Odyssey blog

Customer Service Online

nik.makris — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 20:26:00 +0100

There are lots of things to consider when you plan to take the leap into eCommerce. One of the most neglected, but most important, is customer service. A lot of businesses assume they can set-up a website and payment solution and it will take care of itself.

Due to the fact that customers cannot physically see/feel the products you sell online prior to purchase you WILL get customers asking you questions. The amount and type of product queries you get will depend on the type of products you sell on your website and the prices they sell for.

The other type of customer query you will need to deal with concerns fulfilment.

“When will my purchase be dispatched?”

“My purchase hasn’t arrived”

“I was sent the wrong colour product”

“My order was missing XYZ product”

“What is your delivery charge?”

Create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page

If you spend some time creating an FAQ page on your website you can avoid a lot of emails and phone calls about the most common customer queries, but you still need to be responsive to customers and give them customer service when required.

This is more important online than in a physical shop because they have bought a product from you without ever meeting you or your business. They have put a certain amount of trust in you and your business.

Customer Service Touch Points

Set up various customer touch points such as a dedicated customer service email inbox, a free-phone or local rate customer service phone line and make sure you answer customer queries promptly.

Proactive Customer Service

If there is a problem with a customers order, then let them know as soon as possible and how you plan to resolve the issue. Most customers will be happy to wait a bit longer or choose a similar product as an alternative.

Remember if you screw up you could lose any repeat business from those customers! On the flipside if you provide a great service, you are more likely to get recommended to others and generate more sales.

Picture used under Creative Commons from Alan Cleaver

Understanding Website Analysis

odyssey — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:51:32 +0100

Get into the habit of regularly assessing your website. Examine your web stats, sales, costs and competitors and keep a record of your findings, so that you can track trends and progress in reaching your goals (You do have goals for your website right?).

Ensure you make a note of dates when you make significant changes to your website as these will allow you to attribute changes in your traffic and visitor behaviour and you’ll know if the changes had a positive effect or not.

Use your web stats to understand:

Who your audience is and where they live (What time zones are they in?)
Why they are visiting your website (What search terms do your visitors arrive via)
How long your visitors spend on your site (Do they only read one page and leave, or do they spend several minutes browsing your site?)
What languages they speak (Are your users predominantly English speaking?)

Understand your audience by examining your web stats; never assume you know your audience or their reasons for visiting.

If your website stats do not answer all your questions, you may need to consider using a site survey or even adding your questions to your site registration form if you have one.

Create Goals

Decide what actions on your site constitute a conversion and create goals within Google Analytics to measure these conversions.
Conversions do not need to be sales, they could be user registrations, user enquiries or other actions that have some value to your business.

Easy Wins

After examining your site visitor behaviour, try to determine simple tweaks you can apply to your website to improve user experience and encourage more conversions.

Ascertain what sections/pages of your website are popular with your visitors and try to improve these pages so that visitors are greeted with a page more optimised to their needs, thereby increasing the chances of them converting.

Translations

If you discover a large percentage of visitors are from non-English speaking countries, consider adding a translation widget or getting a professional translation of certain pages/sections or even the whole website, don't take the British attitude and assume everyone speaks English!

Lead picture used under Creative Commons from somegeekintn

Should I Buy Web Hosting with my Domain Name?

odyssey — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:39:38 +0100

Frequently asked question:

I've just bought a domain name for my business and was offered a good deal on web hosting, should I buy it?

Our answer:
Before we answer this question, it would help if we understood a bit more about what web hosting actually is.

Web hosting is essentially a leased space where you can upload your website and make it accessible to users on the Internet.

Websites are hosted in data centres which have very fast connections to the internet, they essentially consist of many special computers called servers. These servers can host anything from one to many hundreds of websites each. “Web servers” as they are known can use different operating systems too, much the same way as desktop computers can run Windows Vista or Apple OSX, they can also come preinstalled with many different types of software that you can use for your website.

As you can begin to see web hosting from one company isn't necessarily comparable to web hosting from another. There are lots of factors you need to look at to compare one service to another, and as with computer software, some packages are not compatible with different servers.

As a general rule, we ask customers to avoid purchasing web hosting because the package you purchase might not be suitable for your website. The CMS (Content Management System) might not be compatible, the server might have too many other websites running on it which may make your website slow to load. There can also be hidden charges such as extra bandwidth bills if your website becomes really popular or you have videos or other large files on your site.

Picture used under Creative Commons from cbowns

Determine Your Business's Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats

odyssey — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:38:22 +0100

Do you ever analyse your business?
Do you know what your business strengths and weaknesses are?
Do you know of any external threats to your business?
Do you assess potential opportunities for your business?

If you answered no to any of these questions you should consider performing SWOT analysis on your business.

What is SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis (Strength's, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) is a method of assessing a business.

By undertaking the SWOT process you'll have a better understanding of your business and your market place.

You'll discover what you do well, what you need to improve, whether there are potential opportunities you could take advantage of as well as potential external threats.

Start by using a grid with four columns, one each for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Objectively look at every aspect of your business and its products and services with your team, try to look at the big picture rather than concentrating on minutiae. Encourage the team to analyse your business and categorise what you do into the four columns.
Examples might include a poorly structured website, low ranking in search engines compared to your competitors and low profit margins.

Evaluate your strengths and compare them to your competitors. Ask yourself whether there are improvements to be made.

Identify where expertise is lacking and what would be needed to fill the gap, also consider how you might turn your weaknesses around creating new opportunities.

Try to be totally honest and realistic. It sometimes helps to get an outsiders’ viewpoint on your business strengths and weaknesses.

Analyse the threats to your business. Try to come up with a "what if" plan to deal with potential threats. This will mean you'll be able to react quicker should any of the threats become reality, since you would have already considered what you might do if such an outcome materialised.

Finally, try to learn from the outcome of your SWOT analysis, plan to build on your strengths, reduce your weaknesses and minimise the risks to your business.

Be proactive and plan to integrate SWOT analysis into your business strategy and perform it at regular intervals to react to changing business conditions.

Picture used under Creative Commons from jean-louis zimmermann

7 benefits of using an Open Source CMS

odyssey — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:19:12 +0100

With both large and small organisations turning to open source content management solutions (CMS) including high profile websites like Whitehouse.gov, we look at the some of the benefits of using an open source CMS.

No propriety license fees - More development time and money can go on creating a beautiful website than on the CMS.
High quality and stable software - Many hours of development have gone into building open source software by a community of skilled and dedicated programmers.
Safe and secure - Generally if security holes are discovered software patches for open source software are released very quickly.
Customisable - Because the source code is accessible, there are always plenty of plug-ins contributed by the community to add functionality to open source CMS.
Large communities - Generally open source projects have a large active community who can help you solve problems.
Source code is freely available - Should you ever need to tinker with the core software you have access to the code.
Not locked into a single vendor - Other developers can easily extend or update your website should you ever need to.

Picture used under Creative Commons from Rob Hayes

What is the Telephone Preference Service?

odyssey — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:41:07 +0100

In the UK it is unlawful to place a direct marketing call to an individual or organisation who has objected, either directly a company or with the central registration scheme - the TPS or CTPS.

The Telephone Preference Service enables individuals or organisations in the United Kingdom to register their objection to receiving direct marketing calls with a central service.

Telemarketing companies are able to receive a list of numbers that have been registered by subscribing to the TPS and or CTPS.

The regulations require that companies comply with an individual's request for suppression made to the central registration scheme within 28 days.

Who needs to comply with the regulations?

All businesses including charities and voluntary organisations who make direct marketing calls to both 'cold' lists and customer lists should be screened against the TPS data before telephone calls are made to ensure they comply with the regulations.

Does TPS apply to customers of a business?

The regulations cover all telephone calls whether they are customers or non-customers. If a customer has registered with TPS you can only call them if they have indicated that they do not object to you calling them.

What are the consequences of calling a number registered with the TPS/CTPS?

Should a subscriber registered with the TPS make a complaint about unsolicited direct marketing telephone calls from a business or other organisation, the Telephone Preference Service Limited (TPSL) will investigate the circumstances in which the call was made. A record of the complaint will be sent to the Information Commissioner's Office, who are responsible for enforcing the regulations.

A TPS subscriber can also contact the Information Commissioner’s Office directly to complain about an unsolicited direct marketing Telephone call which they have received.

How do I get the TPS/CTPS suppression list?

A number of options are available such as list cleaning services, call barring services along with services aimed at helping small companies comply with the regulations.
Visit the TPS website for further details www.TPSonline.org.uk

Picture used under Creative Commons from macinate

Understanding the Purchasing Cycle

odyssey — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:28:00 +0100

The customer buying cycle defines the stages a customer goes through while making a purchasing decision.

The purchasing cycle is important because customers need different information at each stage of the process.

In order to maximise the effectiveness of your website in generating revenue you need to optimise your website to help the customer at each stage.

The Purchasing Cycle

Lets look at each stage of the customer purchasing cycle.

Recognition of a Need

The customer has identified that they need a certain product or service.

This is where your marketing campaigns can be used to raise awareness of your products and services. Think email newsletters, search marketing campaigns etc…

Research Stage

This is the information gathering stage. The customer maybe weeks or months away from making a purchase.

The internet is increasingly becoming a tool for product research, so it’s vital that you provide as much information on your website as possible to help potential customers at this stage.

