Web Design Staffordshire and Online Marketing Stoke-on-Trent - netinspire Ltd.

A short blog article this month, dealing with the issue of premium rate numbers.

A number of our clients that are starting out in business require a phone line. Our advice to them is simple, if you are using a website to generate enquiries for your services or products, DO NOT USE A PREMIUM RATE NUMBER. Numbers that start with 084 or 087 can cost a fortune when called from a UK mobile number and can cost your business up to 80% of it’s potential sales and enquiries.

When we plan and build lead generation websites for our clients, we consider everything from usability to content. After spending so much time and effort getting people where we want them, why would we risk it all by introducing a premium rate phone number.

If you provide a service to other businesses, it is worth considering that some companies do not permit outbound calls being made to premium rate phone numbers. Even if your prospective clients would like to spend money with your business, maybe they can’t.

To find out if a company has a non-premium alternative check out the following website www.saynoto0870.com

If you want to maximise your online potential, get rid of that premium rate number.

Now is a great time to develop your brand, ready for the economic upturn. We would all like to be our customers first choice, but it won’t happen on it’s own. Branding is a tool that can help you get there.

Many people fail to recognise that a brand does not extend beyond a company’s logo. In reality, a company’s brand runs through the core of a business, from your interaction with clients, customer service levels, the attitude of staff, and the quality of services and products that you provide. Your brand represents the company’s core values.

Building and Positioning Your Brand

When building and maintaining a strong brand, it’s important to focus on what your customers want and how you can guarantee to deliver it. This is vital. You’ll need to be consistent in your service and every other point of contact that customers have with you. Once you’ve defined your customers’ needs together with your brand values you can start to build your brand by consistently communicating to your target market. Meeting and exceeding what your brand promises, will have a huge impact on your reputation. Failing, just once, will damage your brand.

Tell Your Customers

Don’t forget, every possible contact you have with a client or potential customer needs to reinforce your brand values.

Key areas to consider are:

• Your name
• The names of your products or services
• Any slogans that you use
• Your logo
• The style and quality of your stationery
• Product pricing and packaging
• Your premises (are you premises tidy?)
• Company vehicles (are they clean and well driven?)
• Where and how you advertise
• How you and your employees dress
• How you and your employees behave
• Your company website (Does it portray the right image?)

If you are consistent with key ares of you business, your relationship with clients will be stronger, making them more likely to use you again and often recommend your services to others.

Case Study - Apple

The Apple brand has created such a strong brand that their customers have become like fans, raving about the recently released iPhone 3GS on forums and networking sites. Can you imagine an army of marketers promoting your products or services for free?

The Magnificent 7 Branding Tips

To build a successful brand you should:

1. Focus on your customers - Your brand needs to deliver what your customers want. However, this is a balancing act. Pay attention to customers’ needs, but also stay in control of your brand.
2. Honesty is the best policy - You have got to believe in your brand, if you don’t, nobody else will.
3. Keep it simple - Focus on a small number of KEY brand values.
4. Be consistent - Every aspect of your business should make customers feel the same way about you.
5. Involve employees - Make sure that everyone within your organisation understands the brand and believes in it.
6. Brand communications - Make sure every advertisement, brochure and letter helps to reinforce the same message. If you have a logo, use it everywhere, but make sure the quality is consistent.
7. Manage your brand - Continually look at ways of improving your brand, both internally and externally. For example, your businesses operations or changes in market trends.

On Wednesday 1st April (fools!) we officially moved in to our shiny new office on the Chatterley Whitfield site. Dan and I believe the move will improve our productivity and focus. Dan even assures me that he will actually be on-time in the mornings!

Chatterley Whitfield features the best surviving collection of pithead buildings and structures in England. The site was designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by English Heritage in 1993 and came into English Partnerships National Coalfields Programme in September 2002.

Our particular office has a dual-aspect window arrangement which is excellent for natural light, it also enables us to spot any visitors as they approach the building.

