Why your website may not be helping you

"So, how much traffic did you get from <insert source here>?"  "Ummm, not sure..."  

Well, how much traffic did you get to your site?"  "Ummm, not sure..."

"OK, how about sales?  Did your website produce any sales?" (You guessed it!)  "Ummm, not sure..."

Sound familiar?  Heard those questions before?  The crux of it is what you did based on those questions.  Did you just soldier on, put your head in the sand like an ostrich, or actually take a long hard look at your whole website and how you track campaigns?

Why sites don't perform

1. No one knows they're there!  Yes. I know that sounds simplistic, but, if you're on page 3 or worse you are, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

2. Bad navigation on site.  I see it all the time, even on professionally designed sites.  You can't find anything; important stuff hidden behind 2-3 mouse clicks.

3. Lots of flash.  Yep, Google supposedly can read content in flash, or is close to.  But do you want to alienate 10's of millions of Apple mobile users?

4. Poorly optimized graphics.  You can get browsers to re-size that 4Mb 3000px x 1800px image if you're too lazy to do it on your desktop, but it kills site loading speed.

5. No call to action.  Once the visitor arrives at your site, is there any compelling "force" driving him/her to contact you or buy from you?  Or do they just leave and check your competitor?

6. Under construction.  And it's many, horrible variants.  Either take more time to properly complete your site, or leave that page out for now.

7. Sloooow loading pages.  Do visitors have time to make coffee while your pages load?  Truth is, they won't - they just leave!

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but are some very common mistakes.

Tracking your site's statistics

There are many ways what happens on your site can be tracked.  Probably the most common is using Google Analytics.  A small piece of code is inserted in your site, and it allows you to see traffic (although numbers are notoriously wrong), how quickly visitors left, how many pages (and which) they visited, plus a lot, LOT more.  We NEVER launch a site without it.

Awstats, part of CPanel, is another good source of information.  Traffic stats are more reliable than GA in most cases, and it gives a wealth of useful data.  Awstats is just one of a bunch of stats programs that come as part of Cpanel.

We also track rankings using Advanced Web Rankings software.  We wrote about it in a recent blog, and what it does, and how it helps us.

But it doesn't really matter (to a point) what you use.  The most important thing is you use SOMETHING!  The longer you use it, the less errors in the data will mean.  As i mentioned, GA's traffic reporting is a bit off - generally reporting only between 10 - 20% of what Awstats does.  But consistent use will show trends, and that's what you really want to know - are you getting more, or less?

Test and measure

Where we have clients embarking on special campaigns we always recommend setting up special landing pages for each campaign.  It makes the job of testing and measuring a breeze rather than getting a bunch more traffic to your home page.  The heart of good marketing is implementing, testing, and measuring.  Just throwing an ad out into print (or a website onto the web) without measuring it's success is crazy!  You never know whether it's making you money or costing you.

How do you test and measure your website?  As I mentioned, special landing pages for specific campaigns.  Watch your stats, or get someone to.  Monitor your site's rankings.  Update content regularly and watch what happens.

I'll leave you with this question to ask EVERY customer (yes, the current ones too) regardless of how they contact you.....

"How did you find us?"

Is 2012 the year of the turn around?

Obviously, the hopeful among us (and probably a bunch of the pessimists too!!) will answer, "YES!!".  One thing for sure, we'd all like it to be... in fact we'd all have preferred 2011 or 2010 to have been that year.

So are there really any economic indicators that are showing the economy is recovering?  There was a rise in IT salaries this year, though not huge, however the whole IT sector is pretty healthy, despite the fact that so many companies are abandoning the USA and sending jobs to India, Asia and Latin America.  Whilst this cheap labor seems a boon to the bottom line, consumers are likely to vote with their feet when an American alternative appears.  This is why we don't outsource.

Overall, most hiring managers appear to have a similar mindset to last year.  Approximately 1/4 (23%) of employers plan new hires for 2010, down 1% from 2011.  However,Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, says that, historically, their surveys have shown that employers are more conservative in their predictions than actual hiring, so he expects 2012 to outperform hiring in 2011.

Gallup reports that Americans' economic confidence is at a seven-month high. The National Federation of Independent Business reports that small business confidence is also up for the fourth straight month. Likewise, the most recent Reuters/University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment has shown four straight months of improvement. And the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index jumped more than 9 points, to 64.5, in December.

In our very small corner of the world, we are experiencing a good rate of inquiries and new commissions.  This year alone, we have had 8 new inquiries, of which we have received 5 new commissions, and launched 2 new sites.  Maybe it's the way we have set up our "No upfront fees" package policy, or the monthly fee structure.  We have certainly thought hard about how we offer our services to our customers and it seems to be working.

All the best for 2012!

Complete SEO software

Just over a year ago, we got our hands on 2 great pieces of software - Advanced Web Ranking and Advanced Link Manager.  At that time we wrote quite a substantial review on what we found as initial reactions to this software. 

We have now been using AWR for just over a year and we are still as happy with the help it gives us as we were when we first reviewed this wonderful piece of SEO software.  AWR automates the incredibly important, but time consuming task of checking the rankings of the website we administer.  If we had to break it down to some bullet point of "Why we love AWR", it would go like this.

1. Time management.

AWR frees up valuable time to be able to move onto cash producing tasks such as marketing, client meetings and actual design work.  A huge part of any SEO program is actually knowing where a website sits or ranks among its competitors.  My Mom had a great saying on her Skype for years... "How do you know what you don't know, if you don't know what you don't know?"  And that's my point.  If you don't know where a site ranks how can you plan a sensible strategy for doing it better?  And how can you track any improvements?