Because a customer maybe months away from making a decision it's a good idea to try and make sure you can proactively contact them to remind them of your company’s products and services.

Try to get them to sign-up to email newsletters, request a call back at a specified time etc.

Analysis Stage

The customer has decided they need your product or service but they have not yet committed to purchasing it from your company.
They are now looking into the features and benefits of your product/service and comparing it to your competition.

You need to provide your customers with your unique selling proposition (USP) - Why should they purchase from you?

Consider the power of testimonials from previous customers to give people confidence in your company and its products and services.

Make it easy for the customer to compare the features of your product/service with your competitors solutions.

Provide detailed and accurate product specifications so the customer can determine whether it meets their needs.

Buying Stage

The customer has decided to purchase and is buying your product.

This is your opportunity to offer them special offers, convince them to purchase a different product or service or additional products.

Post Buying Stage

Product/Service has been purchased. You will need to follow up the purchase with good customer service keep your customers satisfied.

Remember: Retaining existing customers is important as attracting new customers is much more difficult and costly in comparison.

Not Providing Good Product Information Can Drive Your Customers Away!

odyssey — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:42:00 +0100

In order to sell or promote products on the web you must provide good product information in order to give your customers confidence before they click the buy button.

When customers shop online they require more product information compared to shopping for the same items in brick and mortar shops as there is no tangible product to hold no salesperson to ask and no product displays to read.

As a result of poor product information many ecommerce websites are losing sales to competitors who are spending the time to make shopping online as painless as possible for their consumers.

Here’s an example of a few misleading ecommerce pages from a large UK clothing store.

In this case the product has several images and a decent amount of product information.
However when would you realise that you were only buying the shirt and not the matching tie?

It doesn’t mention anywhere that the tie is not included or sold separately.

Another item from the same store features a pair of suit trousers, but if you look more closely you’ll notice the conflicting product information.

Are they machine washable at 40 degrees or dry clean only?

After looking at these two products would you have confidence purchasing items from this store?

Basic Guide to Editing your Website

odyssey — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:33:24 +0100

Making changes to your website when you have a Content Management System (CMS) couldn’t be easier!

When your website goes live you will be issued with a unique username and password to access to your control panel.

Once you’ve logged in you’ll see a content tree on the left-hand side that represents the pages and hierarchy of your website.

By right-clicking the Home icon with your mouse you’ll access a menu that will allow you to reorder the pages on your website navigation.

By right-clicking an individual web page underneath the home page you’ll be able to revert any changes you make to that page to a previous version just in case you make a change and then need to undo it.

The Web Page Editor

Selecting a page in the tree will allow you to edit that page in the main editor (see below) which is as easy as typing a letter in a word processor like Microsoft® Word.

You’ll be able to modify the text on your web pages, change the style of the text, add and change pictures, insert tables, bullet lists and links etc.

The Editor Toolbar

The editor toolbar is very simple to learn. Apart from the usual bold, delete, anchor and insert image icons, the three icons on the left are worth explaining further.
The save button saves your changes, but doesn’t update the live site. The second button saves your changes and publishes your changes to the live website. The third icon along previews your changes so you can check them before you publish if you wish.

The Media Section

The Media section allows you to manage the files and pictures you upload to use on your website. You access the Media section via the pane at the bottom left of your CMS window. These will then be available to add to your web pages via the editor.

Using WHOIS Domain Search

odyssey — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:16:03 +0100

WHOIS is an essential domain name researching tool. It will help you determine the availability of a domain name.
If a domain name is already taken, it's often used to find out the owner or registrant's details or find out when the registration expires.

You can discover who owns a website by performing a WHOIS lookup on the domain, which can be useful if you want to enquire about the possible sale of a domain name that’s not currently available.

On many occasions domain names are purchased and go unused and therefore if you find a domain that is registered but not currently being used, you maybe able to negotiate a price with the WHOIS registrant.

Along with the registrants name and contact details a WHOIS search will usually return:

The domain registration date and expiry date
The current status of the domain
The domain’s name servers

There are a number of websites on the internet that let you query the WHOIS system. To find information on a .UK domain name you can use the Nominet WHOIS service below.

The registrant listed on the WHOIS database is normally considered to be the webmaster for that domain, responsible for administering the domain/website and is not necessarily the owner.

Picture used under Creative Commons from Dawn Endico

Using Abbreviations & Terminology on your Website

odyssey — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:29:40 +0100

Making the assumption that you know the audience of your website and that they understand all the industry and product terminology you use within your company maybe alienating some of your potential customer base.

There are a few very easy ways to continue using your terminology and acronyms whilst making your website more user-friendly and meeting web accessibility guidelines on acronyms and abbreviations at the same time.

Add Meaning to your Terms

Acronyms and Abbreviations - By using the <acronym> and <abbr> tags in HTML you can give more information to your users when they hover their mouse over the term or abbreviation on your website. This HTML mark-up also allows spellcheckers, screen readers, translation systems and search-engines to understand the context too.

For example:

Welcome to the <acronym title="World Wide Web">WWW</acronym>
or <abbr title="Telephone Number">Tel</abbr>

Create a Website Glossary

If you find that you use lots of terminology on your website you might want to consider adding a glossary to your website and hyper linking to the appropriate terms in your glossary when you use them in your web text.

Picture used under Creative Commons from tuchodi

User Experience Explained

odyssey — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:52:19 +0100

User Experience (UX) is what a user experiences while interacting with your website and encompasses everything from how easy it was to find the site to the journey a user takes through the site.

User experience is understanding and designing a user’s experience from start to finish, not just how the website looks or functions.

The aim is to improve the user journey - ironing out those frustrating fly-out menus, optimising the shopping cart processes and making the website more intuitive by placing information where users expect to find it.

UX includes, but not limited to:

User interface design
Information architecture
Usability
Interaction design

User Focused Process

User Experience is user focused, so the first step is to identify and understand your audience and find ways to communicate with them effectively. You shouldn’t assume a user is familiar with your product offering or knows all your industry terminology.

Understand what tasks end users will want to perform on your website and create a series of use-cases to identify each task.
While you and your web design company know how to navigate your website, do your users? The only way to find out for sure is to perform user testing.

User Testing

The best way to evaluate a website’s user experience properly is by assigning tasks to real users and monitoring their progress in achieving the tasks. Users should ideally be recorded and asked to think out loud while carrying out the assigned tasks so you can understand their thought processes while navigating.

It’s important that the users picked to perform the tasks haven’t been involved with the design or development process.

Information gleaned from user testing is then fed back into the design process in an iterative manor to improve the end user experience. Iterative design can help optimise sign-ups, maximise return on investment (ROI) and increase sales, so it has real benefits!

Picture used under Creative Commons from A-dit-ya

Planning a Website

odyssey — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:05:52 +0100

Before jumping into any project it always makes sense to do a little planning beforehand to ensure the project runs smoothly, website projects are no different.

During website planning and brainstorming sessions write down notes and questions you may have.

Follow these basic steps as a guide:

Choose an appropriate domain name.
In a notebook set aside a page for each web page you require on your website and make the page title the name of the web page section.
Begin to jot down notes relating to each website section on its page in your notebook.
Look at your competitors websites and sites you like and use these as inspiration for your website. Make a note of:
- Websites you like and why
- Website you don’t like and why
- Elements of websites you like (e.g. colours, layout, navigation and content)
Start gathering materials and information you want to put on your website.

Company logo
Brochures
Website text

About your company
What your company does
Contact details
List of products/services

Photos and images
Testimonials

While planning your website you should consider the following:

The purpose or objective of the website
Target audience of the website
How will we drive traffic to the site (get people to visit) – Introduction to search engine marketing
How often will we update the website? Would a content management system be beneficial?
Development budget, on-going marketing/maintenance budget

Read more about the web development and design process.

Picture used under Creative Commons from aarontait

What is an RSS Feed?

odyssey — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:52:24 +0100

You may have noticed lots of blogs and websites using small buttons similar to these.

These services use a technology called XML to allow websites to distribute their content beyond the confines of the pages of the site. They make it possible for users to subscribe to websites to receive updates either via email or via a news reader. They also allow the content to be bookmarked, aggregated or packaged into widgets and displayed on other websites.

What is a Podcast?

A podcast is a special type of RSS feed that contains links to audio files. You subscribe to podcast in much the same way as you subscribe to plain RSS feeds.

The Benefits of RSS

Enabling feeds allow the readers of your website to be kept up-to-date with your latest web content without remembering to return to your site. By subscribing to blogs and websites of interest with a news reader such as Google Reader visitors can follow as many blogs as they wish all from one place.

For the website owner it enables visitors to subscribe to your website which should encourage users to return more frequently. Using a tool such as FeedBurner you can also give your readers the option of subscribing via email and you can begin building a subscriber list.

From the advertiser’s point of view distributing your latest content via RSS bypasses SPAM filters that usually affect email broadcast, it also enables you to display adverts on the actual feeds themselves.

How do I get a Feed for my Website?

If you own a blog already there is a chance that you already have an RSS feed enabled on your website. Popular blogging platforms such as Typepad, Wordpress or Blogger publish feeds automatically.

There are also tools such as FeedBurner that enable website owners to gain useful information about feed subscribers as well as lots of free ways to advertise and market your feed.

How do I Start Reading Feeds from my Favourite Sites?

There are many ways to subscribe to feeds, sometimes these tools are called news aggregators, some are installed on your computer whereas others are web-based services, and the good news is lots of them are free!

