C
Colin Parker
- Original Poster
- #1
When someone asks for a quote on a 'X number page website' I always think this is going to be another business that puts the cart before the horse in internet marketing.
Why? Because an 'X page' website invariably means that the business owner is going to make the same mistake that millions have made before which is to have a Home Page full of text such as 'Welcome to the ABC Co' followed by what I call 'we,we' text ie., 'We were established in 1999 and we are based in Manchester and we employ 200 people and we are committed to giving a quality service ... blah, blah, blah.
The other X number of pages are made up of the standard About Us, Contact Us etc., + a page for each of the products and services on offer.
At least 95% of these websites will fail totally in achieving their objective ... which is to significantly add online sales to the business turnover.
They will fail because a) there is no detailed marketing plan to drive traffic to the site and b) any traffic that does manage to find the site will land on the Home Page which does not give a persuasive reason to buy the specific product or service the potential customer wants.
IMO 95% of businesses should start with a ONE page site or multiple ONE page 'sub-sites' each selling just ONE product or service.
Why? Because 95% of searchers are searching at any one time for ONE product or service and all they are interested in is information on that ONE thing.
How many times have you searched for something, clicked on a site that has your keywords in the description, yet landed on a Home Page that is headlining something completely different? Many, many, times I bet.
Does that brass you off? The fact that the average time a searcher spends on a website is less than 7 seconds tells you that a hell of a lot of websites are of absolutely no interest to searchers ... and landing on a generic Home Page is one the major reasons.
Instead of trying to advertise all of your products/services on a website pick the one that has a combination of the highest demand, highest profit to your business and the lowest online competition.
This can take some research and time but it will reward you in £££££'s.
Research relevant keywords and plan your initial marketing campaign with Google Adwords because a) you can get instant 1st page rankings and b) you can quickly split test your keywords/ads/website to fine tune the conversion.
Use Google's keyword tool to find relevant keywords that are cheap and within your budget - you can sort the keywords from lowest price to highest price and you will find some 'gems' if you use this facilty.
Then, find a website designer who understands website conversion techniques (one of the least available skills in IM) and who can either write persuasive copy or can outsource this to a good copywriter.
Make sure your website designer makes your website WA compliant, this means it will look exactly the same as you designed it on all browsers.
Without WA compliance your site may look a mess on browsers other than than the one your web designer uses which is likely to be Internet Explorer - but 35% of searchers use other browsers!
Add Google conversion tracking and analytics to your site so that you can measure, track and test its performance in converting vistors into sales or enquiries.
Once you have a site that converts and is earning you money then, and only then, start repeating this process for your other products and services.
You should add these additional pages to the first page of your site with forward links ie., abc.co.uk/firstproduct abc.co.uk/secondproduct etc., always keeping the separate marketing campaign/keywords etc., driving traffic to each relevant page.
VERY IMPORTANT TIP - do NOT put a navigation bar on each page which allows your potential customer to look at products/services other than the one they have searched for. Why? Because you want to keep them focused on buying/responding to what they were looking for - give them other choices and I guarantee they will get distracted and this will kill your conversion. Use hidden links to link your pages to each other to keep Google happy for SEO - your web designer can do this for you.
This process will also naturally build your SEO rankings.
If any web designer does not suggest the above process to you - sorry web designers - spend money with them at your peril.
Because they are likely to be no more than 'tech geeks' who are long on HTML etc., etc., knowledge and way short on internet marketing knowledge.
And it is internet marketing knowledge that hands down every time will get you the results, sales and profits you want.
Colin Parker
Why? Because an 'X page' website invariably means that the business owner is going to make the same mistake that millions have made before which is to have a Home Page full of text such as 'Welcome to the ABC Co' followed by what I call 'we,we' text ie., 'We were established in 1999 and we are based in Manchester and we employ 200 people and we are committed to giving a quality service ... blah, blah, blah.
The other X number of pages are made up of the standard About Us, Contact Us etc., + a page for each of the products and services on offer.
At least 95% of these websites will fail totally in achieving their objective ... which is to significantly add online sales to the business turnover.
They will fail because a) there is no detailed marketing plan to drive traffic to the site and b) any traffic that does manage to find the site will land on the Home Page which does not give a persuasive reason to buy the specific product or service the potential customer wants.
IMO 95% of businesses should start with a ONE page site or multiple ONE page 'sub-sites' each selling just ONE product or service.
Why? Because 95% of searchers are searching at any one time for ONE product or service and all they are interested in is information on that ONE thing.
How many times have you searched for something, clicked on a site that has your keywords in the description, yet landed on a Home Page that is headlining something completely different? Many, many, times I bet.
Does that brass you off? The fact that the average time a searcher spends on a website is less than 7 seconds tells you that a hell of a lot of websites are of absolutely no interest to searchers ... and landing on a generic Home Page is one the major reasons.
Instead of trying to advertise all of your products/services on a website pick the one that has a combination of the highest demand, highest profit to your business and the lowest online competition.
This can take some research and time but it will reward you in £££££'s.
Research relevant keywords and plan your initial marketing campaign with Google Adwords because a) you can get instant 1st page rankings and b) you can quickly split test your keywords/ads/website to fine tune the conversion.
Use Google's keyword tool to find relevant keywords that are cheap and within your budget - you can sort the keywords from lowest price to highest price and you will find some 'gems' if you use this facilty.
Then, find a website designer who understands website conversion techniques (one of the least available skills in IM) and who can either write persuasive copy or can outsource this to a good copywriter.
Make sure your website designer makes your website WA compliant, this means it will look exactly the same as you designed it on all browsers.
Without WA compliance your site may look a mess on browsers other than than the one your web designer uses which is likely to be Internet Explorer - but 35% of searchers use other browsers!
Add Google conversion tracking and analytics to your site so that you can measure, track and test its performance in converting vistors into sales or enquiries.
Once you have a site that converts and is earning you money then, and only then, start repeating this process for your other products and services.
You should add these additional pages to the first page of your site with forward links ie., abc.co.uk/firstproduct abc.co.uk/secondproduct etc., always keeping the separate marketing campaign/keywords etc., driving traffic to each relevant page.
VERY IMPORTANT TIP - do NOT put a navigation bar on each page which allows your potential customer to look at products/services other than the one they have searched for. Why? Because you want to keep them focused on buying/responding to what they were looking for - give them other choices and I guarantee they will get distracted and this will kill your conversion. Use hidden links to link your pages to each other to keep Google happy for SEO - your web designer can do this for you.
This process will also naturally build your SEO rankings.
If any web designer does not suggest the above process to you - sorry web designers - spend money with them at your peril.
Because they are likely to be no more than 'tech geeks' who are long on HTML etc., etc., knowledge and way short on internet marketing knowledge.
And it is internet marketing knowledge that hands down every time will get you the results, sales and profits you want.
Colin Parker
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