Category Archives: Internet Marketing

If you have a website for your business, then it is important for you to be able to easily track the performance of it. This data can be invaluable when it comes to marketing and knowing how and where to spend your budget.

There are many programs that offer statistic tracking the most used on being Google Analytics. Although Google Analytics is very user friendly and free, it is not always the most accurate in terms of real visitors.

Web server stats are usually bolted on to every hosting package, but these are often quite limited in terms of data and sometimes record visits from spiders that crawl your site.  They are also often not very user friendly and only give you very limited information. Ideally you should use several stats packages to try and get a true picture of how your website is performing.

Once you have this data, put aside some time each month to analyse it in detail and find out what marketing avenue is giving you the best return on your investment. If you find for example, that you are investing a lot of money in Google Adwords but hardly getting any qualified traffic then you may want to think about stopping your adverts and investing the money elsewhere.

Pay per click advertising has been around for a number of years now and many businesses spend a large proportion of their marketing budget on this.

Google Adwords is the most popular Pay per Click programme and it allows you to create tailored ads to show on Google’s search engine results pages along with other affiliate sites. You can create adverts and keywords and organise them into groups setting certain parameters such as location to show the ads, times to display it, page to redirect visitor to and the cost per click limit.

When the ad is clicked by a visitor, the website owner will be charged a specific amount for that click. The visitor will then be taken to the page you have specified for that advert.

Google Adwords can be a little costly, especially if you are targeting generic high competition keywords but can work really well. If you have a new product or service that you are launching and want to get instant traffic to your website, Pay per Click is a great place to start as you can literally have people finding your page as soon as the ad goes live. Also if your website has recently gone live and not yet been indexed by the search engines, then Pay per Click can start pulling in the traffic.

The way you design your website is vital and can make a huge difference to the number of visitors and importantly returning visitors you get. A website that is too complex, too busy or hard to navigate will instantly put people off and may lose you a sale or enquiry.

You may not know exactly what will and what won’t work on your website until it is all up and running and you can track the progress. Analytics are vitally important to the success of your website and you should find a reliable statistics package to allow you to get the most from the results.

Google offer a great free analytics program called Google Analytics which will allow you to track a a number of different stats such as number of visitors to your site, how they found your site (e.g. Google, referral from another site or social media sites etc.). Having this information is very important and you can then analyse it full to understand what your visitors behaviour is. If for example a huge number of your customers are leaving at the checkout process then it could mean that it is too complicated.

Web design companies are becoming increasing popular as more and more businesses are realising the importance of having and maintaining a website as part of their marketing strategy.

There are many web design companies out there, so to be able to compete and stand up against the competition you need to be offering a high level of service. When it comes to web design and programming, client reviews and testimonials are very important. Potential customers want to know that you have an array of clients that are happy with the work you have done for them and may want to see working examples of websites you have created. Adding an area to your website showcasing previous works and results you have got should be a high priority.

Many web developers often struggle to really sell their services because they do not explain the product/service to the client correctly, so making sure that you know how to speak to clients in a language they understand is vital. If you struggle to do this then you may need to think about hiring someone who will manage the sales side of the business for you.  When quoting work, don’t be too greedy, if you can undercut competitors you may get the contract and possibly future work or recommendations.

If you have an ecommerce website then you should try and ensure your site is set up in such a way that you can easy advertise additional products. If for example you are selling electronic equipment then you should have an area come up that shows other products that they may be interested in. This may be batteries or cables etc. You may be surprised by how many additional products you cans ell in this way. Even if a customer knows that they can get the add-on item slightly cheaper elsewhere, they may just buy it from you because you have made it more convenient to do so.

Another way to upsell is by offering free delivery when you spend over a certain amount. You may want to add banners to your site that state free delivery when you spend x amount but also adding a message to the checkout page telling customers if they spend x amount more they qualify for free delivery. All these subtle little messages and ways of displaying additional products can make a huge difference in your overall sales and profitability.

Some sites show an area which displays other products people bought when purchasing that one. These products may or may not be linked to the purchase, but this is just another way of showcasing products.