Many news readers use an interface similar to an email inbox with each blog post appearing in a reading pane. The posts are listed in chronological order and you usually have the option of selecting all the latest content or content only from certain sites you subscribe to.

Click here to find a suitable RSS feed reader.

What is LinkedIn and how does it Work?

odyssey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:17:16 +0100

LinkedIn is a social networking website aimed at business professionals, it allows you to create a personal profile where you can promote your skills, knowledge and experience while allowing you to connect with professionals in your field in order to do business.

As you build your profile you can request and receive recommendations from people who you have done business with in the past (colleagues, business acquaintances, clients etc). These recommendations add value to your online resume just like letters of recommendation and testimonials and will help build trust in what you have to offer.

Ten Tips for a Strong Profile

Create a Personal Tagline – This is shown under your name, so it needs to summarise at a glance who you are.
Elevator Pitch Introduction – Create an engaging 30-second introduction that succinctly describes who you are and what you do.
Don’t Cut and Paste your CV – Describe your experience and skills as you would to someone you just met and keep it short and punchy.
Use Action Words – Use words that project an image of a results-driven, action-oriented achiever, such as maximised, supervised, optimised, streamlined etc.
Point out your Skills – List your specialities, abilities and interests, be sure to use appropriate industry buzz words where appropriate.
List your Experience – Briefly describe each company, what it does and what you did there. Again use clear succinct phrases.
Distinguish yourself – Add additional information to enhance your profile, join groups of interest and list trade associations or other organisations you belong to.
Build Connections – The connections you make add credibility to your profile.
Get your Profile to Rank in Google – Your public profile is available to view by anyone and will appear in search engines, so think carefully about what you want to share with the world and use it to your advantage.
Answer and ask Questions – Asking and answering questions in your field will help establish your expertise and raise your profile on the network.

Photo used under Creative Commons from NickStarr

Become an Authority and Increase your Search Rank

odyssey — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:44:10 +0100

Authority in the business world is a powerful tool, it demands respect, trust and admiration.
Authority also plays a big part in online marketing since Google’s PageRank® algorithm determines websites’ authority and ranks them accordingly.

If people think your website is important enough to link to then so will search engines. The more authority you gain from people linking to you from their website/blog/social bookmarking page etc the greater your rank will become in search engines such as Google.

In order to to become an authority that others link to online you need a website with indispensable content that demonstrates your expertise, rather than a website that simply claims expertise.

Become an authority by learning all you can about your niche and sharing your knowledge online.

Authority is all about perception, perceived authority can outrank actual authority because what other people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

Rules for Building Authority Online

Define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – what sets you apart from everyone else?
Get a professional website design and branding
Make friends with influential people in your industry – use social networking sites such as Twitter and LinkedIn as well as traditional networking events
Don’t sell to people… Educate them and demonstrate your knowledge to build trust and authority
Create indispensable content that other people will want to share with their peers
Grab people’s attention - write killer headlines and stand-firsts
Build a subscriber base – get people listening to what you have to say
Learn the basics of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Picture used under Creative Commons from PaperThinSerge

Web Development and Design Process

odyssey — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:54:32 +0100

Creating an effective website that will generate sales involves a number of different skills and processes to work in harmony.

Branding – Creating a brand identity or defined proposition for your company.
Web Design – Designing a website incorporating the brand identity and features required.
Web Development – Building a website from the web design visuals.
Copyrighter – Writing killer sales copy.
Search Engine Marketing – Optimising and marketing your website through organic and/or pay-per-click channels.

If all goes to plan, the development process will result in a clear and focused website that:

Clearly explains what the company offers.
Displays your products and services.
Is potentially ecommerce enabled with a secure straight-forward checkout process.
Ranks well in search engines.
Makes it easy for potential customers to get in touch.
Establishes you as an expert in your field through free information, articles or a blog etc.
Can be kept up-to-date easily.
Gets visitors to opt-in to your newsletter subscription.
Gives visitors a reason to return.
Tracks and monitors your website traffic.

Read more about the web development process here.

If you’re still not convinced you need a website, read our post: Why do I need a website for my business.

Picture used under Creative Commons from veribatim

Leveraging Social Media for your Business

odyssey — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:48:57 +0100

There has been an unprecedented rise in social networking websites over the last couple of years, and even with the success of sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter businesses have been slow to take advantage of the potential benefits they can provide.

The power of social networking is that it allows companies and brands to engage with their customers in a two-way dialogue rather than a traditional marketing broadcast approach. This allows businesses to manage their customer relations, talk to a customer focus groups, raise awareness of their products through different types of media, while allowing supporters of a brand to endorse your services and keep up-to-date on your latest products.

Creating a Social Media Strategy

Before you start signing up to every social networking site you can find, it’s worth deciding what you are trying to achieve and focusing your time and efforts in those networks where your target customer base congregate.

Define what you are trying to achieve:

Increase brand awareness
Increase customer retention
Provide a feedback mechanism
Target new or existing customers
Get customers to share their ideas
Involve customers in your product development
Recruit employees

Then start building your communities on the social networking sites you have chosen, but make sure you follow the social etiquette and don’t fall into the trap that companies like Habitat did recently. Decide who in your organisation will be responsible for the up-keep of your networks and set processes in place for managing your online reputation.

Photo used under Creative Commons from caseywest

Domain Name Dilemma

odyssey — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:43:04 +0100

There’s an interesting piece of advice in the November 2009 issue of .NET magazine concerning choosing unique domain names.

A reader wrote in to the Expert Advice column explaining that he had bought a .co.uk domain and the equivalent .tv and .mobi variants for a website he was about to set-up. However after purchasing the domains the reader stumbled across the .net version of the domain which was already an existing website owned by someone else and providing very similar content to what the reader had planned for his site.

The reader wanted to know if it was best to continue developing his site or think of another domain name that was unique.

The advice given by .NET magazine’s legal expert Struan Robertson was:

“I’d urge you to pick a different name. That’s partly because a complaint from the established site is foreseeable.”

Struan mentions that keeping the name would cause “confusion in the marketplace”, by “harming their goodwill”

“It’s generally in you’re best interests to avoid this type of battle”

Struan goes on to advise:

“Pick a new name that lets you establish your own brand identity from the start.” “Even if you were to win [a dispute] in the end, such a dispute would cost you far, far more than a few domain names.”

Displaying Business Contact Details on your Website

odyssey — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:13:56 +0100

Providing details about your business gives visitors to your website confidence that they are dealing with a legitimate company, it is also required by UK law. The absence of such information will generally arouse suspicion and most probably affect the potential of your website to drive sales.

Whether you are trading as a sole trader, partnership or limited company you need to display certain information about your company on your website.

You are required to show the full name of the company, registered number, registered office address, email address, VAT number if applicable and the place of registration.

If you are a sole trader or partnership you are required to display your name and partners’ names and business addresses in addition to the information above.

Email Marketing Campaign Tips

odyssey — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:43:32 +0100

Maintaining a customer database can be very useful to your business, it’s worth remembering that it’s much easier to sell your products and services to existing customers, than find new ones. Therefore it’s important to maintain a dialogue with people you have previously done business with, as it’s a good way to inform those customers about promotions, new services and new or updated product lines that they may be interested in.

Your website should feature a newsletter sign-up form to encourage visitors to register for your newsletter, but don’t forget your offline marketing and customer contact points. The more you spread the word about your newsletter and inform customers of the benefits of signing up, the more readers you’ll get.
Try asking for customers email addresses when they purchase a product in your shop, or include an newsletter opt-in when they purchase a product online. Don’t forget to make sure customers understand why you’re asking for the information, they’ll then be expecting the newsletter.

Maybe you already send out a printed catalogue or special offer leaflet to your customer base, but why not offer special incentives to those customers that sign-up for the email newsletter. For example: You might want to point out that the best offers get snapped up by email subscribers because they get to see your promotions before the printed catalogue reaches other customers.

Offering special incentives to email subscribers “adds value” to your newsletter and will ensure your email gets subscribers who are more likely to read and value the broadcast.

Make the newsletter useful and don’t abuse your marketing list by sending out newsletters too often. Ideally you want your newsletters to be targeted to the individual as much as possible as this will ensure the products and services included are relevant to the recipient. Relevancy will help you maximise the sales achieved via the newsletter, so it’s worth putting in the effort when you’re creating your email campaign.

Remember: It’s very time-consuming to grow a customer database so make sure you don’t abuse your list, as the unsubscribe link is always only a click away!

Sketch used under Creative Commons from 10ch

Competitor Analysis

odyssey — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:44:00 +0100

There's a well known quote that rings true in the business world as well as warfare.

"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer"

By keeping a close eye on your competitors (enemies) you will get to know all their products and services, strengths and weaknesses, sales strategy and position within the market etc.

With this valuable information you can determine any weaknesses in your defence and concentrate your efforts in those areas. You'll also learn to know what prices the market will bare for your products and services and be able to offer more competitive prices to win new customers. As well as weaknesses in your own product offering you'll discover weaknesses in your competitors which you maybe able to exploit.

What is your USP?

Knowing all your competitors intimately will also help you learn what your unique selling proposition is within your market.

A (Unique Selling Proposition) USP is the thing that makes your product or service stand out from your competitors.

Knowing your competitors products and services will help you learn what's unique in your own business offering, it may even lead you to create a product or service which fills a gap in the market that no other company currently sells.

