planning your website...want to serve so either you or your web designer can weave those keywords...
TRANSCRIPT
www.ilkestonwebdesign.com
Planning Your Website Preparing to build your small business website
www.ilkestonwebdesign.com
Planning Your Website
Preparing to build your small business website
Thanks for downloading our guide “Planning Your Website.”
If you have comments, thoughts or feedback please get in touch.
Thanks,
Ilkeston Web Design
www.ilkestonwebdesign.com
www.ilkestonwebdesign.com
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1. Geographical Area & Niche ............................................................................................................... 1
Who are you & what do you do?
Dominate a smaller niche
It’s not all about search engines
Do you have a marketing strategy?
2. Website Address (URL) ..................................................................................................................... 4
Domain suffix: The bit that goes on the end
Avoid-unusual-symbols
Should a web address be identical to your business name?
Web address purchase & registration
What does a URL cost?
Who’s Who URL lookup
3. Professional Email ............................................................................................................................. 8
Password
Forward a professional email to an existing email
Email footer signature
4. Web Pages ........................................................................................................................................ 10
Specific pages
Navigation hierarchy
Coming up with content
Website words & images: Dos and Don’ts
5. Logo ................................................................................................................................................... 13
Send your logo ideas to Ilkeston Web Design
6. Social Media ...................................................................................................................................... 14
Social media benefits
When you have finished reading this document please look at the questionnaire located on the
website at http://www.ilkestonwebdesign.com/questionnaire/
www.ilkestonwebdesign.com
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1. Geographical Area & Niche
Many businesspeople say their product or service is
for anyone. This shotgun approach is not a good
strategy and will cause you to blend in with every
other ad or marketing message people are subjected
to daily.
Narrowing your niche and aiming for a target
audience is not only a good idea for offline marketing
but standard practice for any marketing.
Dominating a smaller niche makes it easier to rank in
search engine results because there is less
competition for those keyword queries.
Who are you and what do you do?
Decide exactly what you do. If you’re running several businesses, do not try and cram them into one
website. Combining different businesses on a website confuses both visitor and search engine.
Break things down into chunks of concise, easy to consume information. Pick the geographical area you
want to serve so either you or your web designer can weave those keywords into your website’s title,
headings, page descriptions, sales copy, image names etc.
Appeal to a targeted audience.
Dominate a smaller niche
Gaining importance in a smaller sphere of influence is always effective.
We run a website called Ilkeston Fast Food advertising about 40
takeaway businesses, pulling in approx 150,000 page views per year
(about 4000 users per month). Because of the narrow niche we can
consistently focus our marketing efforts on hungry customers in the
local area.
A larger area (like Derbyshire) would be much harder to target,
manage and rank for. I’m not saying it can’t be done though.
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It’s not all about search engines
You must also consider getting direct traffic through PR, the media, local networks, word of mouth etc
People talk, so talk to them about your website.
Put the “social” in social media and develop some relationships. People tend to share your
content more when you are allies with them.
Branded marketing materials can be distributed locally.
Business networking events can produce beneficial contacts.
Branded business cards, QR codes and USB sticks are excellent ways of distributing links to your
website.
Do you have a marketing strategy?
Maybe you need to travel to your customers but are conscious of fuel
expenses, so need to limit what areas you aim your website at for the
sake of economics.
Setting boundaries is important because this would affect the budget
and geography of paid internet advertising.
If you went down the pay per click route with Facebook ads or Google
Adwords, you will need to know where to draw a line as not to waste
money on inefficient targeting.
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2. Website Address (URL)
Choose a web address that is short. It’s common to see unnecessarily long URLs printed on company
vehicles and business cards. Web users either don’t remember or do not want to type dozens of
characters.
In many situations web users will not have to type a URL because they will be arriving at your site via
search engines. However, it is good practice make sure your URL is short, punchy and catchy for
situations where you are personally passing on your website address.
Domain suffix: The bit that goes on the end
A domain is the part of the web address ending in
.com or .co.uk.
There are actually lots of options like .net and .org but
I tend to try and stick to the first two options.
Google seems to favour .com and .co.uk over other
suffixes because they are viewed as legitimate and
trustworthy websites.
Too long
http://www.sandiacrebespokekitchensandfurnishingsltd.co.uk
Nobody wants to type this... few will remember or bother to type it.
About right
http://www.sandiacrekitchens.co.uk
Short and sweet.
