Where Do Your Customers Come From?

How to keep Track of Phone and Email Enquiries

When you receive a phone call or email into your business, it is vitally important to track the original source. Tracking of all your marketing activities is absolutely crucial. Once you know what is working and what isn’t you can reallocate your marketing activity for maximum effect.

If you have Google analytics installed into your website you are provide with a fantastic tool to tell you what is going on there. But and yes, this could be a big one. Analytics doesn’t tell you if a prospective client rang your phone number from your call to action in your websites description. Because they can do this without even clicking on your website!  If they send you an email from your website, you can set up goals to measure this. I like to set up a goal as reaching the thank you page for this purpose. But once again analytics does not tell you if a customer decided to call your business from the phone number they got off the website.

The challenge seems to be figuring out where your phone call enquiries come from. There are several ways you can monitor this. The most effective, fool proof way is to have a separate telephone number for different marketing activities. One for leaflets, one for advertising in local press, and another for your website. Each month you can get an itemised bill which will show the volume of calls received from each marketing source. The second and cheaper alternative is to ask everyone who calls where they got your number today. Then log them all on a simple tally chart like this.

Day/Source	Leaflets	Press	Website	Word of Mouth	Saw Van
Monday	II	I	IIII	I
Tuesday	I	I	III		I
Wednesday	II	I	IIII	I
Thursday			IIII	II
Friday	II		IIIII II	I

A more comprehensive method of tracking would be the use of a sales funnels like this one:

Name/Source/Action	Source	Enquiry	Follow Up 1	Follow Up 2	Sale
Mrs Smith	Website	Phone			£59.99
Mr Brown	Leaflet	Email	28 Jun 13	1 Jul 13
Miss Jones	WOM	Phone	28 Jun 13		£215.00
Mr Black	Website	Email	29 Jun 13	3 Jul 13	£87.49
Mrs White	Press	Email	1 Jul 13	4 Jul 13

Using these simple tools will make your business more profitable! Without them you will never know where your customers are coming from, and by association you will not know where your profits come from either.

Duncan is an Entrepreneur with specialist skills in website design, search engine optimisation, marketing, photography and electronics. Please do subscribe to our channel to keep up to date, you can also follow PWP Web Design on Twitter and Facebook

Google Penguin 2.0 Update

If you haven’t yet heard about the latest Google update, referred to as Penguin 2.0 you will! Why? Well because this will affect websites who use, either intentionally, or unintentionally, manipulative SEO practices!

What is a manipulative SEO practice? That I suppose is the million dollar question. Looking back at previous updates these have been things like paid listings on various websites and directories. The first to go were links from so called link farms, basically websites just set up to get money just for putting links back to another website. Since then it has been difficult to say which links are going to get penalised and which aren’t?

It amazes me that the likes of Yell.com, Thompsons and the like are still in business. There business is taking money for links back to websites? The difficulty as a webmaster is knowing where the black and white is, but there is a lot of gray about! Of course Google cannot say how its algorithms work, because even more cheating would go on.

The problem as I see it is down to Google in the first place. Any search result or web page ranking that has anything at all to do with back links is simply asking for trouble. I have wrote an answer to Matt Cutts on his blog with what I think is the answer. AS I see it Google are chipping away at the black with a tooth pick, instead of using some good old TNT!

These pesky back links are to blame. Unless you have a lot of friends in very high (ranking) places, you are always going to struggle. The focus should be, and should always have been on the design, structure and content of the website. By using Google very own tools webmaster can find out the popularity of certain words throughout their website. Presumably a website that has “Ford Cars” appearing more times than any other phrase will have something to do with Ford Cars. You don’t have to have 1000 back links to discover this. Also if a website has 99 pages about wedding photography, then you can be fairly certain the whole website has lots of information on wedding photography – a lot more than a 3 page website, for instance.

Websites should also be easy to navigate, not for Google, but for the people who want to use it. Next you should have not just page after page of text, but also include pictures and videos. Matt Cutts has always said that “content is king.” At the moment it is on the substitute’s bench, but I hope, really hope that one day soon, it really will be the prime consideration when judging a website.

