Is your web site driving you nuts?

28 September 2008

Soda presents the first in a series of articles aimed at dispelling some of the myths about developing a successful web site and using it to drive your business forward.

Soda designs and builds web sites in the same way it approaches its other design and marketing projects. Soda believes that all well designed marketing material will directly improve your sales and ultimately your profits.

This article aims to highlight the processes we follow when designing web sites and also point you in the right direction when tackling an online web project.

What can you use your web site for?

We often get asked, “What is the point of having a web site?” If you don’t have an online shop or aren't selling services over the internet then there are still plenty of benefits for putting your company, project or organisation online. The overall effect you want from your web site is probably as follows.

1. Increase profits

By improving the communication of your brand, your core values and your services you will increase the amount of people who are aware of your company. And that can only be a good thing.

2. Increase sales

People buy things when they trust the company they are purchasing from. Improve your online presence, enable your visitors to trust and enjoy their experience on your web site and those visitors will begin to become customers.

3. Convert visitors into customers

Repeat visitors are interested in your company. By providing reasons for them to return to your web site you have a great opportunity in converting visitors into customers.

4. Providing online customer support and informational services

You can reduce wasted phone calls and enquiries by providing an online brochure of your services and products. This can be extended into providing information on employment, contact details, directions and information on staff. In fact the more information you put on your web site the more time you will have to concentrate on getting your real job done.

5. Reducing operational costs

Your web site can act as a live conduit between you and your potential customers. By providing up-to-date news and information you reduce the need for staff on hand to provide this information or process tentative sales enquiries.

6. Increase awareness of your brand and business

The more people who see your services or products then the more people will be aware of your brand. A well designed planned and maintained web site will increase this awareness exponentially.

7. Increase traffic to your site

Use offline as well as online marketing techniques to promote your web site and brand. An increase in traffic to and from your site will itself bring more visitors to view your company online. Your ranking will improve as will the amount of sites that link into your web site.

What can I do to attract new business?

There are many ways to improve the traffic to your site. Yet it is interesting that many sites ignore many key objectives you need to consider when launching or re-launching a web site.

Content is king. Interesting and engaging copy will not only hold a visitors attention it will also help you move up the rankings in the search engines.

Current content is “kingerer”. Update your web site regularly to attract visitors back to your site. Often visitors will visit your web site several times before they decide to use your services or buy your product. They may be on a fact-finding mission and return once they have researched other competitors. Visitors like to see new content as do the search engines. Regular visitors often become customers.

Use content to build relationships. Rather than supplying a download document, require the visitor to enter their email address and automate email delivery of the document. That way you have gathered their details for future contact.

Create actions on sections of your site. For example on your contact page try to capture client information in a form that you can use in further promotions. Make it enticing to join by promising special offers and promotions to members of the mailing list.

Associate your company with expert advice. Use email newsletters to offer advice and tips on your services and products as well as report on case studies, new products and services.

Become a central resource tool for people in your industry. Linking to competitors and similar businesses is not always a bad thing. If you can make your web site into a central hub for visitors then you will increase traffic to your web site and potentially increase sales.

Offer useful services such as easily printable pages on your site. Also think about offering links for social networking sites to promote your web site on these rapidly growing networks. You could even use a blog as a magnet for return visits. Is there someone in your organisation suited for this task? The more sites you are mentioned on then the more you move up the search engine page ranks.

Make your web site work for your target audience as well as potential new clients. Casual visitors who don't necessarily use your products often know someone who is your target audience.

Provide easy recruitment and support pages to reduce time and costs to your company.

Test your web site and test it again. Often clients are loath to test their sites. By using a wide range of people with varying degrees of computing skills and expectations you can identify areas of your web site that need attention before launching to the general public.

Assemble a test committee made up of employees, family members and trusted customers. Do this with any online press releases and newsletters too to ensure errors and bugs are minimised.

Keep your design simple. You only have a few seconds to attract the attention of your visitors. Soda likes to keep navigation and layout simple. Visitors need to get to the facts quickly. If they are waiting for a splash screen or flashy effects to load they will probably leave the web site before you have a chance to engage them with your core messages.