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.COM – Stands for “commercial” but is used for any site. If your web address is going to contain your
town or location (e.g. www.ilkestonwebdesign.com) then it is okay to use .com.
.CO.UK – Usually commercial and British based. Using this gives your visitors an extra clue to your
location. If you are using a branded domain name (e.g. www.glazeking.com) it could potentially attract
unwanted international visitors mistaking your business for another. Sticking .co.uk on the end will
reduce that from happening.
.NET – This is something I’ve used when .com or co.uk is unavailable. It isn’t my first choice but if the
domain name I want is very popular then this might be the only thing left.
.ORG – This is associated usually with charitable or non profit organisations. If you’re a commercial
enterprise or business stay away from it. I have uncovered scam artists masquerading as funding
organisations and trying to deceive people by the perceived “trust” coming from a .org domain.
.BIZ – I would stay away from this domain altogether. I have seen it used for questionable business
opportunity websites (usually a pyramid scheme of some sort) so avoid it.
Avoid-unusual-symbols
Hyphens, dashes, underscores etc make it difficult to advertise your domain name verbally, making it
less easy to remember, explain or type.
It is common to see a botched URL in a printed advert where a hyphen is responsible.
In this example, the business owner had called up to
place the ad because the website URL used underscores
(_) instead of hyphens (-).
The ad designer had probably confused the hyphen for an
underscore over the phone.
The URL should have been www.pmc-plastering.co.uk
(worked when I tried it) but was printed as
www.pmc_plastering.co.uk (did not work).
I called up the business owner and told him. It has since
been corrected, bit for months, it was printed as shown
on the left!
It’s only a little thing, but I wonder how many people tried to access the site and couldn’t? Granted, the
phone numbers are there but it still makes you wonder.
It’s very easy for weird symbols or characters to cause confusion for your website. Avoid-hyphens-in-a-
website-address!
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Should the web address be identical to your business name?
If you can obtain an exact match web address, do so. If
you can’t, don’t worry too much about it because it’s one
of many website components.
The website’s page title tags and written content is more
important and fills any knowledge gaps for the website
visitor.
Our business name is Ilkeston Web Design and the URL is
www.ilkestonwebdesign.com but if that URL had not
been available we might have registered
www.webdesignilkeston.com while still operating under
the business name Ilkeston Web Design.
Another example...
There is a Nottingham pet service using the URL www.petsittersinnottingham.com although the actual
business name is Paradise Pet Sitters. This is a good example of a website targeting keywords in the
URL, specifically for search engine users. This can be effective but you should never put too much stock
in these tactics.
But here’s a warning. The “exact match domains” are not worth using if you end up stuffing keywords or
end up with something that is awkward to say.
Web address purchase & registration
You need to go to something called a registrar to
purchase a website address.
To check if your desired website name is available head
over to GoDaddy or 123-Reg to check availability and
price of a URL you might be interested in.
You will need to try different phrases in combination with
the domain you want (.com, .co.uk, .net etc) until you
find something that is available.
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What does a URL cost?
You can expect to pay about £20 per year for a GoDaddy domain with privacy.
123-Reg is a similar price but a little easier to use than GoDaddy.
You can choose to register your URL for up to 10 years. It is up to you how long you choose. Make sure
the domain/URL is set to automatically renew if you want the money to come out of your account by
debit.
Who’s Who URL lookup
If a URL is already taken and you want to find out who
owns it or if it will become available again go to
whois.net to look up the details.
Other WhoIs websites are available and you can find
these by performing a quick Google search for
“whois”.
If you’re unsure what to purchase or feel confused,
wait a while and talk to me.
Registering a URL can be left till the end so there’s no
particular rush unless you know for certain the URL is
highly sought after.
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3. Professional Email
Getting a professional email helps your website look
serious.
Using a free email account is okay for personal use but
for business consider using an email account
integrated with your website domain name.
Email is purchased as an additional product through
whichever registrar you use to register your domain
name.
Name of your mailbox
The name of your mailbox can be whatever you like. We use [email protected] so you need
to come up with a mailbox name for your own URL. You can use names of individuals who work within
your business such as [email protected] .
Everything should be lowercase.
Your email address might resemble the following examples:
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Email forwarding
If you want to forward the professional email address
to an email account you already have and want to
continue using, that can be arranged.
For example, when a customer sends an email to
[email protected] it can be set up to pass that email
message to your private hotmail, Gmail or whatever
email service you’re using.
When you reply the customer will just see the email as
coming from [email protected].
