Category Archives: Blog

This may sound odd considering we offer Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as one of our core services but SEO should not be considered the “silver bullet” of online marketing. To put it another way attracting traffic to your site is only the beginning, you need to be able to convert that traffic before you can consider your website a successful marketing tool.

Just as there is little point in having a website if nobody ever sees it, there is little point in getting people to your website if the site is not good enough to convert them to do what you want them to do (i.e. pick up the phone and call, buy something through the shopping cart or complete a contact form). This is why a good web design and SEO company will tell you that good site design goes hand in hand with a well optimised site. At the end of the day, do you really want to spend good money on attracting people to your site only to see them immediately hit the back button because of the site’s design?

Ranking number one in Google for your main keyword phrase is excellent and, if you have targeted your keywords correctly, should yield a large number of visitors to your website but is it actually making you any more money? Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) is the most important factor for your website as this is the factor that will have the biggest impact on your bottom line.

Before you get into making changes to your site to increase your conversion rate you need something to measure it against. This is where analytic software comes into play and you begin tracking web traffic and conversion rates, Google Analytics is a free tool and is more than capable of providing you with the data you would need.

A Few Ways You Can Increase Your Conversion Rate

Help Visitors Trust Your Website

A lot of people are still extremely cautious when buying online, either buying directly through a site or contacting somebody for a quote, and rightly so you have to say. It is easy for an unscrupulous individual to hide behind a website collecting peoples credit card information.

Increase the level of trust in your business by having your physical address on every page of the site, ideally not a PO Box, and a phone number that doesn’t forward straight to a voice mail. Other things like a clear privacy policy, terms and conditions of using the website, shipping procedures etc. all help to garner more trust from the user.

Something else that plays a big part in the overall trust level given off by a site is how well designed it is. A poor, out-dated design gives off a very un-professional vibe and may just encourage the visit to hit his or her back button and seek what they are looking for elsewhere. After all if the company is not willing to spend the money to get a professionally designed website how can they be sure that the product or service they are after will get the attention it deserves? If the content of your site is poorly written and littered with spelling mistakes this will also put people off.

You should also take the time to make sure your website is kept up to date, especially if you have sections on the site that are date specific. For example having a news section that was last updated in 2008 is going to have a negative impact on your conversion rate, people are going to wonder whether the section has not been updated because the company no longer exists or if they just could not be bothered to update it.

Have A Clear Call To Action

The purpose of your website needs to be clear to the visitor as soon as they land on the page, tell them what you want them to do next, why they should do it and how they go about doing it.

If you have an e-commerce website then you obviously need to be encouraging customers to add items to their basket, so nice clear calls to action like “Add to Basket” or “Proceed to Checkout” would be required.

If your business does not sell directly through the website then decide on what you want them to do and direct them towards doing it. If you want them to pick up the phone tell them “CALL NOW on 00000 000000″, if you want them to fill in a contact form direct them towards the form and make it easy to fill in.

Don’t Make People Jump Through Hoops

One of the biggest mistakes websites make is asking the user for too much information. Do not waste the user’s time by asking for information that you don’t need, the prospect of filling out a long form as opposed to simply putting in their name and email address may be enough to cause them to back away. You can always get additional information later but for the initial contact make it as easy as possible for them to make contact.

One of the most important questions a small business owner can answer about their website is, why do you have a website? I have asked this question countless times and it has been met with largely the same few variations of answer:

• Everybody has a website
• Our competitors all have websites
• So our customers can find out more about us
• To sell more products
• To gain new customers

If the answer is one of the first two then it is clear that they need to have a re-think about what they want to get from their site. If the main reason for having a site is because your competitors have one then you are clearly not making the most of the potential the internet offers.

Van Zant Design have successfully pushed The Durham Plumber to the top of Google for the websites primary keyword phrase, “Durham Plumber”.

The website targets all kinds of plumbing work in County Durham and the surrounding area and currently ranks on the first page of Google for a number of keywords, such as:

• plumber in durham
• emergency plumber durham
• bathroom installer durham
• plumber ferryhill
• plumber spennymoor
• central heating installer durham
• boiler servicing durham

The site itself is available for rent so if you operate a plumbing business in County Durham and would like to take advantage of the traffic that this site is already getting then get in touch.

If you would like to see your own website, be it plumbing related or otherwise, ranking highly in Google then why not contact us and let us give you a quote to make that happen?

Many small business owners don’t give enough consideration to SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) before launching their online marketing efforts. This is to be understood, of course, most small business owners have one hundred and one things to do so learning about SEO is not something they have time for. For this reason a lot of them push ahead and start marketing themselves using PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising, like Google AdWords for example and while this can be a great tool for increasing sales leads for a business it can also end up being a massive expense if not managed properly. For this reason it is very good business sense to invest time and money into SEO.

While there is some expense at the outset, and usually an ongoing expense to maintain rankings, good SEO will more than pay for itself. Once your site begins to rank well, you should be able to maintain the rankings, providing you invest the time to keep your website well maintained and up to date. Once you start to rank well you will begin to see relevant traffic hitting your website without the worry of paying for every click and looking after a PPC budget. The first thing you need to do is target the right keywords for your business, products or services.

Keyword Research

Research the keywords that you want to rank for before you start building out web pages and creating content. Some of the quickest and easiest ways to look at keywords that you might want your site to rank for is to actually sit down and brainstorm ideas. What words or phrases would you use to search for the services or products you provide? When talking to customers what words or terms do they use to describe your products or service? Speak to work colleagues, friends or family members to see if they can come up with any potential ideas.

When people think about using Facebook as a marketing tool they primarily think about how they can attract new customers to their business via the social networking platform. I like to recommend that businesses use Facebook as a customer retention tool, a way to remain in contact with current customers to ensure they stay loyal to the business.

In general people use Facebook to connect with and remain in contact with people they already know, I know from my own personal experience that I have never used Facebook to meet new people. So would it not be fair to say that the same would go for the way people use Facebook to interact with businesses? Again from a personal point of view I have only ever added businesses to my Facebook feed that I have used previously, I have never used Facebook to shop around for new services. Based on this, Facebook would be better suited as a tool to remain in contact with previous customers, search (and in particular Google search) would be the better strategy for sourcing new customers.

Google Places Optimisation

An image showing how the Places/Maps listings are shown in the Google search results for a localised search

So what is your Google Places listing? You might know it as the map results that come up whenever you search for a product or service. Regardless of whether you have signed up for the service chances are your company will have a Google Places listing already, just waiting for you to claim the listing and optimise it.

So why should you be bothered about Google Places optimisation? Recently Google have really been pushing the Places platform and they are giving more and more emphasis to Places listings in the search results, pushing the organic listings further down the page. If you are not up there you will be missing out on the opportunity to get your business in front of many of your potential customers.