AWR automates the process of checking rankings on a user definable basis, and gives you, the SEO specialist, a wealth of data.  But, at least as importantly, is it gives you time to work elsewhere.  AWR is like an AGM-65 Maverick "Fire and forget" missile.  Set the controls and let AWR go out and do it's thing without you having to spend time yourself.  Then pick up the results when it's done.

2. It's automatic.

Everyone is busy - we all get busy and, even the "best-laid schemes o' mice an' men" (thanks Robby Burns!) go awry at time and jobs fall through the cracks.  Advanced Web Ranking allows you to schedule ranking checks to run automatically.  Better still, the program will even grab the reports, present them in a layout of your choice or making, then email them to your clients all on its own!  Never forget to run a ranking check again.  Clients will love the clear easy to read reports that turn up in their inbox every <insert your time period here>!

3.  Frequent updates.

Yes, the core program, but, importantly, regular updates on the search engines and other crucial features.  The people behind AWR certainly give  you, the owner of this complete SEO solution, the feeling that you matter, that they actually care about what's happening.  The program is complex, no doubt about that.  But the team at AWR give good support and their website has plenty of help on it too from How-tos, to a forum, manuals, FAQs and more.

4.  Powerful reports and customization.

There are loads of reports and options.  You can graph, chart and follow almost everything to do with rankings, and display them in many ways.  This is a very powerful program through every area, and reports are no exception.  They are all fully customizable and can have as much or as little data in them, displayed how you or your client wants, as you like.  Forget reports that look cheap and horrible - AWR reports are very slick.

We're a small business that faces all the problems associated with small business.  One of those is a lack of staff to do all the critical jobs - one being rank checking.  AWR is a great piece of SEO software that, in a sense, gives us another person in the office.  Hours of work each week are handled automatically, on schedule and on budget.  Who could ask for more?

A life saving tip for computer users

I've just flown back in from New Zealand yesterday, after a successful pleasure and business trip there.  Because the Internet knows no borders, it's very simple for me to work for clients in any country, and that was part of the reason for the trip to NZ - to visit existing, and cultivate new, clients.  To this end, I had my trusty WD passport HD with me, so I could still access important documents.  There ends the good news!

The passwords document I had lovingly created many months ago had not been updated, due to my own failure to do so.  So I couldn't access the backends of many of my clients sites, nor get to them via FTP either!  Fortunately I didn't really need to, so there was no real drama, but there could have been.

So my "life saving tip for computer users" is to back up, back up, back up!  I run 4 copies of all my important documents.  I have them stored in 2 separate places on my computer's HD, on a network HD (these are cheap and a great way to get a little "remote" with your back ups), and a 4th copy on a site called SugarSync.  I like SugarSync as it means I can access my documents from anywhere, including my iPhone, and it's free.  By doing a few simple tasks (inviting friends and the like), you can increase your storage capacity from the initial 5Gb to 8Gb.

And I never lift a finger to do my back ups, except for the password document... well, I failed to lift a finger on that, much to my disgust!  But, for the rest, how do I accomplish this?  Again, I like free, so I found a great little program called "AutoVer" that monitors files and folders that I specify and backs them up on the change of set parameters.  Now I don't have to worry about whether my work is safe.  Between SugarSync and AutoVer, I know I have safe and secure back ups whenever I need them.

Don't get caught out without a current back up.  Storage is cheap and easily set up, and can save you serious heartache down the road.

Why use Google Apps?

Google first launched its Apps program back in 2007 as an alternative for businesses to the traditional Office suite of tools.  Whilst most businesses will be more than catered for with the free version, there is a Premier version that gives tech support and more email storage for a paltry $50 per year per user.  Plus, in April this year, Google added the ability for businesses to pay just $5 per app per user per month.

Who's using Google Apps?

According to Google, 3 million plus businesses and 30 million plus private persons are signed up for it.  That's a powerful user base to allow Google to go even further, because you know many of those will be paying customers = more revenue!  Their impact on small and medium-sized businesses has caused Microsoft to release its Office 365 recently in the hope it will offset the inroads GA has been making on MS's core customer base.

The 5 reasons GA is transforming business

1. Cost effective cloud storage.  Businesses can get the tools they need when they need them without investing in large amounts of space or applications.  These apps don't need any software or hardware, and require only minimal administration.  In addition, they allow a business to work cohesively with all users able to access the apps from desktop, laptop or smartphone.

2. Easy group calendars.  Now even small businesses can get the same powerful team collaboration that big businesses running MS Server applications could.  Cloud based team calendars allow easy scheduling of meetings, check colleague availability, and even schedule vacation time.

3. Improvement and growth.  In its first year GA added about half a million users, and grew at about 20,000 per day after that.  Google continues to push the boundaries with a revamp of Gmail, and the introduction of Google Plus which looks set to give Facebook and Twitter a run for their money.  As one analyst is quoted saying, "...Google+ is going to change the corporate landscape..."

4. Efficient email search and organization.  Gmail gives businesses the ability to store and search vast amounts of email.  But it does more than that.  With its get-it-from-any-computer abilities, Gmail allows users better organize communications.  And by utilizing Gmail's "threaded conversations", messaging between colleagues is vastly simplified - no checking and rechecking of previous emails.

5. Powerful collaboration and project management.  Google Docs allows the creation and editing of documents which are stored on the cloud.  This means the most current version is always the one that's available - no working off outdated information.

If you're an Act 2012 user, it gets even better.  Acts latest version integrate seamlessly with Google Apps.  Guess it's time for us to upgrade to the latest version!