357 | P a g e

Module: 23

Your website

358 | P a g e

study

23.1. Why do you need a website?

23.2. Setting up a website

23.3. Creating good content

23.4. The copy

23.5. Search engine optimisation, SEO

23.6. Website analytics

23.7 Benefits of blogging

23.1. Why do you need a website?

Today, a website is a must for all businesses, no matter what their size. Before customers decide to come

to you they are highly likely to have done online research, even those who got a personal referral. Your

website is your online shop window, your chance to look appealing, be appealing and reassure the up-

359 | P a g e

for-grabs customer that you will answer his needs better than the competitors whose sites he will also

check out. You can use it to show yourself off at your best and build valuable credibility. If you don’t

have a website you’ll look inadequate to clients so it’s a necessary investment but probably not as costly

as you think.

If you’ve grown up in the digital age, you’ll already have lots of ideas on creating an online presence that

accurately represents you and actively works to promote you. If you’re uncomfortable or unfamiliar

with anything digital, don’t be put off. You may feel it’s an alien world you know little about but, far from

being scary, it’s exciting, intriguing and can be a huge asset to your business. Also, there’s a wealth of

good quality information available online which will educate you on everything you need to know about

creating a website - what’s important, what’s crucial, what to avoid and how to keep it working hard for

you. Ask someone you know who’s knowledgeable about website creation to get you started in the right

direction. Next are some basic guidelines but we recommend you add to these by spending time

searching for more detailed information online.

23.2. Setting up a website

Your website is catering to two audiences:

1. Your customers & potential customers and

360 | P a g e

2. The search engines, of which Google is persistently king.

You need to keep both happy and interested.

If you’re on a limited budget, you can design your own website, cost free. User friendly website design

tools you can learn to use like Wordpress, Wix, IMCreator and more have readymade templates which

you customise with your own content. Create.net offers a free 30 day trial and a range of low cost

monthly fees thereafter. Once the site goes live, in most cases you will have to pay a yearly hosting fee

but this is very affordable. Template master has a huge range of templates from many DIY site builders.

It does take a fair amount of time to learn what you need to know, make all the technical and design

decisions and gather your content for a DIY site. You also need to educate yourself on SEO – search

engine optimisation - or how to appear high up in listings when someone searches for you, your service

or product.

Even though all you need to know is easily accessible online, it is a large amount of knowledge to absorb.

Before you start, talk to anyone you know who has set up a new website, ask for recommendations and

get some quotes from website designers. As your time is valuable, it may save you more in the end to

employ someone who knows exactly what they’re doing so you can get on with other tasks and get this

part of your business set up off the ground earlier.

361 | P a g e

Prices vary a lot bit if you just need a basic, informative site with up to 10 or so pages and not a huge

amount of content, it should be quite inexpensive. We encourage you to shop around.

As an example of what’s possible for a small budget, visit

http://www.toucher.co.uk/fixedprice_websites.htm

Or

http://www.redevolution.com/website-costs-explained/#.U2jaR5VOXmI if you’re in the UK.

If you’re in the US, you’ll find good information on costs here:

http://www.executionists.com/blog/website-design/cost-to-build-websites-2013/.

Whatever country you’re running your business in, search for sites like this to help you make decisions.

Whichever route you take, you’ll firstly need to work out what objectives you need to achieve with your

site. Do you just want to raise awareness? Do you want to provide free information? To provide

information you want clients to know before they come to you? If you intend to sell online you’ll need an

e-commerce structure and a secure payment facility which is technologically more sophisticated and

more expensive, multiples of what a simple site would cost. Shop around and ask around so you have a

good knowledge of the market before you make a decision.

23.3. Creating good content

Before you start to gather together the content for your site, define what your objectives are:

To inform visitors?

362 | P a g e

To selectively attract only a certain audience?

To give free information?

To show how inviting your premises is?

To show your difference from competitors?

To sell online?

Once you know what your aim is and who you care most about impressing, you can create good quality

information. A successful website is clear, concise, attractive, current and easy to navigate. Visitors

should immediately get a feel for what you’re about, quickly find what they’re looking for and come

away feeling like you’ve given a good service and answered their needs.

