SME Guide: 5 Tips For Online Success

Transcription

1 SME Guide: 5 Tips For Online Success Thousands of businesses choose Easyspace to help get them online, so here are some tips to help your business achieve success online. TIP 1 Get The Basics Right In 2012 over 70 Billion was spent online by UK shoppers. Your customers are online, and no doubt your competitors are online, so it s vital that your business has an online presence too. Even if you aren t planning on selling directly online, it s still important to have a website for your business. The fact is many potential clients will search for you online, whether it s to gain more indepth product info, view customer testimonials, reviews, etc. Being able to find and read about your business online will give them added reassurance and it gives your business added credibility. If your business is not online, then all they will see are your competitors websites. In order for your business to achieve any success online it s vital that you have the correct foundations in place, from the very start. This means having a suitable domain name, plus a professional looking website. Domain Name Firstly you need to register a domain name (web address). Since it will be used for your and website it will be the first thing people see of your business online. Your domain name will have a large influence on the way customers and search engines such as google judge you. First impression matter, so make sure you have a suitable domain name for your business. Choose a domain name which matches your company name. Try to have a name that is easy for people to type and is unique & memorable. Brainstorm ideas and try to choose a name that hints at what your business does e.g. PayPal.com, AutoTrader.com, etc. Possible domain name extensions for businesses are.com,.co.uk,.net,.co,.biz,.info,.eu,.org.uk,.me,.gb.com,.uk.com... 1

2 Address Another reason you need a domain name for your business is for your . A professional looking address such as yourname@yourbusiness.com is vital. Having an unprofessional address such as a yourname@yahoo.co.uk or yourname@hotmail.com on your business card, etc screams AMATEUR and you will not be taken seriously. An unprofessional address will make potential clients think your business is unprofessional. So make sure you have registered your domain name for your business to use both for your address and your website. Web Design A website for your business is key the simple fact is it will help generate sales for your business. When designing your web site make sure it is simple and easy to use. If your site is confusing or difficult for people to use, then odds are they will leave and try your competitor instead. Make sure your site has a stylish design, with complimentary colours, high quality images and text fonts that are easy to read. First impressions count so make sure your site looks great. You may be able to design a website yourself, but unless you re a professional web designer then the odds are your web design won t be up to scratch. In this case you have two options: 1. Hire a professional - For example, Easyspace has designed hundreds of websites for businesses, so we have huge experience is providing beautiful, bespoke, professional designed websites. We can provide custom designs starting at only which will give you a website built to your specifications, by our team of designers. Call to get a no obligation quote. OR 2. Use a website builder which offers professional template designs, such as EasySiteLive PRO. From only 9.99 per month you can have access to our professional website builder. We offer 100 s of professional design templates to choose. It uses simple drag & drop technology enabling you to easily move and place your content wherever you want, giving you total control and freedom over your website. 24/7 UK based customer support is available. Try our new EasySiteLive PRO website builder for 21 Days Free of Charge at 2

3 Mobile Responsive Design It s expected by 2014 that mobile phones and tablets will be the most popular way to access the internet. Having a mobile presence is extremely important as consumers are increasingly using mobile devices to find information about you and your company. So, make sure your website is optimised for mobile when you re arranging its design. If your website does not have a mobile responsive design then you will be missing out on sales. Getting a mobile responsive design is actually quite easy to do. For example, Easyspace offers our gomobi package, which allows individuals and businesses to build complete websites specifically optimised for mobiles & Smartphones. Building a gomobi website only takes a few minutes and requires NO technical expertise... Web Hosting: Speed An important, yet often overlooked factor when setting up a website is web hosting. Make sure your web hosting is fast, which will enable web pages to download quickly, otherwise potential customers will lose patience and leave your website. Reliability Also, what will happen if your website gets a sudden surge in visitors e.g. it s mentioned on TV or linked to in a popular news story on the BBC? Will your hosting be able to cope or will your website crash? Support & Security It s recommended that you choose a UK based hosting company, whose data centres and support staff are located in the UK. This will ensure that they are following UK legislation when it comes to data protection and security. For example, Easyspace currently owns and manages a pan UK network of 6 state of the art data centres, situated in London, Manchester, Glasgow, Maidenhead, Nottingham & Leicester. 3

