November 7, 2018

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Is your website leaking customers? – Part 2

As we discussed in our last email, when potential customers visit your website are you happy with what they see? Is your website portraying your business favourably to potential customers? Most importantly, are you missing out on potential customers because your website is scaring them away? These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself to ensure your website is not leaking valuable customers. How to keep potential customers on your website! As you would know from your own experience visiting websites when you are looking for a service, you need to give potential customers what they are looking for quickly. This means primarily you need an awesome homepage which will engage customers. Homepages have changed a lot over the last 5 years and one of the main differences is how long they are now. Your homepage needs to be an overview of your whole website, providing visitors the opportunity to click through to other pages for more in depth information. Showcase your work; this sounds obvious I know, but too often website owners sell themselves and their business short by using poor quality images. If you’re thinking of building a new website start taking lots of photos of all your work. Taking photos with your smartphone is fine just make sure you follow these quick tips; Always take photos in landscape – try to remove tools or anything ugly from the background of the photo – finished work is what potential customers want to see, they don’t care so much about the before photo. Video and drone footage works; potential customers love short videos of your work and are a great way for them to get to know you. Professional videos and drone footage are recommended for businesses dealing with clients who are spending a significant amount of money with your business. Remember: Making a website look pretty is the easy part, getting potential customers to take action and call you once they get to your website is much harder. Don’t let your website leak potential customers to your competitors.

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Is your website leaking customers? – Part 1

When potential customers visit your website are you happy with what they see? Is your website portraying your business favourably to potential customers? Most importantly, are you missing out on potential customers because your website is scaring them away? These are just some of the questions you need to ask yourself to ensure your website is not leaking valuable customers. Internet users have come to expect a certain level of sophistication and professionalism from websites they visit, regardless of a company’s size. In fact, a OnePoll survey revealed that 70 per cent of consumers wouldn’t buy from a business with a poorly designed website (source: OnePoll). Poorly formatted images, a lack of content, unprofessional design, slow loading pages, inaccurate information and other factors may result in your website leaking customers. When that happens, you will almost certainly become a victim of the “back button”… How to keep potential customers on your website! The most important thing you need to do when building a website is to establish credibility. Credibility is the “king of conversion” meaning no one will call the number on your site if they don’t think your business is credible. When trying to build credibility on your website start by addressing common fears your potential customers have. For example – Mention your experience, qualifications, QBCC record, industry bodies you are a member of, positive reviews from happy clients, all of these “trust factors” will work together to build credibility in the minds of those visiting your website. How to identify if your website is leaking customers; set up Google Analytics on your website and pay close attention to your “homepage bounce rate” and “average time on site” metrics. Bounce rate measures the number of visitors that land on your site against how quickly they hit the back button to leave. If you discover that a high percentage of visitors are leaving quickly, it’s obvious that you need to make some adjustments. Average time on site measures how long on average potential customers are spending on your website. Remember: Despite the old adage, many people will still judge a book by its cover – at least with regards to browsing the Internet. Don’t let your website leak potential customers to your competitors.

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Is your website a lazy employee?

Ask yourself this question. If your website were a sales employee for your business would you hire it or fire it? We speak to website owners everyday who aren’t happy with their website, and more often than not it all boils down to two things. One, they have lost motivation or simply don’t have the time to drive the performance of their website anymore, and two, previous bad experiences dealing with unreliable people who have promised them the world, taken their money, but not delivered anything but the invoice. To help all those hard working website owners out there who might fit into this category, the team at Web Coach have come up with a couple of practical “try this tips” to help give your business the website it deserves. 2 Quick Tips – Part 1 1. DON’T let your website look like a cheap suit First impressions count big time online. If you’re not happy with the way your website looks you can be pretty sure potential customers visiting your website agree with you. Try this: Before you fire your website and get a new one try giving it an update or a makeover. If you’re website is only a few years old and you’re pretty handy on a computer, making these changes yourself may be an option. Another important factor will be the images you use. If your product or service lends itself to a visual description or gallery of product shots, spend a little extra time and get higher quality images. You won’t regret it! Remember: If your website is more than 5 or 6 years old it may not be mobile optimised (meaning it doesn’t work on mobile devices). If this is the case, I’m afraid you may be better off putting it out of its misery and starting from scratch. 2. DO help your website’s SEO SEO is often put in the too hard basket. This doesn’t need to be the case. There are many simple SEO tactics you can put in place to help your ranking over time. Try this: Keywords are king when it comes to SEO. Know your keywords and more importantly make sure the keywords you are targeting actually have a decent amount of monthly search traffic. Use Google’s free keyword planner tool to search the monthly traffic volumes for keywords in your location. If keywords are King, then content is definitely the Queen. It’s vital that you have at least 350 to 500 words of content on the pages of your website you want to rank. For example it’s very important that your homepage has at least 350 words of content. This content doesn’t always need to be at the top of the page making your site look too text heavy, try positioning this type of content lower down the page where site visitors can read it if they want to. Also be smart about your how you structure the internal page URL’s on your site. As an example let’s say you have a cleaning business and your domain name is www.examplehousecleaning.com.au. If you were to have a page on your website dedicated to external house cleaning you could use the following URL structure, www.examplehousecleaning.com.au/external-house-cleaning. It’s pretty simple stuff but in the long term little SEO tips like this and other fundamentals will help your ranking. Remember: SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Results are long term and often up and down over time depending on Google’s algorithms and your ability to implement sound on-page and off-page SEO tactics/strategies. WebCoach.com.au is a local web solutions business based in Milton, Brisbane. Our point of difference is we will come and see you face-to-face at no extra charge. Give us a call we would love to chat!

