Advantages of using WordPress

WordPress is an off the shelf content management system. It allows you to build a website from a very basic template that already comes pre-installed with it or buy your own theme to upload and amend. The beauty of WordPress is that there are literally thousands of themes out there for you to choose from so you will often find one that is very similar to what you want. It also has a great backend system that is very user friendly an easy to use. WordPress release updates to the code of the CMS system so that you do not have to worry about doing it yourself. You can install plug-ins which are essentially bolt on bits of code that provide different functionality such as scrolling header images or contact forms etc. The options really are endless with WordPress which is why so many programmers choose to use it. If you need a very bespoke website and CMS then you may decide to build your... Read More »

Making your website work for you

Having a web presence is, some would say a necessity for growing your business. Although there are some companies who rely on social media to promote their local business, a website could generate more business and possibly result in rapid growth and development of your company. When you decide to launch into designing your website you may have the skills to attempt this yourself and there are many useful online sites to guide you however utilising the services of a web designer will probably  give you a more professional looking website. The home page of your website will be the first thing that a visitor to your site will see and so should be attractive and clear so that visitors can see links to relevant pages and contact information. A link to a map showing the location of your business is a useful addition to your home page. The following pages of your website should have the same colours and design as your home page... Read More »

How to set up a good Google Adwords Campaign

Lots of people know how to set up a Google Adwords campaign, but that doesn’t mean they know how to set it up properly. Adwords has grown massively over the last few years and there are so many different options and choices you need to make when setting up the campaign it is easy to get it wrong. You need to think about how you are going to split up your campaign or if you are going to have more than one campaign. If you want certain ads to show only to certain countries etc and have a separate budget, then it is better to have two separate campaigns. This will allow you to easily manage them and when the budget is used up on the one the other will still run. Within your campaign you need to set up Ad Groups. This is a way of grouping relevant keywords. It may be that you split the keywords up into groups based on locations or... Read More »

Having a marketing strategy for your business

Any business no matter how big or small should have a marketing strategy in place. A marketing strategy is essentially a plan of how and where you are going to market your business. It will usually include time scales and costs. It can be easy to get carried away with investing in multiple marketing avenues without really checking what return on your investment. If you are you are getting. If you do decide to use multiple companies for your marketing then you may find that they overlap their services meaning that you are paying twice for the same thing, or even missing out a significant marketing avenue. If you only have a small marketing budget and no one in house that has marketing experience you may be best to outsource it to an individual or marketing company. When creating a marketing strategy try to think of short term and long-term goals as some things are pretty instant such as Google Adwords and others take time... Read More »

What to look for in your web stats

Website statistics are vitally important when looking at your website performance and marketing. There are hundreds of website statistic tracking tools available for you to use to see how many people are visiting your site. Each software package may vary in terms of exactly what data you can extract from it but most of them offer the same basic stats such as number of visitors to the site, how they go to the site i.e. PPC or social media and what they did when on the site. Google Analytics is by far one of the best stats packages you can use and best of all its free. It gives you so much data but in a friendly manner meaning even if you don’t fully understand marketing and stats you can still find your way around.  You can add the main information you wish to see on the front dashboard and even have the data emailed to you on a regular basis. But if you are... Read More »