Value perceived by customers is relative to rivals offerings, so making competitor knowledge an important part of your corporate strategy.

Competitor Profiling

Analysing other company's websites, literature, blogs, advertisements and newsletters will allow you to build up a good profile of what types of customers they are trying to attract, who their clients are and what marketing techniques they are using to attract new business. This is all valuable information that you can put to good use with your own business.

You will discover some competitors are an aspiration of where you want your business to be, some others will be of a similar size and more comparable to your own. So use this exercise to create well defined action points to grow and position your business to where you want it to be.

Go ahead and do some competitor profiling!

Photo used under Creative Commons from petercastleton

Virtual Receptionist Services

odyssey — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:31:00 +0100

There are a multitude of telephony services you can subscribe to help your small business manage its calls. They range from virtual receptionists, free phone numbers, memorable numbers and message taking services, the list goes on...

There are even Pay as You Go services that enable you to set-up services with very little outlay and no monthly subscriptions or contracts to sign. Pay as You Go services like these enable small businesses or even freelancers to enjoy services similar to those of much larger organisations.

Answer.co.uk Message Taking Service

We have been trialling one such Pay as You Go service called Answer.co.uk for a couple of months now which is a no frills message taking service provided by Internet Communications Limited and it has proved to be very professional and cost effective.

Answer.co.uk Benefits

No upfront set-up fees or hidden costs
Pay as you go (Uses Google Checkout to top up your account)
£1 + VAT charge per message taken
Calls taken 24/7 365 days a year by UK receptionists
Multiple employees can be set up as users
Text message alerts when you receive a telephone message
Web access to message inbox
Customisable greetings
15 minutes to set up

Answer.co.uk Limitations

You cannot use the service to patch calls through to your phone
Although you are not charged for hoax calls or wrong numbers you will get charged for telesales calls
You need to use the service at least once a month
Only 0208 numbers are available

If you run a UK based business find out more about the Answer.co.uk message taking service, or watch the video tour.

Pure Jam Virtual Receptionist Service

If you are looking more for control over how your business calls are handled such as patching calls through to your landline or mobile phone then another service you should consider is Pure Jam.
Like Answer.co.uk this service also doesn't have a set-up fee, but you are charged per minute when calls are patched through to your landline or mobile. There are a number of monthly tariffs available starting at £25 with no inclusive patched call time, with more expensive tariffs including lower call rates and inclusive patched call minutes.
The receptionist will decide whether to patch a call to you or take a message depending on your current status or schedule. If you are available and want to take your own messages, then this is free.

You can quickly change your status by text message or using Twitter. Pure Jam also has a mobile version of the message inbox to allow you to browse your messages while away from the office.

Find out more about Pure Jam Virtual Receptionist service.

13 Testimonial Tips

odyssey — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:46:28 +0100

Testimonials are a good way of sharing existing customers experiences of your products and services with potential customers, and can be powerful marketing tools for your business.

If customers who have bought your product or used your service are willing to praise your company/product or service then new customers will have more confidence in your company and the service you offer.

Amazon.com is a great example of how product testimonials can work for both the consumer and the retailer.

Effective Testimonials

Not all testimonials are equal! For testimonials to work they have to look and sound genuine.
Here are a few tips to help you pick and choose which testimonials to publish on your website or company literature.

13 Tips for client testimonials

Never use fake testimonials.
Only use testimonials where you can publish the first name, surname and company* of your customer.
Don't use vague testimonials, favour personal and detailed testimonials.
Potential customers want to read what other customers who have first hand experience of your product thought.
Include a few testimonials that aren't a 100% positive as these will provide credibility.
Ask for feedback rather than a testimonial as it's less formal and you'll receive a better response.
Use photos of your customers to add credibility to your testimonials.
Don't over edit a testimonial, often informal language is perceived as being more genuine.
Use testimonials that back up your product or service benefits.
Address consumer fears in your testimonials and how your customers overcame them.
Include testimonials that answer popular consumers questions about your product or service.
Use testimonials where the end user describes how your product or service enriched their lives/their company etc.
Experiment with video testimonials. These can be tricky to get right, but can be very effective.

(* company may or may not be applicable depending on your business, but you may want to add location, age etc instead)

What Does Web Accessibility Mean?

odyssey — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:26:04 +0100

Everyone has the right to use the internet regardless of whether they have sight problems, colour-blindness or other impairments, which is why the UK Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) also applies to websites.

This law applies to all websites and therefore you have a legal responsibility to ensure your website does not discriminate against disabled visitors to your site by anticipating the requirements of disabled people.

By not complying you open yourself up to criticism, bad publicity or even legal action!

What's involved?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a series of guidelines on Web Accessibility which the majority of web developers and designers should be aware of, but it is always worth confirming with your web developer that your site needs to meet at least priority level 1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 before any work is carried out.

Examples of Accessibility Scenarios

Users should be able to resize text on a website to a comfortable level for reading, either through the appropriate web browser menu or using a facility on the website itself.
Visitors with colour blindness should be able to read and understand a website regardless of the colour of the text, and therefore require a good contrast ratio between the text and the background colour.
Blind visitors should be able to use screen readers (software programs that read the contents of the screen aloud to a user) or Braille devices to browse a website and understand its content.
Users with seizure disorders, such as some types of epilepsy should have the ability to turn off any animation or effects that may trigger seizures.
Individuals with memory impairments rely on consistent navigation to browse a website.
People who cannot use a mouse for one reason or another should be able to use alternative methods such as keyboard shortcuts.
Providing deaf visitors with transcripts of video and audio presentations.

8 Benefits of Accessible Websites

Increased reach to disabled web users.
More business from impaired customers or older people.
Greater compatibility with handheld devices used for browsing the web, such as mobile phones.
Faster loading websites and lower bandwidth costs.
Cross-browser compatibility.
Ability to promote your website as being accessible.
Accessible website are generally search engine friendly.
Compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act.

Web Browser Testing

odyssey — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:27:00 +0100

An essential part of web development involves building websites that are cross-browser compatible. Cross-browser compatibility ensures a website will look and function correctly in a range of different web browsers.
Unlike a few years ago when Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominated the web browser market, the chances are users are more likely to use a wider variety of web browsers to navigate the internet, such as Apple's Safari web browser or Mozilla's Firefox, there are others too such as Opera and Google's Chrome. This is down to a number of reasons including the increase in popularity of Apple Mac computers and well publicised security problems with Internet Explorer.

Web browser testing is essential to ensure a user experience is consistent irrespective of which browser a user chooses to browse the web but also to ensure you don't alienate a potential customers.

Supporting the latest versions of each web browser isn't necessarily good enough however. Often, as is the case with Internet Explorer (IE), a website has to be compatible with a number of versions of a web browser as is currently the case with IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8. The stats below obtained from Google Analytics show Internet Explorer versions used to browse a client website.

To determine what web browsers you should support you need to analyse your log files* for browser versions your visitors are using to browse your website. If you don't have a website yet then check the latest web browser statistics for the market share of each browser version.

* If you are using Google Analytics, you can obtain browser share like the graph below by clicking on Visitors > Browser Capabilities > Browsers in the left navigation.

If you already have a website and you're wondering what it looks like on different web browsers you might want to try browser shots, a free web browser testing tool (However I would suggest that you only test web browsers you wish to support).

Remember: If you are commissioning a web developer to build a website on your behalf ensure you stipulate what web browsers you wish to support before any web development begins.

The Web Development Process

odyssey — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:56:00 +0100

From an initial client brief through to site launch the web development process can be divided up into a number of stages. Here is a quick overview of what is involved in each stage.

Analysis

The analysis stage involves talking to the client to gather requirements and determining the websites objectives.

The analysis stage will ensure the team understand the client's needs which is vital in ensuring the project delivers a solution that achieves the client's objectives.

Skills and resources required to complete the project will be assessed and a project plan will be put in place to deliver the website in line with the client's requirements.

A cost to deliver the project will be calculated and a proposal sent to the client.

Information Architecture & User Experience Specification

Assuming the client is happy to proceed and a signed proposal and deposit have been received, the specification stage will begin.

This involves defining how the information contained in the website will be presented in the form of a sitemap and set of wire frames diagrams. These help develop the hierarchy, structure and navigation of the web pages that form the website and how each page will be laid out structurally.

This stage is important as it will effect how users locate the information on your site they are looking for, a poorly structured site can hinder potential customers, which may mean fewer sales if they can't find what they are looking for quickly enough.

If the website contains interactivity that cannot be captured by a wireframe or sitemap, a functional spec will be written to communicate the intended functionality.

Web Content

Ideally the web copy should be sourced from the client before the web design stage as the content forms a large proportion of the design and the length of the copy on key pages can influence how a page is laid out and designed.

Where possible professionally written web copy is preferred as it will ideally include keywords and phrases to assist the search engine optimisation process.

Once the copy has been written another copywriter should proof-read it for typos, style and inconsistencies.

Web Design

A web designers job will involve taking output from the first three stages of the development process (the client brief, web copy, site map and wireframes) together with any existing corporate branding to produce a design for the website.

Web Development

Following the client approval of the design, the development phase can begin. This stage will see the design transformed into HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Depending on the requirements of the client, a content management system may be built onto the website to allow the client to make website amends through an easy to use administration panel.

Once complete, a prototype will be deployed to a test website so the client can submit feedback.

