Mo

We want Twitter/ Facebook/ Google+/ Instagram/ Pinterest/ Linkedin…

“We want social on our site”, I get told. My first question is why? Does your target market hangout on Google? Is Facebook suitable for your B2B business? What are you hoping to gain from being on these platforms – sales, brand recognition, customer support?

What type of social works on your website?

I can think of three types for starters – Follow, Share, Feeds. Which do you need?

Do you want users to follow your company posts?
Share your content on their own walls/pages?
Do you want to demonstrate your activity on social on your own website? *

(*Hint: Nothing worse than a dated feed, kind of like old-school news that’s years old).

Are you broadcasting or interacting? (More questions, sorry).

Do you know the answers?

Copywriting woes

A friend of mine is a freelance copywriter and she has just taken part in a survey of UK copywriters, most of whom were grumbling about the state of the industry. It seems that a copywriter suffers from the same problem that a graphic designer does, the customer often thinks they know better than the professional.

This was borne out by a conversation at dinner with another freelance copywriter who had her work laid out ready for the printer, when the client decided he needed to make his mark and issue a number of edits at 5 to 5 on a Friday afternoon, subsequently holding up the printing press.

Everyone can write, can’t they?

According to the survey, this is common ground for copywriters and designers, but less common with coders, perhaps because the average customer doesn’t know how to code?

The trouble is, everyone can write, but not everyone can craft copy that is compelling, technically proficient, or search engine optimised, and certainly not grammatically correct. The perception that writing or designing is easy makes for a very low bar of expectation to be set – and begs the question why not just use a wordpress template or write the copy for ourselves?

Employee training on the web

An awful lot of business owners, especially small business owners who are too busy to do it themselves, delegate ‘the website’ to the nearest employee. This can be a good thing or a bad thing and depends on the competence and interest level of the person involved.

Early adopters

A computer savvy youngster might not have the business acumen but be more willing to learn new technology though the familiarity of using it at school or college, whereas a more mature employee might not be as up-to-speed on all things digital but might know the business better or have more experience in customer service or sales. Early adoption of the latest greatest ‘thing on the web’ isn’t necessarily the best strategic plan for a business.

Underperforming website

I am not saying it always does – but this can lead to an underperforming website. Whether this is through lack of knowledge of the web, if the delegate can’t identify new growth opportunities it is a lost opportunity. If they can’t identify where any issues lie with the current offering, there can be fallout from lack of follow up on visitors or loss of data. It’s also the case that new information or accurate information doesn’t get uploaded to the website when it needs to be.

Consider the learning curve

There is a learning curve whenever a company decides to implement new software and that is just as much the case when a new website with an unfamiliar content management system in place behind it is launched. And don’t forget, when this employee moves on or gets promoted, someone else is going to have to pick up that workload. These things are worth considering when choosing a website provider.

Launching a brand new ecommerce store

So you had your great idea, got your products together, built a website, now all you have to do is put your feet up and let the money roll in, right?

Get social networking

Getting sales to a new store isn’t easy. Ideally you need to have laid some groundwork prior to launching the website by building up an audience using social media channels and database list building. Grow a network of contacts who can recommend you to a friend or who can cross-promote because they sell a similar product or sell to a similar market.

Great SEO stands to reason

Get the new site indexed as quickly as you can, ensure that you submit a sitemap to Google and other major search engines for your location and checking for any crawl errors that’ll prevent Google from indexing fully. Pan for the gold dust of organic results with long tail or niche terms where you might be able to compete as these will bring traffic at lower cost.

It pays to advertise

Accept that a certain level of spend is going to be inevitable in the early days, whether on PPC or Shopping feeds, advertising on social media and other sales channels or good old fashioned discounts, promos and competitions to encourage your followers or mailing list to give your website a try, then do everything you can to keep them on board and repeat orders or refer your site on.

Whatever means you choose you can bet your bottom dollar (and maybe you will!) you’ll need to put a large amount of work in to get the site successfully making money.

Lies, damned lies and Analytics

We’ve all been told that we need to pay attention to visitor analysis on our website, but how much of what we can see reflects reality? As the bastardised phrase above says ‘lies, damned lies, and statistics’ – statistics need to be interpreted and Google Analytics is no different than any other data set. It needs to be interpreted by someone who can see the patterns and make suggestions for improvement based on the trends.

Referral spam

I’ve published many new sites and watched, with the business owner, as visitor figures begin to climb. But often, there is a puzzling trend, lots of website visitors, few conversions. The first culprit to look at is yourself. Make sure your own visits are not being recorded as if you were a visitor. The second place to look is for rogue referrals, e.g. social media share plug-ins or “free or paid for SEO services”, as visits from their robot crawlers can skew your visitor results by some way.

Filter Google Analytics

Some of these visitors are pretty tricky to get rid of and you might need help from your trusty web developer, but most of them can be blocked using the filtering system in Google Analytics. Be Warned – you’ll get warnings from Analytics that you could potentially be skewing your statistics! Unfortunately, you will need to keep an eye on your reports to make sure that new culprits don’t spring up after you have managed to get rid of the existing ones, but then it has always been smart business to keep an eye on your visitor figures and conversion anyway.