- Better than nothing (is harder than you think): http://bit.ly/cFiMEs
Online Presence
Wordpress, Joomla (Open Source) as a CMS – why wouldn’t you?
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the May 21, 2010 @ 10:43 am
In 2010 many SMEs want to be able to update their website themselves. In the earlier days of web design this wasn’t possible without knowledge of HTML programming or spending a fortune on a content management system.
Nowadays, content management systems (CMS) are king. This post provides an argument as to why you should use a CMS and helps you choose which one. It is written from experience and reflects our opinions.
A CMS gives you, the customer, the ability to update the content on your website through easy to use forms. No editing code, just simply click a few buttons and you can add new pages, change the navigation and add text and images yourself. If you want to be able to update a website and not pay a developer to do it you need a CMS. They are also great for search engines.
Choosing a CMS
The first decision to make is do you use an open source (i.e. free) CMS like Wordpress or Joomla or a proprietary one, built by a company. We’ve seen both and tested both. Despite everything a sales person will say about their proprietary CMS we haven’t seen one yet which matches the capabilities of the open source ones. What’s more you pay for the privilege to use these ‘sub-standard’ systems.
Why open source is better
- Being open source means anyone has access to the source code behind the CMS and can improve it. With the best developers all over the world doing this; thousands of users providing feedback every day and frequent new releases the products are improving all the time
- Not only do you get the CMS for free, developers create plugins for the CMS. A plugin may be a tool to help with search engines or it could be an e-commerce module. This saves you time and money in development costs as you can download the plugins and literally plug them into your website to expand its capability
- CMS platforms are built for search engines to read them, increasing your presence on search engines
If open source is for you, it’s then time to choose a system. Wordpress and Joomla are the market leaders however there are some others. We’ve used both Wordpress and Joomla. We find Wordpress easier to use and is great for blogging. Joomla is more complex but works well for larger websites. You’ll have to do a bit of research to find out more and what’s best for your requirements but it’s well worth it.
With CMS becoming the norm through their reach and affordability, building a website on a CMS platform should be a major consideration when building a new website. For more information or to discuss the options for your new website contact us today.
How to generate leads with landing pages
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 24, 2010 @ 1:44 pm
Do you want a quick, hassle free way of generating leads from your website? Then look no further than using landing pages.
Landing pages are simple one page websites with the sole purpose of getting people to fill in a form. Typically the visitor would exchange their email address and basic contact details for something free.
That something free could be a trial of your product or it could be some information; a free guide, ebook or white paper, in fact anything that would provide value to the customer.
Creating landing pages and what to do with them
Landing pages are separate from your website; they should have no navigation to distract people. It should simply give people information and then include a form. There’s an example of a Xander Marketing landing page here, and an example of one of our client’s here.
Once set up you can use Google AdWords to drive traffic to your landing page, making sure you set conversion tracking up so you know how much each lead has cost. You can split test landing pages and experiment over time.
What do you do with the leads?
Once your landing page is set up, you’re getting traffic and people are exchanging their contact details for something free; what do you do next? You could call each person up, if they’ve signed up for a free trial of your product this may work well. Or you could nurture the leads – send them a series of emails which over time would give them more information, educate them about your business or maybe send them special offers. You can use an email marketing programme to do this automatically for you. Once warmed up people will be very receptive to a phone call.
So, now you should have a way to develop a constant stream of leads. If you want to chat about landing pages and lead generation, or want help in setting up your own lead generation campaign get in touch.
What will a website become in 2010?
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 8, 2010 @ 10:34 am
In 2010 a website will become a tool, a community and a place to interact rather than an online brochure.
Websites started as virtual brochures. 10 years ago this was ok, brochures were static, the web was new and mostly static, businesses had a spent a lot of money having brochures designed so turning this into a brochure website was fine, and it worked.
In 2010 brochure websites will get ignored. Talking about ‘we’ and ‘us’ will get ignored. Sales messages will get ignored. People care about themselves. “What’s in it for me” has never been more important than now. To stand out and be different you need to adapt!
So what can you do?
Think interaction, a hub of communication, one-to-many as well as one-to-one communication: Yes, you still need ‘brochure elements’ to your business, you need to tell prospects what your services or products are and why they should use you. But you need to combine this with blogs and Twitter feeds. You need to allow people to interact with your website from outside your website using tools such as RSS feeds or encouraging Twitter followers.
What is the one thing you want people to do next? A brochure website from 2000 would introduce your company and then expect people to click on the links within the navigation bar to explore the rest of the website. Now people spend less than seven seconds on a website. What do you want them to do next? don’t assume people will find what you want them to find. Look at these websites for examples:
Think lead generation: When someone is looking at your website they are looking at your competitor’s websites at the same time. People will make decisions quickly. You need to convert them. You need to capture an email address and get people’s permission to send them information that is of value to them. What is on your website that is going to make someone want to contact you and work with you? More importantly what have you got that your competitors don’t have?
If your website needs to be brought into the new decade why not look at our Online Presence Proposition.
Is Google Maps the new Yellow Pages?
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 8, 2010 @ 11:06 am
Do a search in Google for say Marketing Agency Wokingham and a map comes up displaying 10 marketing agencies in Wokingham. By digging deeper you can find further businesses in the same category and location. There are detailed business listings, direct links to websites and even the opportunity for people to review your business. What’s more, it’s free to list.
The Yellow Pages takes time to search through it, businesses are listed in alphabetical order not popularity and it costs a few hundred pounds for an advert.
This post isn’t meant to be a criticism of the Yellow Pages, just an observation! If the Yellow Pages works for your business and You’re getting work then keep advertising in there.
It’s only when asking the question – the last 3 services you purchased – how did you find them - was it the Yellow Pages or was it Google, that people really realise a shift. 10 years ago people did use the Yellow Pages for everything, now the internet is usually the first (and last) port of call. Getting your website and online marketing right is essential.
And finally, if you run a service business and You’re not on Google Maps you should really spare 15 minutes to get listed on it!
Search Engine Optimisation – 6 simple things SMEs can do today
This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the March 8, 2010 @ 11:06 am
Search Engine Optimisation is the buzzword for small business websites at the moment. Having your website ranked highly on search engines for your keywords is more important than ever. Here are 6 simple things you can do to your site today to start moving it up those search engines…
- Page titles – Many people say this is the most important part of search engine optimisation at the moment. Write an accurate, keyword rich page title. don’t say ‘Xander Marketing – Home’. Say ‘Xander Marketing | Marketing Agency for SME | Berkshire’
- Meta description – This is how your site is described in search engines. If you don’t have a description search engines will just pull the first bit of content off your page it can find. Again, make it keyword rich and try and keep it to 160 characters.
- Descriptive URLS – don’t use URLs like XanderMarketing.com/1212lkl.php/12etc. Do use URLs like XanderMarketing.com/about.php.
- Meta tags – Not as important as they used to be but still easy to implement and they do have some importance for search engines. These are keywords that go in your code to inform search engines of your keywords.
- Replace images with text – If your links or headings are images search engines can’t read these. Replace as many as you can with text links.
- Create an XML sitemap for your website – This informs search engines about URLs on a website that are available for crawling. To create a free sitemap for your website visit: www.xml-sitemaps.com.
For advice on how to implement any of these techniques, leave a comment or get in touch and we’ll be able to help you out.
