Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

As a website business you obviously worry about your website rankings, vistors / traffic and you ensure you are listed correctly in Google Local and ensure you have relevant listings in the business directories like Freeindex, DMOZ and all local free directories. As a web-based business a valueable channel to us is having a strong back catalogue of website projects that we list on our portfolio pages, having our website signature / link on previous clients websites allows us to attract business from clients that recognise and like our work when they are looking at their competitors websites, we estimate that between 10 and 20% of our website projects come from this business stream. The following email highlights a new client finding us through our website signature on a competitor’s website.

I have been looking at your website and the websites you have designed and think you have completed some great work, hence my email now to you.

I want to start up a business from home and this will be an add on to my day job.  I want a shop window so that people can check out what I can offer, know a bit more about myself after receiving my business card, leaflet, flyer, word of mouth or yell directory for instance and feel comfortable to deal with me.

I have looked at other florists website and kept ones that I like.  I am after something bright, vibrant, modern.  At the moment I am thinking a shocking bright pink colour for my name with black background!   A lot of florist websites seem to be a bit boring and drab in colour I find.

I can send through links of the websites I like but the ones you have completed are great, exactly the high standard that we need from a website designer.

I will also want the ability to:-

-  Have photos on each page that can be updated/changed by myself

-  Get my website so it is up and running.  I know the name I want to buy but have not done so yet, not sure if you do this as part of the package?

-  Website optimisation (I believe you do this as standard)

-  Website statistics (who has visited the site) (again I believe you do this as standard)

- Ability for customers to click on a photo and the photo is enlarged (if this extra)

-  A quick response website, some are slow and I know I get impatient and give up

-  Want the web page to fill the page and the user not to have to scroll down to view the content

-  Connect my website to yell (when I register) – is this something I do via Yell?

-  Also if I had the web built but then wanted to add a page later, how does this work?

I have drafted out what I want on powerpoint so have a rough idea of what I want, although open to changes, suggestions and ideas.  I see you have done a website for Mrs Bouquet which I really thought looked good also, so not sure what input you had into this.  At the moment I have designed 7 pages, although there is not a lot on each page.  There is a page for Home, About Me, Bouquets/Gifts, Sympathy, Wedding, Corporate and Courses.  I would want to have pictures of examples of photos of things I can do on each page, approx 4.

I hope I have given you enough information and I look forward to hearing from you further.  I actually live in Billericay and also work part time in Stanford le hope so I can come along and see you if required to talk through.

Among our staff we have a skilled British copywriter who has been writing web content for SEOs for the last 5 years. During this time she has written well over 1,500 articles of between 250 and 500 words, as well as numerous blog postings (more than 100 posts of 100 – 150 words a month). In addition she has her own website and hase a deep working knowledge of WordPress, Joomla, Dreamweaver, MS Office elements, HTML, CSS and PHP and a basic understanding of Javascript. As with everyone at Delicious Webdesign she has a  a 24/7 Internet connection.

We offer the following Webcopy / SEO related services:

Copywriting, in particular Web content articles and blog postings (and including title, description, keywords & content meta tags for Drupal, Joomla etc. if so ordered)
Proof reading and Editing for SEO of existing content.
In addition we offer a number of other services, and can tailor our services to suit you.

We write only in English, and her grammar and spelling are usually flawless – no-one is completely without fault! Contact us today to give your website a boost by reviewing your existing content and / or adding new content to it.

We can write unique articles or SEO content for your websites / products / blogs. The topics can range from builder’s services politics, fashion, technology, health, business, sports or any of your choice related to your business website.

All articles are informative, copy scape proof, original and most importantly in simple English which is the core requirement as 90% readers prefer simple reading.

When anyone is planning to present their products or services to potential clients they want to use the words that their target audience will relate to. If you work with a search engine optimisation programme these are usually called ‘key words’ (although they may be a phrase rather than a single word) and need to be incorporated into the web pages for the company.

However, this applies no matter what the ‘vehicle’ is – whether it’s a sales letter, a flyer, a brochure or an email. People are looking for their key words. It’s a bit like being at a party with lots of people talking; you can’t hear what everyone is saying there’s too much noise, but, if someone says your name on the other side of the room, there’s a good chance you’ll hear it.