4 Each datacentre s location has been carefully selected to ensure that UK wide organisations seeking to house critical IT infrastructure off site have easy, local and cost effective access to the latest secure and resilient data centre facilities. Easyspace also have UK based support staff, allowing you to speak to expert advisors over the phone. What would you do if you something went wrong e.g. your website was hacked, and your hosting company is based overseas and offers no phone support? Make sure you don t find yourself in that situation. When it comes to the security of your website especially if you are going to process orders online, or store customer details then it s vital that the necessary security measures for your website are in place. A secure website starts with secure web hosting. Get An Online Shop (Install ecommerce software) Make sure you make it very easy of someone to give you money. Setting up an online shop may seem daunting at first, but the rewards are well worth the effort. Make it easy for your online customers to add a product to your basket, go to checkout and pay securely. When selling products online, having secure & robust shopping cart software is very important, and a worthwhile investment. Low cost shopping cart software from Easyspace: Accept Paypal & Worldpay and sell via ebay, Google Base, Kelkoo and more Whether you have 10 products or 10,000 products, Easyspace ecommerce software provides a variety of features to make your online shopping cart a success. From providing online payment options and additional channels to post products through to marketing and promotional features our shopping cart software has everything you need to setup your shop online. Additional key features of this advanced ecommerce software include the ability to automatically cross sell popular products, the ability to allow customers to rate products, the options to integrate blogs, RSS feed, guest books and booking forms. Options to setup vouchers and discounts, two features that no shopping cart software should be without, are also included! For further details visit: 4

5 TIP 2 Generate Traffic to your website Having a great looking website, with the latest widgets and an online shop is great but if nobody visits it then it s a complete waste of time. Just because you have an excellent website doesn t mean people will automatically make a stampede to it. You need to attract people to your website. You need to generate traffic to your website. There are numerous ways to do this but keep in mind it is a competitive and never-ending task, but a necessary one. Visitors to your website = Sales = Profit The best way to attract people to your website is to create quality content especially on your homepage, such as interesting blog posts, how-to-guides, entertaining videos, popular products/services, etc. Give visitors the information they are looking for. Quality content is the reason why websites get repeat visitors, and ultimately customers. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site Google, Webmaster Tools Social Media You should generate traffic to your website primarily creating quality content. However, you should also use other means such as social media tools e.g. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pintrest, etc, Begin with Facebook (1 billion+ users) and Twitter (500 million users). They are an excellent way to keep in touch with customers and offers the potential for them to promote your business to their friends/followers, since they share what they like. YouTube is currently the second most popular search engine after Google. And you thought it 5

6 was just a place people watched random videos of cats, etc? The fact is YouTube can be a great source to help generate traffic to your website. For example, many businesses submit how-to-videos of products/services, etc. Helpful videos such as these can help attract visitors to your website. Even if you feel you re too busy to spend time on Facebook or Twitter, set it up anyway. Spend a few weeks adding some content and interacting and tell your website visitors about it. In future, those few thousand subscribers, followers, friends, etc could be beneficial, even if it s not your main priority today. Make your content easy to share. Social media offers an excellent opportunity for you to connect & interact with existing & potential customers so get involved. Having quality content on your website which includes keywords that you want to be found under, and getting people to link to your website e.g. popular blog posts, etc are good ways to improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and gain high ranking positions on search engines such as Google. Try getting links to your website from good content on high-ranking / trusted websites. Links to your site are known as backlinks. They can benefit your website most when you include the keywords in a natural way. The reason for this is it informs search engines that your website is trusted - this makes them more likely to increase your search rankings, resulting in your site being pushed up to a higher position in a keyword search. Make sure you update your website regularly, blog, do PR campaigns, give away free trials, free consultations, samples, discounts, etc. As mentioned above, give visitors the information they are looking for. Don t ever be tempted to try dodgy SEO tactics. For example, always avoid paid links from other websites. This may work in the short term, but Google does not like it and the likelihood of them penalising your search engine rankings is high. 6

7 Google Adwords (PPC) Another way to drive more traffic and more customers to your website is by using Google Adwords. This involves paying to display an advert of your business on Googles search results pages. Every time somebody clicks on your advert a potential customer will be forwarded to your website. You will have to pay Google for every click. This is known as Pay Per Click (PPC). The main advantage of Google Adwords is that it enables you to target specific customers who are actively searching for your products/services. If done correctly it can be a superb way to drive sales to your website. Google AdWords helps businesses connect with targeted visitors searching for products and services online via Google search engine platform Easyspace offer a Google AdWords deal for all customers. Customers are now entitled to turn 25 advertising spend into 100 when they sign up for a new account with Google Adwords To learn more about 75 advertising vouchers, visit Easyspace Google AdWords pages or call our sales team on who will be happy to answer your questions. 7