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The process of building a website in Brisbane

If building a new website is something you are interested in, we have outlined the steps we go through and what we need from you to build a new website. Summary of what we need from you to build a website Images – Ideally you will have between 20 to 50 images of your work (this can include images taken using your phone). If you don’t have enough images you also have the option of purchasing images online. Content – You choose if you want us to write your content for you ($220 for an average of 1250 words), or you are welcome to write it yourself. Design – We will provide you with design options for you to choose from based on example websites you have told us you like. Step 1 – Website planning meeting We meet with you for an hour face-to-face to plan out the entire website. This speeds up the whole process and allows us to start building version 1 of your new website much quicker. In this meeting, we will ask you what services you would like to promote on the website. We can usually complete about 80% – 90% of the website in this meeting. We also collect your images at this point. We will go through each page of the website and provide you options. We can also write the first draft of your content for the website based on the discussions we have with you (this is optional). We charge $44 per hour and our copywriters can usually produce roughly 250 words in an hour. Typically most small business websites will have about 1000 – 1250 words. Before we start building we will provide you with a number of design options for you to choose from based on example websites you have told us you like. Step 2 – Version 1 of your new website is built After completing the website planning meeting and document we will build version 1 of your new website in about 2 weeks. Version 1 of your website at this point is just a draft. We will send you a link to your new website which you will review and provide us with your changes. Most changes are completed within 3 – 5 days. Step 3 – Version 2 of your new website is built Following your version 1 changes being completed, version 2 of your new website will be ready for your review. You will provide us with a list of the changes and we will complete them (again in about 3 – 5 days). This will be your last round of free changes. Step 4 – Your new website is now ready At this point, we implement basic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) on your website. We will also submit your website to Google for the keyword phrase you have chosen. Step 5 – Your new website is live Now you have a brand new website to promote your business online!

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3 Don’ts when building a SMB website