My name is Duncan Malloch and my company is PWP Web Design which offers customers around the World advice on web design and search engine optimisation. Were on Facebook and Twitter too

How to get Websites to Page One of Google - Naturally

No Quick Fix

People who understand a little bit more about websites and SEO often ask me, so how do you get websites to page one of Google?

The Secret Formula!

You apply optimisation techniques offsite and to each webpage. - Easy yeah?

How do you successfully optimise?

Now this is the real question! In 1978 I started my career in state of the art electronics, from basic circuits to advanced radar and lasers. Of course software development and electronics go hand in hand, so there was a lot of that too.

The first computer I worked on actually used gears to compute intercept courses in Fighter jets. My experience of personal computers included VIC20, Commodore 64, Amiga, Apples and of course, all sorts of PC's.

When I decided I wanted to go self employed I left the world of aerospace electronics behind and followed my other passion as a full time photographer in 2000. Since then I built my own websites and followed every twist and turn to ensure they were as high up the search results as possible. The main trick, if you can call it that, was to give customers, not Goggle, what they wanted. Content, be that text or images. You have to get this right, because poor content will not see your website rank well, no matter how good the SEO is.

Once the content is there, then attention is turned towards the SEO. How do I design my SEO, well that is the £12,000,000 question. I have a system - a proven system, that works for everyone of my clients. If you can spare £12,000,000 I will give you the system. If you don't have that kind of money, do what I did and continue to do, research, read, do then research some more.

Facts

Google is the number one search engine in the UK. 94% of all clicks go to page one, with a huge amount of these going to the top half. So for us page one isn't enough, the profit is at the top.

PWP Web Design

We are a small business UK based who prefer to help the smaller businesses. We pride ourselves in outstanding customer service, with a personal touch. If you have a small or medium sized business and could benefit from a fantastic page one presence our details are:

Sales: 07980 412 752
SEO Consultant: 07795 681 507
PWP Web Design: CLICK HERE
First Page Google: CLICK HERE

Your Business on the Web - SEO

SEO for Beginners

You need new customers who don’t know you exist

It doesn’t matter how good your business’ website is, without visitors, it’s never going to achieve its’ full potential for your business.  Chances are, if your website has been online for a while, when you type in the name of your company it’ll pop up in the search results somewhere near the top.  The problem is, the only visitors you’ll get are those who already know you exist – what you really need are new customers who don’t know you exist.  This is where SEO becomes at least as important as the website itself.

What you need are visitors looking for the product or service you offer.  People use search engines, like Google to find things that they want - if they’re looking for an accountant in Darlington, they’ll type ‘accountant in Darlington’ into a search engine.  If you’re an accountant in Darlington, that’s what you need your website to be listed under.  The good news is, it’s not as difficult as you might think.

On Page Optimisation

The main thing you need to do to begin with is ‘on-page’ optimisation - telling the search engines what your website is about.  Sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how many websites don’t do this. If the heading of your home page is something like ‘Welcome to our website’, you’re not really telling them much. So how do the search engines know what your site is about?  It’s all about keywords or phrases that describe what your business does - you need to get them (like ‘Accountant in Darlington’) in the page title and description. The Header tags should include relevant keyphrases too and have them scattered, sparingly, throughout your main text. The search engine spiders - as they are called 'crawl' or ‘read’ your web page and then have a better idea what your website is all about.  On a basic level, that’s all you need to do for ‘on-page’ optimisation, if the competition from other websites is low for your chosen keywords. Things get much more complicated when you start getting into ‘competitive’ keywords and companies can spend thousands of pounds to get to the top of the results.

If you’re just starting out, and have enough spare time, read as much as you can on SEO, choose your keywords, make some changes to your site and above all, be patient! It take time for the search engines to update the information they hold on your website.

If you don't have the time, or the skill to get your website to the top of the searches for your chosen keywords, this is when you need to hire a professional company.

PWP Web Design

PWP web design are a UK based web design and SEO company, who can help you attract new customers by optimising your on site and off site information. They have two websites you can take a look at:

PWP Web Design and SEO

First Page of Google SEO

Email is: info@pwpwd.co.uk

Some business help is available in the form of grants. For businesses in the North East, please try NBSL

Ultimate Online Marketing

Ultimate Online Marketing

There is a lot more to successfully marketing your business online, than just having a pretty website. A pretty website is no good at all if nobody can find it.