Email footer signature
Every time you compose or reply to a message, you
can have a small image automatically inserted in the
footer area of your email with a phone number and a
link to your website.
The image displayed should ideally be a scaled down
version of your website logo. This is great for design
consistency and helps visually tie everything together.
We can set this up for you or you can do it this
yourself.
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4. Web Pages
When search engine users land on a website they do not necessarily land on the homepage. Quite often
visitors arrive at a website via another page such as “about us” or “contact” or in the example shown
here from my local takeaway website, “special offers”.
Adding more pages to your site increases the chances of customers finding your site.
More pages make organising content easier. You need to be able to break up any written text into
manageable chunks otherwise you’ll lose your readers’ attention.
Specific pages
A small business operating locally can use only a few pages and typically uses the following setup:
Home – A summary of your services with one or two
images and sales copy leading into other pages.
About – You can say who you are and how long you’ve
been in business. You could mention particular clients
or contracts.
Gallery – This page usually features photographs of
products, services, business premises, key staff etc.
Contact – This is the page where customers are
encouraged to make an enquiry either by phone,
email or post. A Google map should be included.
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Content
Content like this breathes life into a business website.
It appeals to part of your customer that is i research
mode.
Preselling services is a common inbound strategy.
Good content delivers value up front and can build
trust between yourself and your audience quickly.
It is a conversation starter.
Coming up with content
So how should you go about writing content? How long does it take and what are the benefits? It
sounds like a big task but it’s not hard if you know your business well.
Because of the way the internet has evolved customers expect openness /transparency before they
make purchases.
Typically you would write your content and send it to Ilkeston Web Design (email, disk, post etc)
and we proofread, edit and reword copy.
We can write entirely original content from scratch. Content, copy writing, branding and design
are all taken into account. This is an additional marketing service and is added to your invoice.
If you want to write the content yourself you are free to do so but must provide well written,
high quality or insufficient content will damage your credibility in the eyes of website visitors.
Through web content you should be aiming to build familiarity, visibility and a positive
reputation.
Let your content be interesting, useful, problem solving, educational and compelling.
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Website words & images: Dos and Don’ts
Do upload a photo of yourself if possible. Don’t worry; it doesn’t need to be a fashion shoot. Just be
willing to give customers the opportunity to put a face to a name.
Word your content according to the type of business you are. If you’re operating on your own, say
“I”. If you’re part of a team, say “we”. Using singular or collective pronouns is important.
Keep your sentences short. In the guide you are reading right now, I go into detail, but our website
is concise. It offers the opportunity to download this document for those interested.
Use headings and titles. The average internet user prefers easy to consume information as opposed
to unformatted blocks of text.
Use lots of images to support the text. Because people skim read paragraphs, the images give them
the idea of what you’re saying.
Name your image files correctly. Image content is not understood by Google although the name of
the file can appear in results if anyone is performing an image search related to your business.
Write useful content. It’s not all about aggressive sales copy. Be very, very helpful. People like
opportunities to buy rather than be sold to.
Never copy and paste text from other websites. Plagiarism is not only lazy, it is damaging to your
site. Google crawls the entire the web and it knows when duplicated content appears.
Refrain from repeating the same keywords over and over in text content. This is called “over
optimising” or “keyword stuffing” and makes Google suspicious.
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5. Logo
Ilkeston Web Design can have a logo created for you. This can be included as part of the website’s price.
Artwork may be supplied to you in a digital format at additional cost.
Whatever the situation the chances are a logo will need to be digitally constructed so the quality is
suitable for a website.
You can upload any scanned images such as business cards, leaflets etc – you can upload artwork here.
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6. Social Media
Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter are two social
media platforms widely used.
You can communicate quickly with anyone who has
Liked your Facebook page or Followed your Twitter
account.
It is a convenient way to connect with customers on a
conversational level. It is ideal for the soft sell and
relationship angle of your marketing.
“Social proof“ is where you leave a positive footprint
in the form of high numbers of Likes, Shares, Tweets
etc.
Social media benefits
1. Free to use
2. People spend more time using social media websites than on ANY other activity
3. You can link to your website from your social media accounts
4. You can build and repeatedly sell to a loyal social media following
5. You can embed Facebook and Twitter activity feeds into your website pages
6. Social media activity is crawled and indexed by Google.
Questionnaire
Please click the following link to answer the questionnaire:
http://www.ilkestonwebdesign.com/questionnaire/