SEO Web Design

Websites To Improve Your Bottom Line

A company's web presence is their most important brand asset in 2010. But if your site doesn't convert users into leads or sales, then you're not taking advantage of online as a sales channel.

And we already know online is not just the most important sales channel, but it's also the only marketing channel to keep growing despite the recession.

So how do I make my website into an investment rather than an expense?

Simple: Build for SEO, then optimise conversion rates before introducing small, efficient PPC traffic highly targeted to your audience. That way you target the largest traffic group available first:

^* Source: Penn State, 2009

Then, ongoing:

1. Set up advanced web analytics tagging
2. Get feedback direct from the search engines vie their Webmaster Tools
3. Tag your pages for multivariate testing
4. Build landing pages around your keyphrase strategy which segment customers from both SEO & PPC traffic, to overcome sales obstacles
5. Set up user voice feedback (and pay attention to it!)
6. Monitor your traffic progress each month, and revise your keyphrase targets accordingly
7. Set up conversion funnels to understand where people are abandoning and test improvements
8. Produce compelling, authoritative content in your market and promote it via social networks, industry sites, blogs & forums.

OK, OK! So it's not exactly simple!

The point is, that at no point did any of the above steps include obscure technical jargon.

• Your website is simply a communication channel: the most important part of any website should be the message communicated and the audience it's directed at.

Obviously, you'll need to build on a solid technical foundation, but that's something for out technical team to deliver, not for you to worry about. To make it even simpler, this month we are offering FREE Web Development with our 12 month SEO contracts. So why not get a free web development quote from our experts today?

A Simple Path To Web Success

• Identify your critical business objectives to be achieved by the site

i.e. make a booking, buy a product, fill in an enquiry, provide support, etc

• Survey your current audience: if you're online already, then put up a quick survey like this one from 4Q to find common frustrations.
• Think about your USP, and what you'll need to put online to get your message across

Think: case studies, rich media, product sheets, product images, reviews, accreditations, etc. (notice: still no mention of site technology yet!)

• Research your marketplace

i.e. what people are searching for, how competative your marketplace is, where you can't compete & where your niche spends its time

• Think about who will need to access the website, what pages they should be able to easily create or update and what pages should be locked away from clumsy fingers!
• Build out a site architecture

Keep it simple! Use a spreadsheet program, mapping pages to keyphrases, intended customer segments, feature components & page types, etc. Anything you'd like to append, add it: just think about which URL is shoudl go on and organise it that way.

• Plan depth from homepage for site sections, and navigation shortcuts (featured products on homepage, etc), so your most valuable pages get the most domain value for best SEO
• Finall, tie everything together into a site wireframe, though of course without any look & feel at this stage, just content blocks & functionality. Again: keep it simple!

At this stage, you'll be able to bring in designers to pull together a look & feel which supports your customer research & branding, and give them a clear set of page types, functionality, & purpose.

It's important to note that we are not asking the designers to tell us what should go on the site.

This site is your business, you must get involved in the steps above otherwise you aren't fulfilling your business potential online.

Consider the following research from Enquiro Research on reasons for pesople to click on a SERP listing to appreciate the importance of addressing your customer needs:

BTW: still no technical jargon yet! Oh, and if you're thinking that there's already quite a bit to do, remember that if you don't have enough time to dedicate to your online business, getting the experts in will not just make it easier for you, but you'll also get the best possible return on investment.

Also, if you're planning on running an SEO campaign, this month we can offer FREE Web Development with a 12 month SEO contract!

Finally, plan to incorporate an analytics package, and make sure you can tie it to tracking all the objectives you've set for the website (onClick events^* for contact form buttons, eComms back to PPC, Conversion Funnels for shopping carts or booking processes, etc).

You'll need to ensure you can handle cross domain tracking & https transitions so Google Analytics should be the very minimum you consider, but if in doubt about your precise requirements, give us a shout and we'll happily give you a spot of guidance on what you should be looking for from your analytics vendor.

^* Yes, that was the start of the XHTML code references!

I've Got Some Beautiful Wireframes, But Now What?

Now you can actually get cracking and build the site!

Think about the Content Management System (CMS) you'll be using. It needs to be flexible enough to allow user & page editing permission controls, dynamic feature delivery (pulling in news snippets, highlighted case studies, retire products, etc), editable templates to keep up with CRO suggested layout changes, and secure enough to make sure you're not at risk of XSS attacks or allowing your customer / user data to be compromised.

• If you're really switched on, you'll also want to make sure your user retention features (emails from newsletter signup for example) share data with your CRM & email marketing tools.

At QueryClick we're big fans of Python & in particular Django for web development. Some other companies also swear by it, but it's not as commonly used as PHP for CMS delivery (think Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, PHPBB, etc). But it is open source, well documented online, and supported by a fantastic community.

It's also the foundation our our in-house CMS, using the Django framework for natural XSS immunity (that's right: it's extremly secure).

Drag & Drop SEO

Naturally SEO friendly, our CMS also has 100% flexibility for any wireframe, XHTML valid code, drag & drop page architecture & can handle multilingual built in.

We'll custom build our CMS to your requirements as part of a FREE Web Development package being offered this month. So for a free quote, advice on your current web development, or simply to talk about using online to deliver business success, just get in touch.