The bulk of the content on most sites is written material (copy) and pictures. (Unless its function is

purely to sell products.) You can add to these and bring the site alive by posting blogs, videos,

podcasts and vidcasts, though they may require more functionality and therefore expense. There are

tools you can use to post free blogs like Google blogger, Word press and Type pad. Add further

interest by linking your site to your chosen social media applications.

23.4. The copy

Producing good written content can be harder than you think. If you can afford it, hand it over to a

copywriter. They are skilled at using the right words, avoiding waffle and promoting the best selling

points of your business in a way that’s compelling. It will read well and look professional. Another

advantage is that most web designers will tell you that waiting for content to be ready is the biggest

reason for delay in getting a site up and running.

If you do want to give it a go yourself, here are a few tips:

363 | P a g e

Even though you want to please both search engines and your customers, write with your customers in

mind. Search engines are becoming more and more insistent that content is of a high standard, relevant

to your site’s audience and answers what they’re searching for.

Keep it jargon free. Use simple, clear, plain talking language. You might love using all the lingo exclusive

to your sector but customers prefer to read descriptions and explanations in plain language.

Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Aim for sentences of no more than 10 words and break up large

blocks of text into smaller, individual paragraphs.

Write like you’re taking to one person, your typical dream customer.

Don’t write about the features of your business. Instead, emphasis the benefits. Try to get your customer

to feel how much better her life will be after using your service. E.g., instead of saying “We use the

newest dog clippers available”, point out the benefit: “Your house will stay clean longer with our

summer close-cut using the newest clippers.”

Avoid starting sentences with “we” as much as possible. Instead, start with a verb. E.g., instead of “We

can plan every aspect of your big day.” Write: “Relax and thoroughly enjoy your most memorable day

while we take care of all the arrangements.” As much as possible, speak to your customer, not about

yourself - use the second person narrative.

If you’ve prepared your content and end up with long pages of information, ask someone outside your

business to help you reduce it to what’s really needed. When you’re too close to your subject it can be

difficult to separate the pertinent points from the unnecessary padding.

Adding a frequently asked questions page is a really good way to avoid time spent on repeated enquiries

and search engines rate it well.

Factually rich content appeals to both internet users and search engines. Try to keep facts interesting,

not too technical or industry specific. Think about what you write from the reader’s perspective.

As you’re preparing content, keep in mind that you need to regularly add new content to keep it feeling

fresh and the search engines ranking you well. Keep a note of ideas you can add weekly. A blog is a great

364 | P a g e

way to fulfil this function. If your business is very visual, like make up or nail artistry, with customers’

permission, you can continually add to your gallery of pics showing your work in action.

23.5. Search engine optimisation, SEO

Once your site is ready to go live – your domain name is registered and you’ve arranged hosting – your

next task is to get it noticed. It’s rather like a catch 22 situation - in order to get noticed by your

customers, i.e. appear high up the list when people search for your type of product/service in your area -

you must first be noticed by the search engines. To be noticed by search engines, one of the important

criteria is to have lots of visits to your site. (Multiple visits from the same IP address don’t count.)

You’ll need to spread the word to as many people as you can to visit and use all pages on your site to

build the traffic to it so you feature in results. Once you have a steady volume of users and you update

with relevant content regularly, you should be able to maintain good visibility. If you’re a member of a

networking group, ask everyone there to visit your site, linger on each page and use all functionality.

More tips for helping your search ranking:

If you’ve used web designers, they will help with the technical elements of SEO.

One very useful tool you can also use to help is Google ‘places for business’. This allows you to create a

Google Local Business Listing, free of charge. It’s designed with small businesses in mind and increases

your visibility in local searches. Include yourself in all business directory listings that feature in your

searches.

365 | P a g e

Emailed newsletters are a trusted way to entice people to visit your site. Before this works for you,

though you’ll need to build an email list of interested customers. Make sure what you put in your

newsletters is of interest or entertaining. Don’t let it be too serious or need much concentration. Include

offers and enticements, pictures and refer to what’s relevant to your audience – either what’s happening

in the world or in your industry.

If you have a site specific search box on your site, test its usability as these are known to produce poor

results. Pretend you’re a customer, type in a number of different things you might want to find and see if

you’re led to them. A well-functioning search box is rated well.

Link to other sites relevant to your business and ask them if they will link to yours. The more prominent

and used those sites, the more they will direct people to you. If you write an informative piece that other

sites find relevant, they can link directly to it.