Check out the new digs…

Every day we hear the world’s finance problems are apparently worsening. The words ‘credit crunch’ and ‘recession’ now form a staple part of our daily lives. This is indeed a difficult time, where jobs are being lost and budgets are being cut. So as you tighten the purse strings on your business, what will you do with your company’s website? Will you invest more money into it, or leave it on the back burner?
Rather than abandoning online marketing in order to cut costs, here is a list of reasons why you ought make your website your utmost priority:

1. Internet marketing is more cost-effective than any other form of marketing
Websites are one of the most cost-effective (not to mention powerful) ways to market your business. When compared to more traditional advertising channels such as brochures, magazine advertising, Internet marketing is a bargain. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising such as Google AdWords can offer you measurable and instant results without forcing you to spend large amounts of cash.

2. Organic Search Engine traffic is free
If you invest money in SEO (search engine optimisation) you can start appearing in the natural listings.  Unlike the Pay-Per-Click based Internet marketing this kind of search engine traffic is free. It initially takes time and money to get you up the rankings, but once you’re there, there’s nothing else to pay. What could be better at this time than Free traffic to your site?

3. The economy is declining, the Internet is rising
While the retail economy slows the online economy continues to grow. There’s lots of talk of consumers spending less money yet sales through eCommerce continues to grow year-on-year, the Internet has a reputation for offering better value for money so it’s the place your potential customers will turn to when they start feeling the pinch. Even if your business model isn’t suited to an online shop, this doesn’t preclude you from making money from your web site, simply advertising your services or direct emailing are all cost effective ways to market to a wider audience.

4. Measurable results
Unlike advertising in magazines or directories, a website lets you accurately measure your results. You can record all your online enquiries and install website statistics software. When every penny counts, it’s important to know what works and what doesn’t.

5. Advertising and brand awareness 24/7 365!
When budgets are cut and times are tough your website is arguably one of your most important assets, a website advertises your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  You can be earning money or receiving enquiries while you sleep!

When the going gets tough, the tough get marketing - a website can open up substantial new market opportunities, there has never been a better time to address the issue…

One of the most common oversights made when commissioning a new web site or a web site re-design, is the failure to identify the purpose of the site from the outset. There are many possible uses, purposes and objectives for a web site. However, this varies from one web site to the next. Deciding on the role of your web site during the planning stage will help to ensure a return on your investment.

It is always important to remember, that what a business wants from its web site and what its visitors may want, can differ. For example, you may be overly concerned with the visual aspect of the web site, whilst your visitors are primarily concerned with how quickly they can find what they are looking for. Some of the most successful web sites are carefully integrated within a company’s overall marketing strategy.

Common web site purposes include:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Reducing overheads
• Increasing enquiries
• Saving time
• Selling products online
• Providing customer support

In order to ensure a return on investment from your web site, deciding on your objectives before you even approach your web designer will help you to get your web site right the first time. Most freelance web designers and agencies are not marketers and usually focus their attention on design and their own profit margins rather than your objectives and the needs of the web site’s visitors.

In summary, before a web site is commissioned it is good practice to clarify the objectives of your web site and ensure that your chosen web designer understands those objectives. Secondly, step into the shoes of your visitors to ensure that your web site will fulfil their needs and expectations as well as your business’s.

Your web site’s home page is generally the introduction to your organisation, and the main entry-point for the content within your site. The old saying about first impressions is just as important on the Web as it is in the real-world, maybe even more so. It’s important to let your visitors know exactly who you are and what you do, as soon as they arrive at your virtual front-door. This may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised at the number of web sites out there, that still use ambiguous ‘designer’ splash pages, that ultimately create a barrier between your content and your audience.

The design of your home page will set the tone for the rest of your site’s colour, typography, navigational elements and layout. Your home page is also the way most people will remember your web site’s visual appearance, so it’s important to get it right. Its design should be dramatic enough to make an impression, and yet simple enough to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to navigate to the information or section that is of most interest to them.

A well designed home page will clearly indicate what’s inside the rest of the web site, and encourage your users to delve deeper.

So, with the above in-mind, here are five goals to aim for, when considering your home page’s content…

1. Never use a splash page or a pre-home page. They are a barrier between your valuable users and your real content.
2. Make your navigation and links easy to recognise and consistent in style.
3. Clearly state who you are and what you or your organisation is about.
4. Make the focus of your content the core product(s) or service offerings you provide.
5. Include your contact details, or a prominent link to them.

As always, there are many ways to approach your web site’s design, layout, style and content, but the above is a good starting point and covers the basics that are very often overlooked.

Welcome to the netinspire Blog. A practical and (mostly) jargon-free source of web site design best practice and online marketing tips for small business.