Webdesign Tips, Web Design Discussion, Freelance Websites, Ireland

Google Adwords and Website Marketing

Posted by Karl – November 10, 2010

Google Adwords are a really good way of advertising a newly launched site or getting more users to visit your current site. So good in fact that in some sites that I am currently running Google Adwords campaigns for, the number of hits have quadrupled. This is great news for both me and my clients to see the visits coming in. I also make sure my clients have total control over the ads going forward. And they appreciate this to the extent where they can see exactly what :

Keywords are working
What keywords are not working
How many clicks or Impressions each of their keywords are getting
What exactly they are spending on the campaign
Etc

The best way to operate Google Adwords is the pre pay option. Think of it as a pay as you go phone. When the credit runs out on you phone you cannot make any more calls. The same principal applies here where if the credit has run out then the ads stop. Top up and your ads are back. This gives the user peace of mind and he or she can work within a budget.

Some so called Marketing Companies out there would easily take a thousand euro a month off you in the belief that you will get guaranteed sales. When it comes to Google, nothing is guaranteed. For Example, when you submit a site to Google for indexing (indexing means Google will find your site and include it in search results) the following text appears: “Please note that we do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.” So how do people guarantee sales leads if the site might not even be indexed in the first place? It’s a strange one that’s for sure……

Getting visitors to your site is one thing. But making them stay and shop is another. The key here is once a visitor is on your site, he or she knows how to work with the site and move around the site easy enough.

I personally think that it’s best when a visitor registers themselves on the site. Every site owner should aim to get visitors to their site to register. This entails registering once on the site with your Name, Address, Tel etc and a password. This way the visitor can speed up the order process next time he or she wants to place an order.

The good thing about getting someone to register an account with your site is that the user will have a tendency to come back to your site and reorder knowing that he or she need only type in their email address and password. This is all good provided that their previous orders were shipped promptly without any hassle. A good customer service facility in place is key and will ensure the cart runs seamlessly. Repeat business is key to a successful Site.

I would definitely recommend Google Adwords. It might not work for every website out there but when it does work you can reap the rewards.

Category: Adwords
Tags: Ecommerce, google adwords, marketing, Online Sales
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Facebook for Local Businesses

Posted by Karl – September 24, 2010

If you use Facebook then you will have noticed that more and more businesses have set up a Facebook page to promote their business. Facebook can be a great addition to businesses with advantages such as:

Branding – Facebook can be a great resource for generating brand awareness. Facebook is becoming popular amongst various age demographics and can be a great point for building your relationship with your consumers and prospects.
Drive Web Traffic – Facebook can act as a portal point for driving traffic to your site and other online properties.
Lead Generation – Facebook can act as another potential lead tool that can be used to qualify leads. Reviewing potential prospects’ profiles may help you build a relationship with your prospects.
Client Retention – provides another potential interception point to build the relationship with your consumer.

It may not be the tool or medium that many would first think of to promote their brand, but judging by the surging popularity, Facebook is not that bad of a place to create awareness of it.

Just make sure when setting up a Business Facebook page that you create a “Business Page” as opposed to a “personal profile”. The differences between the two pages are:

Personal Page – a personal page is aimed at the general user for connecting with friends, uploading images etc. You build up your friends list by requesting friends which that friend must accept.
Business Page – a business page is aimed at building up a profile so other users can “like” your service. You build up a list of fans everytime someone clicks the “like” button. There is no need to confirm friend requests.

From experience this is often the mistake people make when setting up a Facebook page for their business. Choose carefully and Facebook, working along with your site, could make a big impact on your business.

Category: Social Media
Tags: business, facebook, marketing, promote, web presence
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4 Fast ways to generate traffic to your Website

Posted by Karl – May 19, 2010

Now you have your new website and you are keen to start making some sales! But, how can you make sales if you do not have high volumes of traffic to your website?

One of the challenges which people starting a new online business face is that of getting traffic to their website. This article outlines four important steps you must follow to start generating some traffic to your website.