So, you want to market your business online, or increase the effectiveness of your current website. I will give you some advice here which will help you on the road to better success!

The secret sauce is to have your website optimised for the keywords or keyphrases that you want to be found for. Make sense? Well statistics show that each webpage can manage to be effectively optimsed for just two keywords. If you have a business that operates in several areas, I would suggest a separate webpage be optimsed for each area.

That's the website, onsite optimisation. But your website needs more than just optimisation so Google likes it. In fact just as important is that it has to be easy for your potential customers to find their way around it, and to easily contact you. How can you achieve this? Having an easy to follow menu in plain sight. But, the most important aspect of any website is your phone number.

Phone numbers should be in large text (not an image) in the top right of every page. Phone numbers should be preferably local but a mobile is second best. Don't waste money on 0800 numbers or 0844 (local charge) numbers. Nearly everyone's uses mobiles today so having an 0844 number actually costs then money. You don't want to be putting this barrier between a customer and yourself!

The content on the page has to be attractive, in that it is what your potential customers are expecting. They need to know they can trust you.

The Next Step

Now your website is looking the part, both visually and to the Google spiders, you need to let people know about it. This is all about building links. But don't get all your links from one type of source, such as directory listings. Actually Goggle is starting to dislike directory listings so be careful with these. Build your links from places like Google plus, Blogger, you Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Forums and by article submissions.

If this sounds simple, to some it is, but to get it right requires the assistance of an SEO expert. They will make sure the links are relevant and promote the keywords you want. Submitting links is very time consuming, so many businesses outsource this to companies like mine, PWP Web Design. My details are below:

Website: www.pwpwd.co.uk
For Web Design Click Here
For SEO Click Here
PWP Facebook Page Click Here
Email: info@pwpwd.co.uk
Mob: 07795681507

Marketing - Not for Idiots

Not for Idiots

When you spend so much time talking to fellow business owners, do you despair? I am shocked on an almost daily basis as to the lack of business knowledge most of these people have. Certainly in the good old days (remember them), you could get by with just being good at what you do. But people, the world has changed.

It is no longer good enough for you to be good at what you do.

You really should understand cash flow, you really should know where your customers are coming from and how they found you. You should know what your average profit per customer is and how much you have to spent to get them in the door.

I have been in business many years and I have tried most things. Loving innovation and change I lap up books on how to..... How to start a business, how to manage your accounts, how to sell, how to market your services. And this is continually changing so you need to keep up to date. All this is of course in addition to keeping abreast with the latest goings on within your business sector.

If you can’t sell – you’re doomed!

Let me clarify, if you are a one man band or can not afford to hire someone in with sales experience you are doomed. How many people in business just expect people to come to their door? It just doesn’t happen as much today. My God, even the prostitutes are advertising!

Here is some Free advice if you’re interested on marketing your business.

Ask yourself, how many ways are there to market and promote my business? Write them down. Things like TV may be far too expensive so you can cross them off your list for now. But what about the others? What about radio – quite expensive with diminishing audiences that would have to listen at specific times of day to hear your 4 times a day ad. What about paper advertising. Now I would say this depends on your business. Emergency service like 24 hour plumbers and electricians may do well from these. But again for the majority of us you have to appear in front of the reader when they are in buying mode.

You have to be in front of a prospective client when they are in buying mode.

That should trim down a few advertising mediums. Think now about the internet, or rather Google. Nowadays people “Google it” don’t they?  I know I was looking for a 6 panel internal door and Google was where I went to check prices and local stockists. And I bought one after ringing a local supplier.

If you are not on Google your business is Doomed!

Bill Gates said if you don’t have a website, you very soon won’t have a business. The world has become more focused since then. Since 93% of all searches in the UK are done on Google, you have to be there or you are Doomed!  Actually its much worse than that. You see Google's first page gets about 94% of all the clicks. So all the other thousands of pages are fighting over 6%. So the hard reality of it all is, if you are not on the first page of Google your business is doomed.