People read like that too. If they’re looking for something they don’t really read all the copy on a page (or or off screen), but the scan it looking for those key words they have in mind. This means that every company needs to know what people are searching for when they start planning any kind of marketing. Bear in mind that the words that the client thinks are important are often NOT what their customers are looking for.

e.g. We produce webcopy that is highly readable – but my clients aren’t looking for that. They’re looking for:

• How to keep people on their website
• Get people to buy my products
• Get people to join my marketing list
• Generate more leads

… and that’s just for starters!

One exercise we complete to our clients to really target their message is to get them to do a FAB chart (Features, Advantages, Benefits) and use the benefits to create those magic key words.

We are a leading  Website Design and SEO company with a large portfolio of services and technologies.

We help Corporates, SMEs,Affiliates, Distributors, Retailers, Designers around the world in increasing profitability, clientele, and widen their range of offerings to their customers in a professional, secure manner. Our business model ensures that you, the designer or affiliate, can build and enhance your presence on the Internet. You can enjoy the benefits of a full-fledged setup, but without the overheads.

We have full time dedicated professional, website designers , developers or other resources as per the requirement. We have been quietly working in the background for over a decade for corporates, SMEs, design firms and internet presence providers complementing their offerings on behalf of them for their customers.

We work behind the scenes as part of your company and do not make ourselves visible to your customer. We work on your behalf representing you. You can focus on building your main business and direct your energies towards increasing your customers / website visitors / orders.

A good e-commerce site is more than just a home page, product page and shopping cart. The three core aspects are the shopping cart, payment gateway and merchant account. We can integrate your site with nearly any system around the world.

Our experience matters: Our secure policies ensure that you retain your presence and your clientele doesn’t know that we are working for you! We have signed NDAs with scores of designers, resellers, and entrepreneurs around the world and have helped build hundreds of websites, created thousands of creatives for over a decade. We have experience with the latest technologies on both Windows and Linux platforms, including ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, Ajax, Javascript, CSS, Web 2.0 and W3C compliance, as well as various open source packages.

If you are involved in the wedding / events industry then its possible that you can get a free link to your website / advertising and hopefully some referrals / enquiries and bookings via this site:

http://www.marquee-hire-directory.com

This website has just been built by us for a client and is ready for a ‘soft launch’

If you think your business may fit in to one or more of the categories on the site then you have nothing to lose so add yourself to the directory.

The site allows you to advertise on the site (in your respective category) free for 4 months, I would recommend you add your company / website to this directory and consider using it once the 4 months is up, I have seen other directories related to weddings / marquees / events bring in lots of business and think that in term of seo and marketing its probably in your benefit to join it (especially as you will initially get 4 months free and a link to your site)

As it’s a soft launch I would also be interested in comments / problems / errors / bugs / improvements you may want to share with us here at Delicious Webdesign.

We often get asked about facebook pages, what one to have a facebook group or a Fan Page / Local Business page

In our opinion but have the benefits but if you only want to do one then the Fan page is the way to go. One of best reasons is that you can have the little fan box, that invites visitors to ‘like’ you which can be embedded on your website. This is a great way of showing number of members and allowing people to join right off the home page. You also get weekly stats from Facebook to see how many people joined and visited your page. The benefit of groups is that you email the everyone in the group individually, compared to the Fan page where ‘fans’ get informed of your posts via an update on their ‘wall’.

If you have a massive Facebook Group page already and want to swap it to a Fan Page / Local Business Page, you will be disappointed to know that  there is no easy way to migrate members from a group to a fan page. There are rumors you can email FB and they may or may not do it for you. Some people have a lot of people in their Groups so this is something to keep in mind

In general we encourage clients just to have one website, we think its generally a waste of money to buy the .com the .co.uk the .org.uk and the .net versions of your website name. We believe one website that is correctly built and promoted will be adequate for most websites. We do have clients requesting that we buy the hyphenated and un-hyphenated versions of their website name also and again we state this is generally a waste of money apart from major brands who get a lot of directly typed in URLS where typos can occur. A standard business brochure site that is UK based and wants to sell only to the UK should always try to obtain the .co.uk domain of their choice.

Additionally there is a word of caution here for the unwary.

One of our clients recently told us that they ‘found out’ that they were losing email inquires to the non-hyphenated URL of their website name (example info@deliciouswebdesign.com instead of info@delicious-webdesign.com). They claimed to be worried and to have had no idea  whether one or a load of enquiries went through to the non-hyphenated version of their website. They were approached via email from a company that ‘claimed he was getting the companies email and was ‘reluctant’ to sell the domain name, initially,  the company went on to tell me that they bought the domain and said they were very happy as it has now been resolved as they bought the domain name for £100.