Quality Assurance

The QA testing phase aims to ready the website for launch.

The website will be tested on a number of popular web browsers and versions (Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox, Safari, Chrome), platforms (Apple Mac, PC) and monitor sizes.

The website code will be checked for errors and conformity to W3C guidelines for HTML and CSS. Web accessibility compliance will also be checked.

The site will be inspected for broken links and missing images, and any forms on the site will be rigorously tested.

Deployment

The deployment of the website will differ depending if the site is new or a redesign of an existing website. It generally involves migrating databases and website files to a live server, pointing domain name(s), setting up mailboxes and generally ensuring the site is running smoothly.

Deploying a website that is replacing an existing website is more involved as it requires special instructions in-place to ensure users who have bookmarked pages of the old site will be redirected to the most appropriate page on the new website. This also helps search engines update its index.

Website Promotion

This stage is vital to ensure you get visitors and potential customers arriving at your new website.

Depending on the most appropriate strategy for your website this can include search engine marketing, search engine optimisation techniques and or traditional offline marketing.

Maintenance and Updating

Most websites will require updating every now and then to keep them current, these may be simple content updates made through a content management system or slight changes to the design/navigation which require technical assistance.

Occasionally a bug or error might be discovered with the website and need correcting.

Organic SEO Takes Time and Effort

odyssey — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:48:00 +0100

If you require your website to attract new customers from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing then read on.

Search Engine Optimisation is important and should play a key role in defining the content and structure of your website before you even consider hiring a web developer, but SEO doesn't stop when the website goes live, a search engine friendly website is only part of the optimisation process.

SEO is a continual process and can be broken up into two categories, off-page optimisation and on-page optimisation. On-page optimisation ensures your website is search engine friendly and optimised for your target keywords and phrases, but a search engine friendly website alone is rarely enough to drive traffic to your site unless your business is a very niche market. To improve your search engine ranking you will need to perform some off-page optimisation to establish your website's reputation and authority.

Off-page Optimisation

Off-page optimisation is the process of building reputation for your website content which in turn aims to increase your ranking in search engines for your target keywords and phrases. Reputation on the web is measured in backlinks to your website. Google calculates your website's reputation with its PageRank algorithm and the other main search engines use similar ranking methods.

Link Building

There are a number of methods and strategies involved in gaining reputation, but unfortunately most of them require time and effort to acquire. These include:

Creating link bait with a blog (creating content other people want to link to)
Reciprocal linking (swapping links with other websites)
Purchasing links - buying links is a violation of Google's webmaster guidelines
Asking similar/complementary organisations for a link to your website
Promoting via social networking sites (e.g. social bookmarking sites like delicious.com, and social media sites like digg.com)
Forum posting
Press releases
Directory listings

Not all Backlinks are Equal

The best links you can get to your website are links from authority websites whose sector/business/topic closely relates to your website. If you are building links just to build PageRank you are going about the process in the wrong way, build links that ultimately help humans find your site from related websites. If you do this you won't go too far wrong, just beware that Google does not like the link building process as it undermines the PageRank system. So please read Google's Webmaster Guidelines and stick to them.

Aim for quality links over quantity, and remember SEO requires time and patience. Don't expect miracles over night. If you can't wait for the fruits of your SEO to take effect you should consider pay-per-click advertising as an interim solution.

Photo used under Creative Commons from Scudsone.

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Should I try a Free Website Builder or use a Professional Web Agency?

odyssey — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:57:21 +0100

There are a lot of free website builders cropping up on the internet lately, and during a recession it can be tempting for a small business or sole trader to use a free or cheap "pay monthly" website builder rather than forking out a lump sum to a professional web design agency.

A professionally designed site will almost always surpass a cheap or free out-of-the-box solution in almost everyway, but don't dismiss them straight outright. A lot of the website builders have free trials that allow you to demo the websites to see what you get.

Get a Web Presence!

Studies show that half of the UKs small businesses don't have a website, and half of those businesses think that a website wouldn't deliver any real benefits.

These businesses might find that the low cost of an off the shelf website builder package could tempt them into creating their first website. Chances are they won't regret the decision!

If you are one of the businesses without a web presence, you should read our post entitled why do I need a website for my business.

Upgrade to a Professional Website

After trialling an out-of-the-box website, the business owner will have a fairly good idea what the package can and can't do and be in a good position to create a list of requirements for a custom designed website. These may include:

A bespoke web design tailored to business requirements
A content management system to update the website
Website analytics to monitor traffic to the site
Search engine optimisation to help improve the site ranking
Marketing and website promotion advice or campaign management
Custom functionality

Paying for a Website

Like the majority of businesses web agencies are also being effected by the recession and as such many are prepared to go the extra mile to win new clients. This can work to the advantage of a small business by being able to negotiate on price or get more website for the budget.
You may also find many agencies will also allow you to spread the cost of a website over a number of months to lessen the burden.

Determine your Website Objectives

odyssey — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:28:28 +0100

In order to build a website that meets your business needs it is important to determine what you want your website to achieve from the outset. That way the site can be designed to better achieve those goals.

For instance you may wish your website to:

Sell your products or services online
Build brand awareness of a particular product or service
Manage or promote an event
Gather market research through surveys etc
Generate sales leads for your products or services
Provide marketing literature for your products or services
Build awareness of your organisation

As you can imagine an ecommerce website would be structured somewhat different to a website promoting an event, but even so it is important that your website objectives are communicated to the web design team, as your objectives may not be immediately clear from your brief.

For example:

If we know a major goal of your site is to generate sales leads. We will design the site to include "Call to Action" elements to entice the web users (your potential customers) to enquire about your products.

On the other hand if your website is promoting an event, which is taking place in 3 months the search engine marketing plan we would recommend would be completely different to any other type of site and would favour pay-per-click advertising.

Information Architecture: Product Navigation

odyssey — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:06:06 +0100

Information Architecture put simply is the planning stage of a website and involves organising and designing the structure or "blueprint" of a site and should be carried out before any design or development takes place.
Here is a good example of the importance of Information Architecture.

Choosing Product Navigation Categories

You must consider the end user when deciding what categorisation to use for website product navigation.

We could categorise a company's products by brand, model number, manufacturer, or by function but which is best?

Ask yourself these questions:

What makes the most sense to the customer?
Will a customer who is new to our products/brand be able to find what they're looking for?
Will a user who knows what product they need be able to find it quickly?

Categorise Your Products Carefully

Some websites make the mistake of only categorising products by brand/model or manufacturer and using this as the product navigation on their website. In this case customers who are not familiar with the company's products will struggle to find what they are looking for.

For example, the Peugeot UK website categorise their cars by model number, 107, 207, 308, 3008, 407, 4007, 807 etc. As a potential customer who is not familiar with Peugeot's model numbers I don't know what models to consider if I'm looking for an estate car. Do I click through every model category to try and find what I'm looking for or give up?

Meta Tags and Search Ranking

odyssey — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:46:17 +0100

There are a number of meta tags that can be used on web pages, this post focuses on the two most misunderstood meta tags: meta keywords and meta description.

The Meta Keywords Tag

A lot of newcomers to search engine optimisation (SEO) believe that optimising a website involves writing a long list of keywords that describe your business, products and services which are then added to the website's meta keywords tags. This was indeed the original idea behind the meta keywords tag, but over time this system was abused by webmasters "stuffing" the meta keywords tag with as many keywords as possible in order to improve their search engine ranking. This led a lot of search engines reducing the influence of meta keywords or ignoring them completely.
John Mueller of Google Webmaster Central stated:

"we generally ignore the contents of the "keywords" meta tag. As with other possible meta tags, feel free to place it on your pages if you can use it for other purposes - it won't count against you."

The Meta Description Tag

This meta tag is used to describe or summarise the page contents, it generally doesn't influence a web page's search engine ranking, but Google for instance may use its contents to create the description displayed in the Google search results. Google state:
"While the use of a description meta tag is optional and will have no effect on your rankings, a good description can result in a better snippet, which in turn can help to improve the quality and quantity of visitors from our search results."

Conclusion

Meta keywords and meta description tags are optional tags and have limited benefit especially in terms of SEO. We recommend you don't spend too much time writing them, instead spend that time writing more content for your website or improving existing content. If you do want to include them focus on the meta tags for the most important pages of your website.

Email Marketing Strategy

odyssey — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:08:00 +0100

Just because email marketing is much cheaper than more traditional forms of marketing communications doesn't mean you should put less thought into your email marketing strategy. Sending the same irrelevant message to thousands of in-boxes who aren't expecting email messages from your company is unlikely to be effective and will gradually reduce your future campaigns effectiveness as your emails will begin to be flagged by spam filters as annoyed end-users add your email to their spam list. Remember that email marketing should not just be used for sales or promotional benefit but to maintain your relationship with existing customers.

Build Customer Lists

Crucial to the success of an email marketing campaign is building an opt-in list of customers who have actively chosen to receive your email updates. How you do this depends on your business and website, but this needs to be thought through carefully as the wording will have a major impact on how many customers opt-in. Don't just obtain your customers email addresses online as these may only represent a fraction of your customer base. Remember you will need to state clearly how you will handle and store their data, especially in relation to 3rd parties; How you do this depends on the data protection laws in your country.