Duncan Malloch is an entrepreneur and an investor. Since 1978 he has had a keen interest in electronics, computers and the web. Since 2000 he has been quite heavily involved in business and has built up a great understanding of how it and how money works. When the financial collapse came he set up Red Kite Solutions to help local businesses get their fair share of that Google market. You too can tap into this huge resource at www.red-kite-solutions.co.uk Email by clicking HERE

Diet or a Big Slice of Pie

Diet or a Big Slice of Pie?

To help educate potential clients or business owners interested in website design and search engine optimisation; we are finding that by using metaphors and analogies we promote better understanding. Today’s article is one of many more to come, so please bookmark our blog for further updates.

We see many business owners who have their companies on strict diets. Because their internet marketing is not targeted correctly. This means that their slice of the pie is very thin indeed and correspondingly, results in low enquiry rates and not much business.

What can you do to fatten your business up and get a more significant piece of pie? First of all you need to find out what your potential clients are searching for, and how many of them there are. You can do this by using the “Google keyword tool”. This will give you a breakdown of how many searches are being carried out on Google over the last month, both locally and globally.

Let me introduce you to the pie, your potential clients. In the UK over 93% of searches are carried out using Google. You can optimise your site for Bing, Yahoo any of the others, but that is a diet that could seriously harm your business!

So now we know which piece of pie we want – Google pie please. But, the Google pie comes in lots and lots of slices, (search result pages). Independent research gives us fairly accurate insight into the size of these slices. Here they are in size order. I suggest you go greed and go for the biggest slice!

75% of the Google pie - that is 75% of your potential customers will click on a business that appears in the top half of the results on page one.

19% of your potential clients will click on a business that is listed in the bottom half of the page one results.

This means that a massive 94% of business that it generated through online marketing with Google comes from page one.

The remaining 6% of the pie is distributed among all the remaining pages.

If you know what your target market are searching for, then now you need to optimise your website and target your marketing to get onto the first page of Google, preferably the top half. At PWP Web design we say that if you are on page one for your required search phrase, then you have a great online marketing tool. If you appear anywhere else, you just have a website – and a business on a diet! The decision is yours, let us hope your business soon has a bulging waistline.

PWP Web Design and Search Engine Optimisation guarantees to get your company on to page one of Google’s natural search results.

Contact them today at: blog@pwpwd.co.uk

Why you don't want a website

Background - My background is in electronics, stretching back 30 years. By electronics I mean repairing state of the art equipment down to basic component level and programming computers. My digital background covers online marketing and photography.

So then, I suppose you are wondering why you don't want a website? 

Millions of businesses have websites, and sadly the vast majority of those businesses do not understand that having a pretty website is a waste of time, effort and money! A website has to be a marketing tool. So, then what is the difference between a website and a marketing tool. For me this comes down to where your website appears in the search results for your targeted keywords.

Independent statistics show that well over 95% of all clicks are given to those websites on page 1 of Google. The most going to those sites listed above the fold. The fold is the area seen on your PC, tablet or phone without you having to scroll down.

Here at PWP Web Design we guarantee to get your website listed on the first page of Google, with the ultimate aim of having you above the fold for your chosen keyword or phrase. If you appear anywhere else having a website is pointless.

How we guarantee page 1 natural listing.

There are thousands of businesses wanting to be on page 1 of Google for any given keyword or phrase, so competition is high. In order to guarantee you a page one natural listing our web technicians carry out extensive research into that competition using select keywords. Should that research show that a page 1 natural listing would be extremely difficult and perhaps more importantly very expensive, we would suggest other appropriate keywords, or turn your business down. Our business ethos is to get businesses onto page one, which keeps you delighted because your marketing tool now generates extra revenue for your business and keeps you as a client. The alternatives are just a waste of marketing efforts, budgets and result in high turnover of dissatisfied clients. Please note this is not pay per click advertising.

Think of your website this way.

You have a beautiful car, but it is kept in your garage where no one but you can see it. Or you have 10,000 flyers printed and they all go in the bin, no one gets to read them. Marketing, online or otherwise is only effective if it get seen by your target audience.

This is what we aim to do for you. A simple and effective online marketing tool to drive more customers to your business.

Contact PWP Web Designers and Search Engine Optimisation Experts.

All consultations are free and where possible our field service teams like to conduct meetings face to face.

Please contact Duncan and the team by email: info@pwpwd.co.uk