TK-Team Review please

[Martin Patfield]

www.tk-team.com

www.tk-team.co.uk

Where do I start?
I'm looking to put a case together to go to our CEO / shareholders for the UK to have it's own website which we have complete control over here.... It's easy to list what is wrong with something, but the next question is - how is it fixed and at what cost. I've started putting a website together in Wordpress but not at any stage to show it just yet.

We are a UK subsidiary to our Finnish company.
The website is run by them, and not us here....

Some products are more UK market, rather than European/there's, but we need search engines to actually find us - eg Column board page, but as far as I can see using rank checkers there's only 1 link to it on the website which is very unhelpful.

The website comes in 3/4 languages. How does this affect seo?

Even the menu at the top of the page, if you mouseover any of it, the whole thing shows which is ridiculous.


But, yes please, looking for help to improve website views and 'work for us in the UK' so that hopefully get more email and phone call queries.
A lot of sales are the team with current contacts and specifying projects and products, but would like / need more.

 

[fisicx]

You are right, it is a bit of a mess.

That menu system has got to be one of the worst I've seen in a long time.

The only reason anyone will ever be on the site is because they want a white board or a notice board.

This means you need to have to products showing above the fold on all devices. All I see right now is this huge hero image of what looks like a classroom.

What does: "You design - we make it happen" mean? Are you interior designers? Architects? I have no idea.

I see an image for a square white board. How is this new? I can get square whiteboards on Amazon for next day delivery.

Then there are the new brochures. Why do I need these? I don't yet know what you do. So far I think you are just designers who sell a square whiteboard.

Now I see this column board. It says you make these. Nothing about designing anything.

Then finally I can see the products. And I'm unimpressed. Nothing there you can't get from dozens of other providers.

Most places I've had meetings in don't have plain whiteboards. They have interactive whiteboards. Even most schools now have interactive boards. If they want a plain old whiteboard they can get these anywhere. Same as notice boards.

What is you do that is any different to everyone else else?

You asked about SEO. The site is built with drupal which does limit your options. If you want to improve ranking you need more content, lots more content. And lots of internal linking and a much better menu. Also need calls to action, trust marks and more case studies. Stop writing about you and start writing about the products. For example I see nothing about installation of each product. You do have this:

"The back of the panel is finished in black fabric. The base is 6 mm MDF, on which buttons are mounted, the counterpart is attached to the wall or ceiling. The Hush Light acoustic panel is pressed together to fix."

but I have no idea what that even means.

Turns out you also have a shop but without any pricing this makes it pointless. How can I checkout when I don't know how much to pay.

How to fix all this? first thing is to look at your marketing plan. This will give you a focus. You then write content that aligns with the marketing plan. You then develop a site structure that guides people to the appropriate product. Then you add the calls to action that allows them to get the product.

It's not complicated - but it doesn't begin with a website. The website is the last part of the process. Do the planning, do the market research, do the content creation and then build the website.

 

[WaveJumper]

I think the biggest problem here is not so much the website but who really needs or is looking for these products in the first place. Having a teacher in the family I would say schools but having worked in some of the most up to date offices in London I can't think of one that had a white board, a screen for on line conference calls yes but no white boards.

 

[Martin Patfield]

Thank you Fisicx - I was hoping you'd jump straight in.
I believe what has happened with the website is that Head Office have brought in an agency to create a new site and they pretty much mimicked one of their own competitors. The resemblance is uncanny. Unfortunately this doesn't work for us in the UK here.

How to fix all this? first thing is to look at your marketing plan. This will give you a focus. You then write content that aligns with the marketing plan. You then develop a site structure that guides people to the appropriate product. Then you add the calls to action that allows them to get the product.

This is where I have started with a dummy site really.
I've looked at our competitors sites on product descriptions and started re-writing and re-modelling pages.

With regards to the 'shop' - I think this is the agency deciding that to showcase the products and descriptions. They have chosen a shop mode. Despite there being sizes on the drop down menus, a lot of product is custom made and therefore wouldn't be able to show prices and it's not an Amazon buy it now type store.

I saw on another site, a nicely placed CONTACT US NOW FOR PRICING link on all their product pages which allowed the user to quickly fire off an email with contact details etc.

I want a website that is relevant to the markets we want to target for the product we have. I don't believe it's a difficult task to get right. Then I want to be able to add pages / content / images as showcases.

You mention the new brochures - clearly that looks absolutely ridiculous as it is. This was added to appease my MD here that content needs to be on the main page so people can see it. Not done well at all.


Wavejumper - currently the majority of our UK market is Higher Education. New buildings getting built we are specified directly by an architect for whiteboards / writing surfaces. Or current buildings, where they refresh the equipment, and we already have the relationships with those that hold the budgets.

Now we're seeing Uni's going along this hybrid route where they're using what were meeting rooms for videoconferencing and the rooms not built for this purpose hence they use acoustic panels to soak up the echoes in the room.
Looking on Google at "acoustic panels" or "acoustic sound deadening" and similar, there's lots of uses for them across many industries and I guess we'd like a slice of the cake, but without the website 'working for us' in showing up in searches we have some work to do.

We're not in the world of Amazon and a 1.8m x 1.2m whiteboard or whatever size is on their drop down links for size choice. We just can't compete on price in that world.
We are big, full wall whiteboards that meet "compliance" with the teaching world where we specify the size to the client in order to stop competition.
If we said, yes, you need a 1.8m x 1.2m whiteboard this is the price XX. They can easily go on google and search for this size board and buy it.

If a customer wants a whiteboard | projection screen | whiteboard setup on their wall that looks seamless then we can do that. You can't buy that on Amazon. You could buy 3 separate boards but that defeats the purpose of the differences in business and "what we do".

 

[fisicx]

None of that comes across on the site. In fact having a list of products and the ‘Shop’ is the whole wrong way to do things.

What I’d expect to see is a whole bunch of case studies showing the bespoke solutions you have built and installed in the UK. I wouldn’t even mention the parent company.

Change the whole focus from products to solutions.

Not sure what compliance there is but if it’s a big thing make sure it’s writ large on the site.

Make sure you have contact details and a call back form on every page. Make it really easy for people to make an enquiry.

 

[Mark T Jones]

New buildings getting built we are specified directly by an architect for whiteboards / writing surfaces. Or current buildings, where they refresh the equipment, and we already have the relationships with those that hold the budgets.

I suspect that this is the nub of it for you.

Your marketing -whether website, brochure TV ads or whatever needs to resonate with your target customer.

Every attempt you make to widen that will dilute your message.

 

[antropy]

the next question is - how is it fixed and at what cost.

Ask a developer for a quote.

Paul.