Market Segmentation and Personalisation

Producing emails that are relevant to your email recipients is vital. Invest in Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) and use it to identify different segments within your list, you can then build emails that target specific audiences within your lists to maximise the response from your campaigns. Consider using an approach like Amazon, which sends emails with recommendations based on your previous purchases.

Create Compelling Email Marketing Campaigns

Your email recipients are only one-click away from opting out of your email list, so it is vital that each campaign you send out has a clear purpose and objective which is relevant to each recipient. Remember that your audience has chosen to receive communications from your company so reward these customers for their loyalty by creating offers and promotions especially for them which add value to your marketing messages. Examples of this are restaurants such as La Tasca who regularly send vouchers to their customers by email.

Analyse and Learn from your Email Campaigns

It's important to spend time analysing each campaign you send out to make sure you listen to your audience. Pay attention to hard and soft bounce-backs, keep records of every campaign, what changes you make and the resultant effect of the changes on opt-out requests, click-throughs and 'send to a friend' requests etc. Determine which changes had positive effects and use this information to improve your future campaigns.

Domain Ownership

odyssey — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:49:35 +0100

Your domain name is a valuable asset to your business, without it your website and email would stop working. Yet so many businesses fail to insure that the company's domain names are registered in the company's name.

This can happen for a number of reasons, either way when the relationship between the company and the person who registered the domain (domain registrar) comes to an end, the business will find out sooner or later that they don't control and therefore can't manage their company's domain name.

The company may find that the domain registrar is no longer contactable, may have let the domain name expire or simply retain ownership and make things difficult for the company. If the business cannot negotiate for the domain name to be transferred to the company the last resort is to resolve the dispute through a procedure known as a Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure (UDRP).

A company does not have an automatic right to the domain name and will need to present their case in order to succeed. The business will need to either show that the domain was originally registered in bad faith, the registrar did not have a legitimate interest in it or the domain name is a registered trademark of the business. A UDRP can be a time-consuming and costly process and success is not guaranteed.

It is therefore imperative that a business actively manage their domain names.

Understanding Search Engine Ranking

odyssey — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:48:00 +0100

Lots of website owners want to know how to increase their web site search engine ranking. To help understand how you can improve your ranking in Google and the other major search engines, let me start off by asking a question.

What makes a good search engine?

The answer is to do with relevancy. As a user, when you type a query into a search engine like Google or Bing.com you are hoping to see results that accurately match the type of website you are searching for.

So it is in the search engines best interests to make sure that the best web pages are ranked highest for any query a user may search for, otherwise you will start using a different search engine that gives you better results. As such search engines spend a great deal of time improving how they rank websites, but unfortunately they never tell us exactly what we need to do to achieve better results.

Most search engine optimisation techniques therefore are based on experimentation and guess work, and the techniques frequently change.

What do I mean buy best web pages?

When I used the phrase "The best web pages" I meant the kind that you bookmark to refer to later, the kind that you read and send to your friends, the pages that you find some value in.

Understanding Page Rank

PageRank^TM is a technique introduced by the Google search engine and was the key factor which catapulted Google to where it is today. It can be best explained as a voting system designed to rank pages with the most votes highest.

Each hyperlink on the internet (besides links from your own site) that point to a page on your website is classed as a vote. Not every vote is equal though, links from highly ranked websites and sites relevant to your industry/profession or topic are worth more. The theory behind this is simple. If a website has taken the time and effort to link to one of your web pages then that particular page must have some value. The more websites that link to a page on your website the greater the perceived value of your web page and the higher your page rank.

You can use this Google PageRank Checker to check your own PageRank.

Off-Site Search Engine Optimisation

Techniques aimed at increasing your page rank by gaining so-called "backlinks" to your website is called off-site SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Unfortunately it can be quite difficult to get people to link to business websites because more often than not a business website exists just to sell a product, service or provide corporate information rather than provide content that other people may find useful.

As I mentioned before it is important to get links from related sites, as links from websites that are "off-topic" are worth a lot less that a link from a high quality relevant website.

If you get the opportunity to specify how a website links to you, be sure to specify a short sentence or phrase describing your website to place in the anchor text rather than your business name or website address. For example:

A good backlink might look like this.

24 hour plumbers in the Kent area

And a not so optimised backlink containing your web address.

handyplumbers.co.uk

Avoid black hat SEO

Search engines are cracking down on dubious SEO techniques which attempt to increase their rank quickly by trying to manipulate page rank, so it is best to steer clear of these methods:

link exchanges
reciprocal links
comment spam
and even buying links is a violation of Google's webmaster guidelines

Search engines are constantly improving code which detects such behaviour and can negatively impact your website's ranking or even ban the site from its index if you are not careful!

There are lots of "SEO" companies that will use so called "black hat" techniques to help your website get quick results but these can backfire long after you have parted company with the SEO firm so beware!

How to Choose a Domain Name

odyssey — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 18:29:00 +0100

Before you can launch a website on the World Wide Web, you need a domain name so that visitors can locate your website by typing in your web address, e.g. www.odysseyagency.com

Decide on a Name

In an ideal world you will be able to purchase the perfect domain name for your business, such as www.businessname.com or www.productname.com , but in reality a lot of the most popular domain names will have been taken already, hopefully not by your competitors!

If you are unlucky and your perfect domain has already been taken and is not up for sale, you will have to find the next best domain. Fortunately many websites that sell domain names have a feature to help you choose variations of a name that aren't already registered.

Don't forget that as well as .com and .co.uk, there are other so called top level domain (TLD) extensions such as .net, .org, .info, .biz, etc so it might be worth considering one of those.

Protect Your Brand

Domain names can be purchased fairly cheaply and lots of businesses typically own more than one domain as this can help protect their brand on the internet. For example you may choose to purchase hyphenated versions of your domain name e.g www.odyssey-agency.com and country-specific domain names if your are trading in a specific country e.g. www.odysseyagency.co.uk

Having several domain names can also be an advantage if visitors are typing in your domain name from memory and add a hyphen or type the wrong domain extension (.com rather than .co.uk) because they will still end up at your website. You may even consider buying domain names that are common misspellings of your website.

Country-specific domain names will also normally get preferential search rankings from localised search engines such as Google UK.

Choosing Your Domain Name

Choose your domain name wisely as it can be costly and time-consuming to change it later on. Here are a few points to consider when choosing the domain name for your business:

Think about the goals of your business, will you still be selling the same product in 5 years? An example would be Carphone Warehouse, does anyone still own a car phone? Luckily this doesn't seem to have affected their business.
If possible try to include keywords in your domain that relate to your business. A good example of this is B&Q's domain name www.diy.com.
Try to keep the domain name short and easy to remember.
Try to buy a domain that represents your brand.
Does the domain name you have in mind appeal to your clients/customers?
Purchase domains names of your trademarked products, even if these wont be your main business URL.
Does the name you want have a different meaning in a different country or culture? This is especially important if your business is international.
Was the domain name previously registered? If so was it owned by a spammer and banned from search engines?
Is the domain name you have in mind available as a .com and .co.uk and a .net etc?
Avoid buying domain names with too many hyphens as these can look spammy* and be difficult to communicate to others verbally.

Purchase Your Domains

I would recommend that if you register any domain names you like sooner rather than later, as there is a good chance that if you leave it too long they will no longer be available. I would also advise that you do not type in domains into your web browser just to see if they are taken and instead use a registration tool on one of the many domain name registration sites.

* Websites with domain names consisting of lots of keywords separated with hyphens are considered spammy because this was a technique abused by some search engine optimisers (SEOs) to try and help their sites rank better.

Basic Blogging Tools

odyssey — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:08:00 +0100

There aren’t many tools you need to blog. In fact most blogs will just require a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox and an internet connection because they use a web-based interface for posting to your blog.

There are however lots of tools on the internet that make the process of blogging even easier and you will probably find you will discover your own favourite blogging tools as you continue to develop and write to your blog.

There are tools such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) readers to help keep you up-to-date on what the blogosphere is discussing on the subjects that matter to you. There are social services such as Twitter that allow you to follow and share information with peers, colleagues and “thought leaders” within your industry; there are also online bookmarking services such as Delicious which allow you to bookmark web pages which can be accessed from any computer, anywhere in the world and also shared with people in your network. Other tools like Microsoft OneNote which is part of the Microsoft Office package allows you to collate snippets of information as you browse the web.

A fairly recent discovery for me was Microsoft’s Live Writer, a free Windows blog editor which works with most blogging platforms and makes blogging as easy as writing a Word document.

If you spend a lot of time away from a computer and an internet connection, its always handy to carry a paper-based notepad where you can jot down any blog topic ideas and outline or even write full posts. If you have internet access on your mobile phone, you might find Google Reader Mobile useful to read your news subscriptions on-the-go.

5 Free Blog Tools

A paper-based notepad – jot down blog post ideas, post outlines or full blog posts
An RSS reader – keep informed of the latest topics of discussion (e.g. Google Reader or Bloglines)
Live Writer – a free Windows blog editor
A social bookmarking account – gather share and organise interesting web pages (e.g. Delicious)
A Twitter account – network and share information with peers and key figures in your industry. Tweetdeck is a must-have application for all Twitter users.

10 Reasons to Start a Business Blog

odyssey — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:08:00 +0100

If you are unsure whether your company should be blogging on your corporate website here are ten reasons why you should consider it. You might also want to read our overview of blogging to understand what all the fuss is about.