Measuring your success

The only way to measure the success of your web site is to analyse statistics gathered by your hosting company or a third party web site like Google Analytics. By monitoring popular pages, favourite products and documents and top keywords used in search engines, you can build up a useful picture of how the web site appeals to users.

You can choose to pay for online advertising. By monitoring this statistical information you can quickly find out which keywords are working for your business.

Online promotion and marketing is not rocket science. Many people continue to see online promotion as some kind of alchemy. It isn’t. It is the same as offline or traditional marketing methods. Identify your key skills. Promote those key skills in a clear and easily digestible form and people will respond. By identifying what is important to your business and how far you are prepared to go you can really develop an online marketing tool that will really improve your brand, the perception of your business within the market place and ultimately your profits.

What does Soda offer with your web site?

It is easy to pick the cheapest quote but consider what it is you are getting for your money. Soda offers the following with every web site.

CSS table-less layouts

CSS allows your site to be viewed on all manner of devices such as mobiles and PDA’s. Content is separated from design which speeds up development, rapid changes can be made site-wide to design. CSS allows easy-to-print pages as well as advantages to accessibility issues.

XHTML 1.0 verified code

Soda's code is subjected to rigorous testing and, where applicable, conforms to WC3’s XHTML 1.0 transitional framework. This ensures cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.

Accessibility pages and navigation

Not everyone can access the full diversity of technologies available on the Internet. Soda provides an accessibility menu for navigating the site using keyboard strokes. We use high contrast colours to ease readability and make sure that the sites work in various font sizes.

Google Analytics account

We add some code to the bottom of all your web pages. This allows Google Analytics to track visitors to your site. We then set up an automated delivery of reports to your desktop so you can monitor your web sites success.

Dedicated design and project management team

We are not a one-man band and so we are equipped to provide you with serious studio-based back-up when you need it. You get one point of contact for your account and direct access to the creative team at all times. We are also small and proud of this fact. It keeps design and development costs down compared to large agency-based design companies.

Excellent customer support

Our team have over 20 years experience in design, print and web development. They have experienced most projects first hand and can apply this knowledge to your project from day one.

If you need extra support and features on your web site then Soda can provide you with the following:

Email marketing and newsletter delivery campaign management

Soda has partnered with a specialist EDM delivery supplier. Using their unique and easy-to-use tools you can create powerful email campaigns, track delivery statistics and even link your CRM directly to the newsletter campaigns. Using a third party specialist reduces the risk of becoming blacklisted.

It also reduces costs and time spent fiddling with complicated mail merge lists and email server technology. Upload the design, choose the list of people and click send. It is that easy.

Supporting design and printed promotional material

Soda also provides offline traditional design as well as web design. In fact our account manager has specialist print knowledge and access to both great prices and print quality.

Flash animation and development

Sometimes only Flash will give you the flexibility you need for a certain feature. We use Flash for slideshows, animations and certain navigation. We always make sure that there is an alternative content available if a particular visitor cannot use Flash in their web browser.

CMS and custom database development

There is a wealth of CMS off the shelf solutions available to develop a web site from. Soda have used these in the past but we generally custom build in PHP or ColdFusion from scratch so that your web site is entirely built to order.

PHP or ColdFusion scripting

Scripting languages allow your web site to engage with a visitor. A script can interact with a database to process orders, capture visitor data or power forums and mailing lists. Soda uses ColdFusion on most of its web sites because it allows us to develop more rapidly. PHP is our other tipple of choice.

E-Commerce

Again, there is a wealth of E-commerce off the shelf solutions. Soda has used Miva in the past but we can build and project manage E-Commerce web sites to order.

Web hosting and web mail services with anti spam

Soda have partnered with one of the most reliable and helpful hosting providers out there. We can provide your business with online web mail, hosting, statistics and online access to add email addresses, ftp users etc.

AdWords and SEO advice and support

Soda can optimise your web content to get the best out of the search engines and directory listings. We can help you build successful keyword marketing campaigns, either ourselves or through a number of partner programmes with specialist SEO marketing providers