Archive for April, 2009

Tip number 7 – Don’t mix your websites

Where possible do not use one website for two different products/services. For example – If you are a hairdresser who also sells fancy plates – then ideally you need two different websites.

Whilst it could be tempting to put everything up on the same website to save money, this will not work. You will end up confusing your customers and also confusing google. You would be much better off having two simple websites dedicated to each of the different businesses.

Everything else | 20.04.2009 15:53 | No Comments

Tip number 6 – Earn some trust

Ecommerce and trust.

If you are play.com or Amazon then you can be pretty sure that people will buy your products if the price is right. But if you are a new store then you have to establish some trust between you and your visitor before they will part with their cash.

Some easy ways to do this are to include the following:

  1. Clear terms and conditions
  2. Clear and friendly delivery details
  3. Prices and delivery information
  4. Full company address
  5. A proper telephone number (and not a dodgy mobile number)
  6. A nice about us section (not on the front page though please!)
  7. If you have them – testimonials from actual clients.

Finally please consider your payment methods, people are not always comfortable using PayPal so let them have a choice, if possible always allow the option for people to call up and pay over the phone.

 

Everything else | 17.04.2009 18:27 | No Comments

SEO – it is magic!

SEO – what does this magic phrase mean? Well frankly you can ask a whole bunch of web experts and you will get a different answer. In a nut shell it’s optimising your website for a particular search phrase.  In practice this means spending time maximizing the chances that your website will be found on search engines by potential customers.

Many large SEO companies will expect to be paid if they have your website at the top of Google for the phrases that you have requested. But in reality it makes no difference to you if you are number one on Google or if you received a thousand visitors per second –  YOU want leads!

I have worked with several different SEO companies commissioned by mutual clients. As the web designer I am privy to all the changes that they make on the website. 5 out of 5 so far have limited their changes to adding keywords in the code behind the website (page description, keywords and title) and 2 have also added a footer at the bottom of the site with a list of keywords.

THERE IS SO MUCH MORE!

None have offered our mutual client any advice on possible improvements to the website structure or content and none have provided a clear itemised list of work done.

OK, in an ideal world the website design/set up and SEO would be completed simultaneously at the outset.  But for some of our clients this is not always possible. As much as we encourage thinking about keywords early on, many start up companies just want to get online and then think about SEO later – which is valid!

My most recent experience with an SEO company was with a client selling both lingerie and footwear on their website. They hired an SEO to optimise the website for the terms “wedding flip flop” and I could see the changes that they had made. They did not make or suggest some of the very obvious changes that we later suggested and implemented ourselves.

SEO is not unlike traditional marketing. You open a shop and have to advertise. You need to think about who your target is and how you will get them to the shop. In this case the SEO was only concentrating on getting people to the front door – and did not consider how to get them through the door and more importantly to the till (with a full basket)! A real shop would ensure that the window is decorated to match their advertising and that the shop interior is laid out accordingly. If you were advertising a special promotion then you would move this somewhere prominent in the window and store.

This same principle also apply to websites. We made some simple changes to the website to ensure that “wedding flip flops” were given a bit more focus on the home page, menu and in the content as much as possible.  Not just for Google but to help people find the flip flops once on the website.

Many people still believe that SEO experts can make magic changes to the keywords and code behind the scenes. This is not true – if you want to be found for the phrase “wedding flip flop” – then use it! Put the phrase on your website, include a page called wedding flip flop in the menu, talk about wedding flip flops, add pictures called wedding flip flops – do you get the idea?

Getting up on Google is only part of the trick, you need to consider the whole user experience.

If you want to learn how to optimise your website or obtain a free report on how well your website is currently optimised then I would love to hear from you.

SEO | 14.04.2009 21:47 | No Comments