A blog is an inexpensive marketing tool.
They allow you to talk to your customers in an informal way.
A blog is a good way to inform and educate visitors about your products and services.
A blog can make your company seem more approachable.
Having a blog on your business website can help its search engine ranking overall.
A blog can help you generate sales leads.
You can start a two-way conversation with your customers and show that you listen to what your customers have to say.
Your customers comments can help you develop products and services that better match their needs.
A blog lets you communicate your company's expertise within your sector/industry.
Positive comments left on your blog from happy customers act as recommendations for your product or service.

What Exactly is a Blog?

odyssey — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:07:00 +0100

The term “Blog” is short for “weblog”, blogs are essentially a type of website which initially became popular through personal online diaries and slowly gained in popularity from 2000 onwards around the time Blogger.com was launched.

Why do people use blogs?

Blogs became popular because they made it possible for non-technical people to publish their thoughts online with ease. Blogs also opened up a two-way conversation with the blogs audience through the “comments system”. Blog comments allow readers to voice their opinion by appending messages directly beneath the blog post for all the other readers to read and join in the conversation.

Blogs normally focus on a particular subject and contain text, images and links to other web pages and blogs. Now-a-days blogs can be categorised in many different ways and written in lots of styles.

There are corporate blogs which are used for either internal communication or external marketing, branding or public relations purposes. There are personal blogs which are essentially online diaries or commentaries about the lives of ordinary citizens. Then there are lots of blogs which are focused on a particular genre such as gadget blogs, travel blogs, music blogs etc.

The structure of a blog

Blogs are formed of numerous “posts” which are individual entries posted to the blog. The blog posts are usually arranged in reverse chronological order so the latest post is at the top of the main page. Each post maybe categorised using a number of “tags”, these tags are essentially categories the author (“blogger”) has created to categorise his or her blog.

A blog website is formed of a main page which features the latest dozen-or-so posts, archive pages which are usually formed of a number of pages containing a months worth of posts. Tag pages featuring posts categorised with a particular tag, and finally individual post pages, which contain just one blog post each.

This structure allows visitors to easily browse a blog by category (tag), date, or simply read the latest entries.

What is a blog feed?

Another way blogs differ from other forms of website is that they facilitate “syndication” which means visitors can subscribe to a blog feed and read the latest blog posts as they are published without visiting website directly. This functionality can be found on most blogs where you see the orange RSS symbol, like the one below. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”.

Clicking on the orange RSS button will normally take you to your RSS reader of choice, depending on the web browser you use and if you have configured an RSS reader. Once inside your blog reader you will typically be informed of your subscription to the blog to which you just subscribed.
Examples of popular blog readers are:

Bloglines
iGoogle
Google Reader
and the latest Microsoft Outlook

If you are new to blogging and are interested in starting your own blog or joining the conversation in the Blogosphere. The first step is to begin by signing-up for one of the RSS readers above and subscribing to blogs of interest to get a grasp for how blogging works, how they differ from other forms of media and from one-another, their informal editorial style etc. This research will give you the confidence and knowledge to begin blogging on your chosen topic.

Side-Effects of Changing the Domain Name of an Existing Website

odyssey — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:06:00 +0100

If you already have a website and for whatever reason want to change the domain name of your site doing so may cause some unwanted side-effects that you may not be aware of. However if the correct techniques are followed these can be minimised.

Here are a few reasons for changing your domain name:

Your domain name no longer reflects your business/products or services.
Your domain name expired and you cannot reacquire it.
Your company has changed names or has been rebranded.
You have since purchased a “better” domain name.
You want to have a “.com” rather than a “.co.uk” domain etc.

Here are some of the unwanted side-effects caused by changing your domain name:

Search engines will not update their index of your website straight away, so you will loose visitors for up to 6 weeks (approximately) unless you redirect each page to its new location.
You will loose Google Page Rank (Your ranking in Google) temporarily until Google re-indexes your new domain name.
You may even loose your Google Page Rank altogether if you do not put redirects from your old domain name to your new domain. These redirects need to be the “301 Permanently moved” variety.
Your domain name will need updating in online directories, business stationary, other websites, which can be a time consuming and potentially expensive process.

If you are one of our clients, you’ll be happy to know we will always make sure that we follow the correct procedures to make the process of changing domain names as smooth and painless as possible.

What is Web Analytics?

odyssey — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:05:00 +0100

Web analytics is a term used to describe the processes involved in recording and analysing how visitors use and discover your website.

Here is the official definition according to the Web Analytics Association:

“Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.”

What kind of statistics will web analytics show me?

Geographical location of visitors to the website
How they found the website
If they found the website from a search engine, what keywords they searched for
How the visitors navigate through the website
What the most popular pages on the website are
The average time a visitor spends on the website
The effectiveness of your marketing campaigns
How many pages the average visitor browses
and many more…

Google Analytics – web analytics from Google

There are numerous web analytics software vendors, however if you intend to use Google Adwords pay-per-click advertising, Google Analytics will draw information from your Google Adwords campaigns and let you analyse how well your visitors are converting, so it makes sense to use Google’s analytics offering.

Google Analytics is a free but powerful web analytics tool. Google describes it as “Enterprise-class”, but don’t let that put you off. Even though Google Analytics has a lot of advanced features, it’s quite easy to just stick to the basics and get just the information you need right at your finger tips.

You can even customise reports to show only the data you are interested in and have them emailed to you or a colleague on a regular basis!

What’s more our Search Engine Marketer has passed the Google Analytics Individual Qualification, so we are well placed to help you make the most of Google Analytics.

What are SEM and SEO and do I need them?

odyssey — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:04:00 +0100

In the screenshot below is a results page from a Google search, often referred to in the industry as a SERP (Search Engine Results Page). The blue highlighted region indicates the “natural” or “organic” search results, whereas the red highlighted area refers to the sponsored adverts.

PPC stands for Pay per click, which is another name for the sponsored adverts which appear on the search results page. As the term suggests you pay only when a user clicks on your advert.

To get your website featured in the sponsored adverts region, you will need to sign-up for Google Adwords and start a PPC campaign. In as little as 15 minutes your adverts will go live on Google and you will start attracting visitors to your website!

To get your website featured in the organic listings Google will need to find your website and index it in its database. Your website’s ranking in a search engine will be based on many factors too complicated to cover here, but in order to improve your organic ranking it helps to have a search engine friendly or optimised website and promote your website using recognised SEO techniques.

SEO refers to Search Engine Optimisation the activities carried out to generate qualified traffic to a website in order to appear in the “organic” or “natural” results.

What’s the difference between SEO and SEM?

The term SEM refers to Search Engine Marketing and is used to describe all the activities that encompass the promotion of a website using search engines. SEM can mean either SEO and PPC combined or one or the other.

Why do I Need a Website for my Business?

odyssey — Sat, 30 May 2009 14:40:00 +0100

Some businesses even today don’t see the value or need for a website. Here are a number of reasons to help make that decision easier.

Keep up with the competition

More and more businesses have websites compared to a few years ago, so the chances are most of your competition have websites too. Having a website allows your customers or potential customers to find and browse your products or services at their own leisure, and potentially find out a lot more information than they would through other forms of communication.

Cost effective advertising

Designing and printing professional-looking catalogues and brochures is an expensive job, and when your products or services change you need to reprint them. The cost of building and maintaining a website has fallen over the last few years as the industry has started to mature and the competition has grown.
If you opt for a content management system, then you’ll be able to update your website yourself!

Attract new customers

Whether your business sells directly to consumers or to other businesses, the volume of business done over the web continues to climb year upon year. Many people now use a search engine such as Google to source information, products or services.

In order to tap into this potential market you first need to have a website from which you can start to build your online presence.

If you are still unsure whether there is money to be made, don’t believe the hype, ask your customers!

Sell your products or services to a larger audience

The web has opened up a whole new market place for many businesses that used to only offer their products and services to customers in their local vicinity. Many companies now successfully sell their products over the internet to a national or even international audience that just wasn’t possible before.

What’s more, creating an ecommerce website isn’t as complicated or as expensive as it used to be.

Improve your competitive advantage

The web has started to level the playing field. A well designed and optimised website will allow a small company to compete with much larger companies online. The web has a much lower cost of entry allowing you more room to shout about your products and compete with the big guys.

Your online presence is always available 24/7

You may not answer the phone or your emails around the clock, but with a website your products or services are online 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We all lead such busy lives that it is entirely possible that your customers might want to research or purchase your products or services outside your normal opening hours.

Publish an FAQ on your site

How many hours a week do you spend answering the same customer queries by email or telephone?
If you had an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on your website you could direct your customers to your FAQ page and save yourself a lot of time and effort.

If you’re coming around to the idea of getting a website built for your business, make sure you read this article to help make you aware of the cost of maintaining your website once you’ve had it built.

How to get your Website in the Search Engines

odyssey — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:43:00 +0100

Search engines are a popular method of finding websites on the internet. They DO NOT search the whole internet contrary to popular belief, instead they keep a very very large database of websites (known as the index) which they know about and search those, when you perform a text search.

Search engines such as Google have special programs called robots which continuously scour the internet. These robots are used to retrieve information from websites on the internet. This information is fed back to the search engine for processing and the output of this process is added to the search engine’s index.

Getting your website indexed

As such there are no guarantees your website will appear in search engines, the search engine must become aware of your website before it can be found in the search engine index.
There are a couple of ways of achieving this. You can submit your site to a search engine and wait until it gets indexed, or you can wait until the search engine discovers your site by itself, which is the preferred method.
Either way you may have to wait up to 6 weeks for your website to be added to the index.

