Many website owners concentrate their efforts of getting their website found and increasing the traffic to the site, but it is equally as important to assess how well your website performs and the conversion rate. You need to have a clear goal as to what you want someone to do when they land on your site. It may be that you are looking for them to pick up the phone and call you or fill out an enquiry form or if you have an ecommerce website then you will want people to complete a purchase.

There are a number of ways in which you can check how well your site is performing in terms of conversions, one of which is to install software that tracks what a person does when they are on your site. This is called a recording and allows you to follow a person through the different parts of your site seeing where they move their cursor and where they interact or click. This can give you invaluable information and allow you to identify areas that work and also areas that don’t

You can then use this to improve your website and in turn, improve conversions.

Having a website has become a must for any new business start-up and can make the difference between success and failure of the company. As the majority of people turn to the internet when searching for products or services if your company isn’t there you may be missing out on potential business.

There are two choices when you want a business website the first being to learn the skills yourself to build a site or the second, and probably the best option, is to find a good web designer and developer to design and optimise your business website for you.

Designing your own website has become easier of late as there are many online websites offering to show you step by step how to develop a website. There are also companies that can provide a template based design so that some of the basic programming has been done and by simply uploading your company details and images the website can be personalised. This is a great way to have a simple web presence for little cost then once the business is established a more professional website may be afforded. However, if you have sufficient funds in your marketing budget it is probably wiser to use a web design company and launch your professional business site from the outset.

If you have a website it is important to keep your focus on who your target audience is and ensure that your website is aimed at them. You may need to carry out some in depth research to find out where your site performs well and where it does not. There are a number of ways in which you can do this and software such as Google Analytics can help. You may want to look at your top landing pages to try and establish what search terms people are typing in to find your site. From this you can then look at bounce rates to see how well that page is performing. This will give you an idea as to if any pages require work to improve them, if the bounce rate is high. It may be that there is nothing wrong with the page but you are attracting the wrong type of audience in which case you may need to refocus your search engine optimisation for that page.

Another more advanced way to see how people are interacting with your site is to use a heat map. This will show you the areas that people are clicking on the most along with how long they spent on a certain area of the page.  

Your customer relationship management software can be an essential part of your business. It can help organise your business to ensure that you have the most up to date information about your existing customer database. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and is essentially a system that businesses use to store information about previous, current and potential customers. There are a huge number of them on the market and they often have different features and benefits. A good CRM system can massively help with your marketing. The more you put in to it the more you get out of it. Keeping it up to date is essential if you want to ensure that you have good data when it comes to sending out emails, letters or making calls. On some CRM systems you just enter basic information such as name, addresses and email / phone numbers to create a record whereas other systems may allow you to store information relating to previous purchases, can tell you balances on their account, even down to their interests and hobbies. A very small percentage of companies actually use their CRM systems to their full potential and this could be mean that they are missing out on a large number of potential marketing opportunities.

Many of us now use social media in our daily lives. Whether it be for catching up with friends and family, promoting our business or products/ services or simply to keep in contact with the local community and find out about what’s going on in the area.

As a business owner you should not under estimate the power of social media marketing and if you are not already on the sites, you need to get yourself a business profile. There are so many different social media sites it can be hard to know which one will get you the best results. Some social media sites work better for some businesses than others but often you may not find this out until you try it for yourself.

You don’t have to invest a lot of money more just your time but if you want to go the whole hog you could do paid for ads to really promote your business.

When creating a profile on a social media site such as Facebook or Twitter, be sure to add as much information to it as possible such as your opening hours, your address and contact details, photos of your business as this will help visitors who want to find out more about you.

The right marketing agency can do wonders for your business. Marketing can make or break a business and often as long as you invest your time and money in the right marketing avenues, you will quickly see a decent return on your investment. You can of course carry out some marketing yourself and you may be tempted to do this to keep costs down, but some marketing is best left to the professional. Google Adwords, for example, is one of those marketing avenues that is often best left to the professionals. You need to ensure that the campaigns are set up and managed correctly and that you are only targeting the places and people that you need to. It is very easy to quickly use up all of your budget and have little results to show for it.

Often you cannot get a true fell for the marketing agency until you have been working with them for a short time. They should take the time to understand your business and what it is you are trying to achieve. If they don’t want to do this then it may be time to move on and find a new agency to work with.

If you are considering doing paid for advertising then Google Adwords is probably to most popular choice. Google Adwords is a pay per click program that allows you to create adverts to promote your business. These adverts can be designed to get people to call your business, visit your website or complete a contact form. They can often be set up in different ways such as charges per click or changes per view etc. You will need to decide which works best for you and your business. The beauty of Adwords is that you can get traffic to your site or even a specific page or product on your site the same day. This is especially useful if you have a new product launch or a competition / event you want to promote.

Within your campaign you can create separate ad groups and keywords / phrases. Each time someone searches using the keywords or phrases, your ad may show up depending on if you have got your budget high enough and the quality score of your ad.  Some companies may choose to display their phone number in the advert as they want people to contact them more so than visit their website whereas others chose to take the visitor through to a specific page on the website. Adwords can work wonders but you do need to ensure that it is set up and managed correctly.

Web marketing is essential to get your website off the ground and get it to be found on the search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Most companies struggle to know what they should be doing on their site and how often in order to help the rankings. It is important to understand that web marketing is not only just about the rankings, but also about what the visitors do when they land on your website. There is no point in attracting a lot of traffic to your site if none of it then converts to sales or enquiries. You should also ensure that you look ta other traffic sources to your site such as referrals from other websites, direct traffic and also social media traffic. These are all important ways in which you can get people to your site and you shouldn’t just focus on one.

Hopefully you will already be active on the social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. You may only have set up a profile and be looking for help and advice on how to manage it. Seeking the help of a social media marketing expert will ensure that you get the best results from your social media accounts.

So, you have decided to set up your own online business in response to demand shown in your products by friends and family. You are unsure about the success of the venture but feel there is nothing to lose. What are the best ways to promote your small business, get good value for money and obtain the best results possible within your budget?

It is a good idea to have a web presence either in the form of a website or a page on one of the social media platforms because this is usually the first port of call for potential customers. If you decide to go down the route of creating a website to promote your business you could either use one of the free applications that provide you with a template to design and create your own website or you can employ the services of a web designer. The latter will probably give your website a more professional look and will possibly be designed to contain key words that will improve the ranking of your site on search engines however the cost may be prohibitive especially as you start out. A better option would be to concentrate on promoting your business through social media as the costs are minimal, and the maintenance is much easier.

Social media has become a big part of many of our daily lives. Lots of us have social media profiles on multiple sites and access them every day. Social media has continued to grow over the last few years and now many businesses are seeing the advantage that they can have when it comes to marketing. Many business owners have welcomed the number of increased enquiries and sales that social media marketing has bought in.

Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform for small business and can literally grow a business’s customer base overnight. It is vital that you set your profile up correctly in order to target the right people and ensure you reflect your business in the right way. You should see social media as another window through to your company. Whatever you put on social media is out there for the world to see so it is very important you think carefully before posting anything.  When a user is searching on Facebook they will may start to look for products or services within a certain radius of where they live. Facebook tends to work well for local advertising but can work nationally if the product or service you are offering can be supplied across the rest of the UK for example.