1. Have unique content on your website.

Search engine robots look at all websites on a regular basis looking for sites with fresh and new content. It is therefore important for you to have fresh and high quality content which will get your website quickly indexed by search engines.

2. Have all your keywords on your website.

It is important that you have all the relevant keywords and phrases that relate to your topic on your web pages and any articles you post on your website. This will increase your website ranking on search engines which means that your website will rank high when people type keywords relating to your topic on search engines. You will therefore get many visitors coming to your site via the search engines. When people visit your website, the high quality content you have will make people spend more time on your site and ultimately buy some of the products or services you offer on your site.

3. Because your website is new, you must submit it to search engines.

Submitting your URL to the search engines is an important step towards getting more visitors because it means your website will be visible from search engines. Having your website URL on search engines means that when people look for information relating to your topic on these search engines, they will find your website.

4. Exchange some website links with websites that have a high popularity rank (PR).

Exchanging links with popular and related websites is an effective way to drive traffic to your website, and improve the raking of your site. You will get some traffic coming to your website through other websites that you have linked to.

By following the tips outlined in this article, you will realize that increasing your traffic and getting more people to visit your new website is very easy to do. All you need to do is to follow these steps and you will soon see an increase in traffic to your website which will mean a lot of sales and online profits for your internet business!

The Use of Bad Images in Shopping Carts.

Posted by Karl – March 24, 2010

Bad images in shopping carts can be very damaging to a product and to the total overall experience of the visitor to the site. You need to have professional looking images and you don’t have to pay a fortune to have them done.

You can easily take pictures of your products using a digital camera. You would also need a white background drop. Place the product and click away!

Download the image onto your computer to see the results. Some images may look better than others so it’s a good idea to take three photos of each product. This will give you the option of picking the better image.

There are also ways you can improve the photos by using Adobe Photoshop or a free editor like GIMP to edit the photo. You can use the masking tool in GIMP to get rid of the background around the product. It’s a bit like using tracing paper. It would leave you with the product on a lovely white background. You can even place a backdrop shadow to really impress. See example below….

But be warned. This process can be time consuming. Very time consuming and if you have 200 products that need remastering you might be looking at three to four days for the images to be of professional quality. But it would be worth it.

I have also noticed that some owners of shopping carts upload an original photo consisting of 3 to 4mb in size! You simply cannot upload images this big as it could in turn cripple your shopping cart. What you need to do is to resize your image to 500px in average width so it would help not only the webmaster in upload time, but also the visitor in download time.

Content System. Do I Need One?

Posted by Karl – February 5, 2010

In the context of a Website, a Content Management System or CMS is a collection of tools designed to allow the creation, modification, organisation and removal of information from a Website. It is common for a CMS to require users to have no knowledge of HTML in order to create new Web pages.

So in simple terms it allows the client to update their own site without the need for a “Web Guy”. There are, however, advantages and disadvantages to having a CMS :

Advantages :

Ability to add or edit pages on your website yourself,
Not have to pay your developer monthly maintenance or hourly rate for changes.

Disadvantages :

Potential to break your websites look and feel if not used properly,
You may not have the resources to update the website regularly,
Using a CSM can require certain computer skills that you or your staff may not have.

If your website contains content that is frequently changing or being added to, for example events, news, reports, etc. then certainly a CMS can be very advantageous. If you don’t update more than once or twice a week, it may be more cost effective to pay your developer to make changes.

I absolutely hate handing over a great looking site into a client’s hands when I know (and then is proved later) that they are going to completely ruin it with oversized images, different fonts, etc. Ok, they are happy with it which is the main thing, but it is frustrating and discourages me from using it in my portfolio.

So, in conclusion. Before considering a CMS site for your business, determine what your needs are. If you are a small organisation or business that needs less than a hundred pages consider building a static site instead.

If you are a large organisation or business that will have hundreds or thousands of pages that need to be added or updated frequently with multiple authors, consider creating a CMS site.