8 TIP 3 Build An Marketing List One way of generating sales on your website, as well as encouraging repeat visitors is via marketing. This involves creating and growing an marketing database, which is made up of people who have subscribed to your website e.g. subscribed to your newsletter - their names & addresses. Many successful online businesses have huge lists. Some large companies will have lists that have over one million subscribers. Some businesses make the majority of their sales via their list. They promote their own products and offers simply by write a good and send it out to their subscribers. Since they have already established a level of trust from their subscribers they did voluntarily sign up after all they are more likely to purchase. For example, if a business has 100,000 subscribers and they send out an offer that converts for 100, if only 0.1% purchase the offer, the business makes 10,000. Now you know why you need to start collecting s and building a huge marketing list. So make sure you start building your list from day 1. Make it easy for people to subscribe to your website, and give them an incentive to do so e.g. add a newsletter signup form or give something away e.g. an ebook in return for their address, etc. If you choose you choose to give something away e.g. an ebook, report, how-to-guide, etc then make sure it s filled with great information, so that you can build up credibility and trust, which you will need when you try to sell things to them later. Regular Contact Your list is valuable, so use it. Once you have people signed up to your list make sure you take advantage of it. Regularly send out an to your list e.g. weekly. Make sure its content/offers are worthwhile and don t write it like a used-car salesman keep it natural and friendly. If you don t have something worthwhile or interesting to say then don t your list, otherwise the recipients are more likely to want to unsubscribe. When To Send? A common question from people who are new to marketing is What is the best time to send my ? Unfortunately, there s no one fits all answer to that - it all depends on your audience type, so we advise that you run some tests using different days of the week and different times of the day, to see what response you get i.e. open rates, sales conversions, etc. 8

9 Mail Chimp case study Mail Chimp analysed more than a billion s to identify trends to determine the best times to send marketing messages. Stats showed that opens increased after 12pm, with the most active period being between 2pm and 5pm. Tuesday and Thursday are the busiest days in terms of volume, so it s advisable to try testing other days to help your messages stand out from the competition. However, possibly it could be that these are the most successful days for a most marketers. There is an obvious reduction in the open rate on weekends, so it s recommended to avoid sending important messages on Saturday or Sunday. 9

10 Take into consideration your audience. Is your relation to them Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer ( B2C)? B2B Popular times to send s are Thursday, between 11am and 2pm B2C Popular time to send s are Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursday, and maybe even a Saturday, between 7 to 9pm Experiment, test, monitor your results/stats and over time your will find what works best for your business. Management There are numerous management software available, many of which you can start using for free, until your list grows. These tools enable you to monitor who and how may subscribers you have, as well as reviewing stats on open rates, etc. You can manage subscribers by segmenting them, etc. They also allow you to send out s to your list using either your own custom HTML mailshot or you can use HTML templates thereby ensuring and professional & consistent look to your mailshots. We recommend: Suite 26 Mail Chimp AWeber 10

11 TIP 4 Measure Your Progress Measuring and analysing your website stats is crucial. Unless you are able to access reliable stats then you won t have a clear picture of what is working for you. Google Analytics is an excellent free tool that allows your to record, mesurea and analyse your websites stats e.g. how many visitors does your website get? How many unique vistors? Which pages are they visiting? How long are they visiting your website for, etc? Once you can measure your website stats, you can then respond to user behaviour (i.e. testing), in order to improve your websites performance or your marketing campaigns, etc. For example, if your stats show that people are visiting your webpage, but not staying for long then try updating your content with something more engaging like a video. Google Analytics offer a huge range of reporting options Google Analytics not only lets you measure sales and conversions, but also gives you fresh insights into how visitors use your site, how they arrived on your site and how you can keep them coming back. Testing In internet marketing, multivariate testing is a process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous A/B tests performed on one page at the same time. Dramatic increases can be seen through testing different copy text, form layouts and even landing page images and background colours. TEST > MEASURE > RESPOND For example, if you sell products online you should try testing the effect that different designs of the webpage have e.g. does having a green BUY NOW button result in more sales than an orange BUY NOW button? Does displaying your price at sell more than if it s displayed as 20? Test 11

12 different versions and then analyse the stats. This can result in lots of small improvements and sometimes even big improvements in order to optimise your websites performance, which can help your profit margins. Google Analytics is free of charge and is a good place to start to measure the progress you are making with your business website: Monitor activity as it happens on your site. So you'll immediately see what's working and what's not 12

13 TIP 5 Keep Learning Attempting to improve your website is a never-ending task. However, it is worthwhile as eventually it will pay dividends. At first it may seem a daunting task to get your small or medium sized business online and competing alongside all the other business in your market sector. There is a lot to do at the start, but once your have the basics in place you will start to see the benefits of having your business online, which will most likely spur you on to increase your online efforts. Learning what you need to do is an on-going process. It s recommended that you keep an eye not only on websites and events specific to your industry, but to ensure your business is maximising its online potential, it s also recommended that you keep an eye on the latest internet marketing developments. This will involve reading various technology websites/forums, and maybe even attending conferences or events particular to online businesses such as Ad:tech London ( ). This will help you keep up to date with what you should be doing online. Attending such events will leave you with new ideas, contacts and an enhanced understanding of the action you need to take today to future-proof your business tomorrow. For example, a few years ago Bebo and MySpace were all the rage, with lots of businesses signing up to them to promote their business, including pubs, restaurants, etc. However, now they re old hat it s all Facebook and Twitter now but how long will that be for and what will replace them? If you re not keeping an eye on the latest developments, then you ll be left behind with your MySpace page. So make sure you keep up to date with what s happening online it s not difficult, nor will it take a lot of time. In the long run your business will benefit. Being online is now an important part of your business, so now is a good time to start the wheels of your online activities turning 13