1. DON’T overwhelm your visitors with too much content. It’s common knowledge that most people will leave your website within 10 to 20 seconds if they don’t find what they are looking for. Try this: Make sure all the content on your website will be useful to your website visitors and that it’s easy to find and read. As the business owner you’ve probably seen your site millions of times, so it can be hard to see it through a customer’s eyes. Ask someone who has never seen your site to try and find a specific piece of content. Measure how many clicks it takes them to find what they are looking for. If it’s more than one or two clicks, you may have a problem. Make sure your website pages have what marketing professionals call “white space.” Put simply, this refers to the amount of space on your page that isn’t occupied by text or images. Most people won’t be actually reading the content on your website, they’ll be scanning it and looking for words that are relevant to what they are searching for. White space helps people do this. Remember: Your customers may not need to know everything about your business from your website. You can use future touch points to give them more information. 2. DON’T go long periods of time without updating your site. We’ve all been to websites where it’s obvious the content hasn’t been refreshed since the site was first built. It looks unprofessional and like the business doesn’t care. What’s more, search engines like fresh content, so you also risk becoming outranked in search results by your competitors. Try this: Plan regular health checks of your website. Take a look at the content and see if everything is still relevant to your customers. If not, take it out or replace it with something that is. Start a blog. A blog is a great way of keeping your website updated with fresh news and content about your business. You could add photos of new products, events, your thoughts about a relevant topic, or just general business news. There’s only one rule: don’t be boring! Remember: A blog may seem like a great idea now, but you need to commit the time to keep it fresh. The only thing worse than an outdated website is an outdated blog! 3. DON’T forget strong calls to action Put simply, a call to action asks website visitors to do something. Do you want your website visitors to call you? Do you want them to act on a particular promotion on your website? Whatever it is you want your website visitors to do, they will be much more likely to do it if the call to action is clear and prominent. Try this: Decide on a relevant call to action for your website. Now think of another one or another way to say the same thing and test them against each other. See which call to action gets you the best results. It might only be a small difference in text or an image, but it’s worth optimising. Don’t always “go for the kill” (i.e., sale) right away. What do we mean by this? Well, if you know your product or service is something that isn’t usually purchased in one phone call or one interaction, don’t ask customers to do that. An example of this might be a higher-value product that is more complex and requires a salesperson to properly explain the benefits associated with the price. You may even decide that you don’t want to put the actual price on your website. In some instances an inquiry form can provide a better end result. Remember: Calls to action should be short and prompt an immediate response. They should also be a simple action for your customer to take. If your call to action is something like, “Fill out this form in triplicate,” maybe you need to come up with something simpler!

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3 Do’s when building a SMB Websites

1. DO think about what actions you want potential customers to take on your website What’s your goal? Is it just to provide information and contact details to site visitors, or do you want them to purchase or become a member? Thinking through the role of your website as an integral part of your small business can help you decide what content you need to achieve your goals. Try this: Get to know your potential customers, and understand what they’re looking for when they arrive at your site. Why are they there? What problem are they trying to solve? How can your business help? By understanding customer needs, you’ll know what your website needs to do and what content you need to provide. Prioritise the content you want to include on your website. Ask yourself what pieces of information are most important to your potential customers, and place these where they will be easily seen. Ask three friends whose opinions you value to take a look at your website. What stands out to them? Is it the most important piece of content on the page? Remember: There are certain “hot spots” on a page to which people’s eyes are naturally drawn, such as the upper-right corner. So consider putting your important information or registration form there. 2. DO perform search engine optimisation (SEO) No doubt there are many other small and large businesses offer offering the same products or services as you. If you rank lower than your competitors in search results, it’s harder for people to find you. In fact, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of Google results (source: Hubspot). To rank as high as possible, you will need to engage an SEO professional, but there are some things you can do that could help your ranking. Try this: Look for backlink opportunities. Put simply, a backlink is when another website that has content related to your particular industry links back to your site. This can be difficult to arrange, and you may even be asked to pay for these links. Ensure your content is relevant and well written. Strong content is critical to SEO, so it’s important to think through the keywords you use on your site; make sure they are relevant to what people are searching for, Remember: If potential new customers can’t find your website in search results, your business could be missing valuable opportunities. 3. DO optimise your website for mobile devices A mobile Path-to-Purchase Study conducted by Nielsen found, “73% of mobile searchers look up and call a business phone number and 84% look up business locations, maps and directions.” (source: Nielson) Smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices are extremely important tools your website must accommodate. Make sure your site is mobile responsive so potential new customers can browse your site at home, at work, or while commuting. Try this: Focus on developing mobile features that shine the spotlight on your products and services. On-the-go site visitors typically find your site when they’re searching for a particular service or product in their area. You want them to identify right away what it is that you do. Your contact details should be front and center on your mobile website. Keep in mind your own experiences with mobile web browsing. You were probably in a bit of a rush – in fact, you may have been in the neighborhood – and wanted to find out where a store was or if it was open. Make it really easy for customers to find vital information like your opening hours, address and phone number. Better yet, make that information impossible to miss. Don’t pack too much into one page. Remember, mobile consumers have to use their fingers to navigate your site, rather than a mouse. Forcing them to scroll for a too long is a great strategy … if you want them to click the back button and leave your website! Remember: If customers are unable to access your website on their smartphones or tablets, their next port of call may well be the mobile-optimised site of your biggest competitor. Looking for a great way to lose business? DON’T optimise your site for mobile.

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What Google dislikes about your website!

