront. This may seem out of reach of the budgets of small business but it can be accessible as part of a larger, cohesive digital marketing strategy. There is no specific mobile marketing strategy and this should be considered a low priority given the B2B marketing needed. The responsive website should be effective in converting mobile visitors with no additional work. Page 11

13 Video marketing A marketing campaign or even a whole series of campaigns can be hugely successful with a well thought out and well produced video. Video is easy to digest so complex messages can be simplified and even made fun so your customers may not even realise they are being sold to! Some Youtube videos have been used to promote specific products. This should continue and can be effective when combined with other social media channels. Page 12

14 Summary and Action Points There may be many more action points than those listed below, however this initial report focusses on the actions that should be considered first and those that are critical for success in any digital marketing. The website needs some improvement to be effective in converting visitors to customers. 1. The poor design of your website in will cause issues with trust and will mean poor conversion rates. Before considering any improvement in traffic, the design of the website must be improved. This will have the additional effect of improving several issues with SEO (eg. Change code to HTML5) ACTION: Update the template design NOTE: The company logo also has a small business feel and a simple branding exercise would be recommended to coincide with a website design refresh. Estimated cost: 2. The content of the website does not inspire trust and lacks focus. ACTION: Review website content, including images, the structure of the site, the layout of content and the text itself. Estimated cost: More traffic needs to be generated. 1. There is no analytics software tracking the website currently. ACTION: Create Google Analytics account and connect with the website Estimated cost: 2. The hosting of the website should be reviewed to understand why the page loads are so slow. ACTION: Create Google Webmaster Tools account to analyse page speeds ACTION: Review hosting account and configuration Estimated cost: 3. There is no focus to the social marketing to drive traffic. ACTION: Create a campaign (eg. summer sale) which can be pushed via social media and PPC. In addition to generating some traffic and sales, it will generate data that can be used to measure the cost/value of marketing efforts. Estimated costs: Page 13

15 Note, the costs are purely intended to offer a guide. More detailed discussion will determine exact costs. At this stage we should be in a good position to make refined marketing decisions, with an effective website and a set of data to review and create new action points. Page 14