Unfortunately this is a scam (unless you really have given out your email address incorrectly or made a mistake on the website with the email name (which we hadn’t), so we  had to tell the company that it looked like they have fallen to a well worked scam. We know this as the email address wasn’t given out incorrectly nor was it incorrect on the website or in any directories and we often get offered similar domain names for £100 and are told that they are getting our email inquiries that should be  destined to our websites. This ‘reluctant selling company’ often simply buy the site for £3 and sell it for £100, which is clearly a very nice profit. I had to tell the company that  nowhere on their site was there mention of the non-hyphenated version of their email address so what the ‘reluctant seller was’ claiming was definitely not correct. We added the caveat that it is possible they had added their email address incorrectly on a directory or another listing.

As with any ‘out of the blue’ or ‘too good to be true offer’ If the company had asked us first we would have taken time to look into it before giving our recommendation. In this instance the company fell for a well worked scam that made someone a huge percentage profit for writing an email.

As a client of ours your feedback, contribution and continued participation is greatly appreciated. by all of us at Delicious Webdesign, but did you know we can also help you get traffic to your site, we help site owners and promoters get the most out of their sites.  We have developed and promoted hundreds of web sites and hope to help you by sharing my experiences.

Free Site Analysis

We have evaluated literally hundreds of websites over the years but the site owner rarely saw my findings.  You will be glad to know that our initial analysis is done for free. We accept new websites for a free evaluation.  Presenting the business owner with a free report with the results so you can see what we see.  It will include site accessibility, usability, search engine results, and our overall impressions (our delicious rating !)

For some of the evaluations, we will film the evaluation process and make it available to you.

When you contact us about this SEO Analysis report please make sure you send your URL of the site you want to be evaluated and some key phrases you want to be found in the search engines for.

We can help you take your site to the next level.  Some of the services we can provide are:

• Implementing a Content Management System
• Upgrading your design or functionality
• Leveraging our design and development teams to save  money
• Improving your traffic through search engine optimization
• Tuning up your web site for better speed and traffic performance
• Building a community through social media
• Developing video and content that attract people to your site
• Translating your site into other languages to broaden your traffic base
• Cross promote you with some of our other sites to generate more traffic for you

To be able to send a webpage by email you need Internet Explorer / Outlook and a webpage that is written with Tables and inline CSS, without javascript and with all the images in the root directory of the HTML page.

To be able to send HTML newsletters from one of our XHTML / CSS websites we would need to rewrite one of the pages and put it in a separate directory then re-code it to allow it to be sent via email like this one:
http://www.delicious-webdesign.com/marketing/delicious-webdesign-christmas-newsletter-2009.html

Typically this can be done for an hourly rate of 1-2 hours work. Another alternative is for us to create a standalone table based HTML template written specifically for emails and put your Company logo at the top of it ready for you to send out

How to send a webpage via email
Once this has been completed you will need to:
1 Go to Internet Explorer, navigate to your email html page.
2 Click File > Send > Page by email.
3 Assuming you have Microsoft Outlook as your default email client this will open an email with the webpage in it.
4 Add the email addresses you want to send the page to.
5 Click send and await the business inquiries and / or email opt-out requests from your email contacts.
Hope this makes sense and if you have any other questions please ask (email or phone)

Pretty much standard advice for all our clients is to ignore all cold calls and emails that claim to be able to give you a better website or to put your website higher in the search engines. Generally they are startup companies and have no track history, portfolio, previous clients, testimonials or offices, take this email below, sounds quite impressive until you realise that their own website is only one page in size with 3 paragraphs and two images!

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We maintain Web 2.0 standards and W3C validations in all the websites we design and develop. The website we develop includes:

1. Great first impression
2. Good navigation and usability
3. Quick loading
4. Search engines to access your content

We have a dedicated team of 30 experienced designers, developers and SEO experts. In Graphic/Flash/3D designs, we thrive on the idea that design makes a difference. We can provide you with a fresh, professional image and unique LOOK & FEEL via a recognizable trademark or logo design.

We have our competency in developing CMS, Ecommerce, Social Networking, Job portals etc. We strictly work on performance basis and can assure you of getting quality work done beyond your expectation.

Most overseas firms have achieved a significant amount of savings by outsourcing either complete or part of their work.

We would like to request you for an opportunity to work and AMAZE you with our service.

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Also we have received this email below about 5 times recently