1.Content Shortcuts and Shortfalls Tip: Google considers itself a great judge of web content quality. If your site is a thinly veiled keyword repository, copies liberally from other sites, or has become stale, it won’t be long before your Google rankings plummet. Try this: Write content targeted to actual site visitors, not search bots. Google penalises sites with thin, keyword-stuffed pages, so focus on providing fresh, original content that educates and informs your target audiences. Supplement any content copied from other sites (e.g., product descriptions for e-commerce) with unique commentary, user reviews, or other value-adds. Also be sure to reference any external content sources – it’s good copyright karma! Feed your site with fresh content and links on a regular basis. When you keep your content current and relevant, you demonstrate to Google that you’re engaged and open for business. If you’re running display ads on your site don’t give them too much real estate, especially in page headers. Google can analyze page layout and recognise ads, including those for your own company or site, so present as much quality content as you can above the fold. Remember: Producing original, useful and up-to-date content takes time and effort, but your site visitors will love you for it – and they’ll keep coming back and converting into customers. A higher Google ranking is just icing on the cake! 2. Lame Links Tip: Google is a highly engaged, yet super-critical, website visitor. In addition to counting broken links and assessing your link text for over-optimisation, Google gauges the number and reputability of sites linked to your site. Therefore, it’s important to be aware of who is linking to you and ensure that you link out only to trusted sites. Try this: Reach out to producers of quality online content (eg. blogs) relevant to your product or service to establish relationships that might earn future links, and engage in any active conversations on pages referring to your site. Don’t buy links or participate in other link schemes offered by sites that have no relevance or legitimate ties to your business. If you participate in an affiliate program, make sure it’s appropriate for your target audience. Also, your content should provide added value to give affiliate users a reason to visit your site. Turn on comment moderation, use anti-spam tools, and implement other measures to prevent visitors from publishing links to sites unrelated to your business (aka “comment spam”). Avoid repeatedly using the same keywords for the links on your site. Google sees this as link spam. Check out these Google Webmaster Tools for assessing and optimizing your site’s links: Fetch as Google, HTML Improvements, and Crawl Errors. Remember: The number and quality of links to your site from other sites are major determinants of Google search rank. PageRank, the mother of all Google algorithms, sees these inbound links as editorial “votes” for your site. Links from authority sites, such as major news sites and industry blogs, carry significantly more weight than other inbound links. 3. Keyword Trickery Tip: Google wants to encounter keywords on your site as actual human visitors would. Be sure to use keywords throughout your site, but don’t try to game the system with deceptive techniques. Try this: Avoid over-optimising keywords in your site’s navigation, header or footer links. This is a common “innocent” mistake that Google penalises. Forget about populating the keywords meta tag. Google has ignored it for years, so it doesn’t figure into your site’s search rankings. Don’t try to hide keywords on your site, such as by matching text and background colors or by setting the font size to 0. Google has been onto these black hat SEO techniques for years. Use the alt attribute for images and include descriptive body text for animations and videos, since Google is unable to index text embedded in these formats. Don’t stuff your alt tags with keywords, though. Don’t treat Googlebot differently from any other regular desktop browser, such as delivering special keyword optimised pages that normal site visitors wouldn’t otherwise see. This could be seen as cloaking, a black hat SEO technique that Google really hates. Remember: Your web content should read smoothly, without blatant overuse of keywords. Go ahead and use keywords in your page titles, headings and other content, but make sure they appear in a natural, unforced way. 4. Slow Page Loads Tip: Google has a short attention span and doesn’t like to wait for pages to load. As more users access the Internet via mobile devices, expectations for fast page load times will only increase. Therefore, do what you can to address any current performance issues and follow-up with regular, scheduled check-ups. Try this:  Use Google PageSpeed Tools and other performance tools to analyse and improve your site’s performance. Try PageSpeed Insights for a quick, straightforward performance assessment and suggestions from Google. PageSpeed Insights also scores your page load times versus other websites. If your score falls below 90, you should make further improvements. As a rule of thumb, try to keep average page load times below two seconds. Refer to Google’s web performance best practices for guidance. Check your site’s performance after major content or technical updates, such as a CMS upgrade. Otherwise, put a monthly “website performance health check” reminder in your calendar. Remember: Your site’s relevance, reputation and value-add have a greater influence on its Google rankings than does its performance. However, analytics providers indicate that page load time impacts conversions and is an important determinant of whether users will return to your site or not.

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