Keywords - as search engines respond to the kind of language the user uses, not necessarily what you’d

choose, make sure all your page titles, headings and copy match this language. Before you finalise your

copy, ask several people who might use a service like yours what words they would use in a search.

These should be included as your keywords as often as feels natural through your copy. Don’t try to

force too in many and let the quality of your text suffer, this won’t help.

Even though pictures matter a lot in making your site appealing to users, text still carries more weight

with search engines. Keep it of high quality.

Information architecture, IA, is the term for having clearly organised, categorised pages, with a clear

purpose for each page and the content on each that serves that purpose. Good IA helps with search

indexing.

If you’ve done your site yourself you’ll have learned how to edit your pages for updating and for adding

new content. If you’ve had it designed, you’ll need to be shown how to use your Content Management

System, CMS. Dedicate some time every week to updating and adding content. If you’re consistent and

persistent, it will pay off.

Lastly, it can help your sites usability to have what’s called a ‘fat footer’. This means to list links to your

pages and to other sites in the footer at the end of your pages. The list allows the user to click directly to

what’s on the list. It can give a quick scan of the main areas of your site that are searched for but don’t

over stuff it!

366 | P a g e

23.6. Website analytics

Website analytics is the collection and measurement of data on internet sites and of internet

users behaviour so these can be analysed, understood and used by site owners to provide the

best possible service possible and to respond to continually changing consumer behaviour.

Web analytics uses qualitative and quantitative information. It records and measures traffic to

your site and analyses a users behaviour once there – what pages are visited, what is clicked on

and which landing pages lead to purchases. It can also compare the performance of your site

against your direct competitors.

It gives you insight into how different marketing actions change the pattern of behaviour of

visitors. This means you can gauge what works and what doesn’t. You can immediately adapt

your strategies to better meet the demands of users. You can also measure the performance of

your site against key performance indicators.

As well as these functions, you can also use web analytics to measure off site traffic - consumers

behaviour in general - which gives you an understanding of your potential audience on the

internet and a tool to compete with your competitors.

Having access to this data is a very insightful and helpful tool. But it’s useless unless you can use

it. You may need someone experienced to help you learn how to understand all the information

and more importantly, how to use it to improve the functionality and success of your site – how

to entice customers and potential customers to behave according to the objectives you’ve

decided your site is designed to achieve.

367 | P a g e

Which analytics tool to use?

1. Google Analytics is completely free and by far the most popular and most used analytics tool. It’s

simple to use and will give you all the basic information you need to analyse your visitors. It will allow

you to see where your site visitors are coming from, how they behave while on your site and how often

they visit.

2. Yahoo Web Analytics is also free and takes things a little further. It has the same analytics functions

as Google’s but also helps you dig a little deeper. You can do more in-depth profiling of visitors and filter

and customise in more ways.

3. There are smaller companies, like www.crazyegg.com that take analytics even further. They use heat

maps to measure user behaviour to an even finer degree. They can help you not only to track visitors’

clicks but to pinpoint hotspots, see where they stop scrolling and to identify different traffic types so you

can then make changes to optimise your users experience on your site.

23.7. Benefits of blogging

One of the most effective and beneficial things you can do to improve your website’s performance, and

therefore your business, is blogging.

1. Unlike your website, which contains static, limited information - even though it might be excellent

information – a blog is unlimited in the variety of information and interest it can offer.

2. Because of this, putting creative, intriguing stories, interesting observations, critical comments or

views on current topics can attract a very wide audience from anywhere in the world. This can send new

visitors your site that you’d never have attracted otherwise.

368 | P a g e

3. Many bogs are accidentally found while a user is searching for something else.

4. What you put in your blog, if it’s of interest, can be quoted, linked to and sent on to others at any time,

even long after you’ve written it.

5. You can immediately see reaction to what you’ve posted in readers comments and get an insight into

how your blogs are being received out there.

6. Blogging is a great way to build your influence as an expert in your field. Little by little, post after post,

you can show customers you’re the one to go to and gain competitive advantage.

7. The more you write, the ore you develop your skills as a writer. Always a plus.

8. You create a source of more email contacts.

9. Because you need to fill your blog regularly, it will keep you keen to look out for and research new

material, helping your thinking about your business to stay fresh and inspiring innovation.

10. It gives you an opportunity to feature a particular product or service from a new angle and see how it

affects sales.