As long as your website is linked to from at least one other (indexed) website then your website will be found by the major search engines without you having to do any work whatsoever.

No need to submit to hundreds of search engines

In the UK, Google has almost a 90% share of the search market, the other major search engines are Live Search, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. So its best to avoid SEO companies or SEO computer programs that claim to submit your site to 500+ search engines. Even if they do submit your site to that many search engines, what good will it do you if 98% of internet users use Google, Yahoo, Ask or Live Search?

Your Website and Legal Compliance

odyssey — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:44:00 +0100

When you are thinking about what content you want on your new business website one of the last things your mind will probably be a privacy policy, terms and conditions, or a copyright statement.

You may also not realise that the UK data protection act may be applicable to you if you handle personal information through your website, or that your website needs to be built with accessibility in mind.

Privacy Policies

A privacy policy allows you to state how you will respect the privacy of your users, by explaining what information you collect and how you store and use it.

Cookies
A form of data collection which your website may or may not use is the cookie. Your privacy policy should also mention your website’s use of cookies, and how to refuse them. Be sure to ask the company that builds your website if cookies are being used, as the use of cookies by websites is covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive).

A sample privacy policy can be downloaded from the BusinessLink.gov.uk.

Terms and Conditions

A terms and conditions notice provides visitors with information about the content of your website and what they are permitted and not permitted to use it for. A sample website usage terms and conditions can be downloaded from the Business Link website.

Copyright Notice

A copyright notice allows you to express how your website content can be used, downloaded or distributed by your visitors. A sample internet copyright notice can be downloaded from Business Link. You may also wish to consider licensing your work at Creative Commons, this will allow you to keep your copyright, but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit.

Data Protection Act and your Website

The UK Data Protection Act requires all organisations which handle personal information to comply with a number of important principles regarding privacy and disclosure.

There are eight principles which are designed to ensure that personal information is handled properly. The Data Protection Act gives individuals the right to know what information is held about them.

If you process personal information on your website then you will need to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office. This currently costs £35 a year and adds your business to the public register of data controllers.

Accessibility

The UK Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) refers to the provision of goods, facilities and services. The act makes it “unlawful for a service provider to discriminate against a disabled person by refusing to provide any service which it provides to members of the public.” The act means that service providers must “take reasonable steps to change a practice which makes it unreasonably difficult for disabled people to make use of its services.”

Make sure the company that is building your website makes your website accessible, otherwise you could face legal action.

Beware of Telephone Salesmen Purporting to be from Google

odyssey — Sun, 10 May 2009 14:46:00 +0100

Unfortunately there are people that do not want to make an honest living and decide instead to set-up businesses which scam people into handing over their hard-earned cash. The Internet is no exception.

While the majority of search marketing firms are legitimate businesses, there are a few bad eggs that give the industry a bad name.

There are people that are ringing up website owners purporting to be from Google, offering top rankings for certain search phrases and putting them into contracts of 6 months or so.

If you are approached by a company who are trying to sell you something on the telephone, get them to send you an email with their contact details and end the conversation.

Do not make a decision on the spot, say you need time to think about it. This will give you time to research the company and make a more informed decision.

Trading Standards give this advice:

“There are a number of steps you can take to avoid rogue publishers such as never agreeing to an advertisement over the phone, always asking for written details…”

If and when you get an email with their details, perform a search on the company name, look at their website and then at other results your search brings back. If they are using free web-mail email addresses, such as @googlemail.com, or @hotmail.com be suspicious.

If their email address is not a free web-mail address such as @badcompany.com, do a look up on their domain name to see who it has been registered to; Use a Whois service to do this.

Try doing a search for their telephone number as this sometimes brings up interesting results.

If you have already entered into such an agreement, then you should contact your local Trading Standards office.

Create a Google Business Listing to Help Increase Visitors

odyssey — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:48:00 +0100

Google has a facility that allows you to add your business listing to its search results all for free!

The business listings are part of Google Maps and appear embedded in Google’s search results. I searched for Plumbers in this instance and based on my location, Google displayed plumbers in my local area.

This is an invaluable marketing tool, which you should take advantage of, as you may get many more click-throughs to your website from one of these listings than you would have done relying on your organic search ranking alone, and the best thing is its free and easy to set up.

Setting Up Your Listing

Go to Google’s Local Business Center page and click the “Add new business” button to sign-up.

You will need to fill in a form with your business’ details so that Google has enough information to create a Google Maps listing. Be sure to write a good description as a lot of people leave this blank; this is a your chance to “sell” your services and stand-out from the crowd!

Once you’ve entered all your details you’ll have to verify your listing before it goes live, this can be done by telephone, text message or post. On receiving the verification code, you’ll need to enter it into the Google Business Center control panel. Once this has been verified your business listing will go live within a day or so and you should hopefully start to get more click-throughs and more sales as a result!

Determine Your Long-Term Website Total Cost of Ownership

odyssey — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:02:00 +0100

Your website is a shop window for your business, which will need to grow and change with your business and be able to inform your customers of your latest products or services, news, awards etc.

A common pitfall sometimes overlooked by new website owners is the on-going cost of ownership. There are very few website owners who will be happy leaving their website unchanged since the day it went live, but they don’t often factor in the cost of maintaining and keeping the website up-to-date.
Likewise many people forget that a website will not magically sell itself. Time and money will need to be invested in search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) in order to bring new customers in. The same can be said for retaining existing customers, where keeping a database of names and addresses can be very beneficial to communicate with your existing client base.

If you are looking to get a website built or re-designed it makes a lot of sense to spend a few minutes thinking about the total cost of ownership (TCO). How much will your website actually cost beyond the initial design and build stage?

You should consider the following:

Website design & build
Search engine optimisation (on-page and off-page) – Off-page SEO is an on-going specialist task which will help your site in Google’s “organic” listings
Search engine marketing (SEM) – Pay per click advertising e.g. Google Adwords
Website maintenance – Updating the site text, adding new sections etc
Content management systems – Enabling you to update the website yourself
HTML newsletters design, build and broadcast costs

Some web design companies will offer all of these services, whereas some agencies will specialise in only certain areas.
It makes sense to look at the track record of companies you hire in order to make sure not only you can work with them, but that they can work with other agencies you hire to deliver the type of service you require, in the time-frames your business demands.

Domain Name Registration Length Can Impact Google Ranking

odyssey — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:35:00 +0100

Whether you’ve just bought a domain name for your website or its up for renewal, you may wish to consider the fact that Google and potentially other search engines take into consideration the length of time you’ve purchased the domain for during their ranking algorithms.

They do this and other domain related checks to try and determine whether the domain is potentially a throwaway or spam domain, rather than a quality website they wish to place in their index and send visitors to.

So it is always wise to spend a little extra and renew a domain for longer than the minimal renewal length, which is normal between 1 and 2 years. After all domain name purchases aren’t very expensive, and the benefits are clear.

Even if your domain is not up for renewal in the foreseeable future, most Domain Name Registrars will allow you to extend the domain registration period.

Introduction to Content Management Solutions

odyssey — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:38:00 +0100

The idea behind a content management system or CMS is to enable websites to be updated easily without the need to have any knowledge of how to write and update web pages using HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language) and FTP (File Transfer Protocol). Unlike HTML which is a standard as defined by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), content management systems are not, and because of this they vary a lot. Some are open-source and are free to download, install and use, whereas some are bespoke implementations created for especially for specific websites or organisations. None are created the same and all have strengths and weaknesses.

Basic Elements of a CMS

A content management system usually has a log-in area, usually a web interface where you log-in to modify the website content or upload documents/images to the website. When you save your pages they normally get saved into a database, which will store a lot, if not all, of your websites’ content.

The actual web-facing part of your site, that visitors see when they type a domain name into their web browser, “looks” at the database of content, and gets the content for each particular page when it is requested by a visitor.

Most pages on your website will probably use a common CMS template; this template features all the elements of your site that don’t change from page to page. The template also features empty slots for your page text and images etc. These slots are filled from the content in the database depending which page you request.

Content management systems are really good if you want to be able to modify your website content on your own, and you don’t have any web page authoring experience. However the amount of work required building a CMS onto your site is quite substantial and therefore expensive, and as such you should have a good think about how often you will actually make changes to your site and therefore benefit from a content managed web solution.

Downsides of CMS

Because of the complexity of CMS however, you might find that you aren’t able to change absolutely everything on your website through the content management interface. So it’s important to define your requirements prior to CMS development, as such modifications may be costly and time-consuming once the development has begun.

Content management systems can be written in different programming languages and because of this most are restricted to a specific type of web server/web hosting platform, they will probably have been built for one flavour of database too, so if you plan on using your existing web hosting you may find you need to upgrade or change hosting arrangements, or host your website with the company who is building it for you.

Search Engine Marketing and CMS

A lot of content management systems while enabling you to edit your own website weren’t designed to allow search engines to easily index your website. In a competitive market place, where most people use search to find everything, it is paramount that your website, content managed or not, doesn’t hinder search engines like Google, Yahoo and Live from indexing your web pages and getting your products and services found.

There are lots of techniques for helping a search engine to index your site, and these go far beyond meta tags, which are considered obsolete by most modern search engines, so make sure you ask the right questions before you choose a content managed solution.