Despite this apparent prevalence of opinion, there are certain hard and fast rules when it comes to the subject of social media. In this month’s article, we’ll look at some of the key pointers for the ever-popular Facebook.

Your Business on Facebook
Social media brings with it a whole new level of customer interaction. Spark discussion; invite feedback; share experiences – and so on. With this in mind, the following tips are designed to focus your Facebook marketing efforts.

Keep Up With The Times
Facebook presents a unique opportunity to connect with your audience – more so in fact than you could ever hope to achieve through your blog or website alone. If you’re in business for yourself, you’re more than likely to be keeping up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in your chosen field. You may even run regular webinars and talks, alongside consulting with clients and prospects on their business needs.

You can channel all this valuable content into an interactive playground like your Facebook page, where an interested audience seeks out fresh new content to digest.

From industry tips and insider knowledge to the latest trends, your Facebook page is a dynamic environment that promotes discussion and interactivity. By passing on the benefit of your knowledge for free you’ll also be raising your stock.

Keep ‘Em Coming Back For More!
Whether you choose to reward great ideas with discounts, or simply want to conduct a little market research, Facebook represents an invaluable platform from which to reach out.

Keep your readership engaged by adopting a varied approach, and don’t be afraid to experiment. Judge how well you’re doing by the level of interaction occurring on the page itself.

Broaden Your Horizons
It’s no longer just about the wall. Facebook’s meteoric rise in popularity is matched only by the host of plugins and applications flooding the market on a weekly basis. From shopping tabs to hosted support pages, there is a veritable treasure trove of useful material you can use to heighten the customer experience.

Oh, and more importantly, to drive traffic to your site! Check out ‘Get Satisfaction’ and ‘Fan Appz’ to get yourself started.

And Now For Something Completely Different…
Facebook is generally acknowledged as a place for light-hearted social interaction. Even if your company has a reasonably serious image, Facebook provides a valuable opportunity to show some personality by injecting humour into proceedings.

For those of you who want to keep it ‘strictly business’ – Facebook is still a useful tool for promoting your brand and breathing a little life into the business. Use the page to highlight significant events and milestones on the company calendar – supported by high quality corporate images to add a little variety and credibility.

An aesthetic appeal and an intuitive user interface are key for a positive e-commerce experience – it should be easy for people to buy your products. If they have to figure it out or work at it, chances are they won’t.

Winning More e-Commerce Customers
Understandably, consumers are tightening their belts and looking for great deals and a rewarding shopping experience on the web – which provides a great opportunity for online shops. With this in mind, here are 5 tips for improving your customers’ experience – and your sales.

Keep It Clean
Take half an hour out of your day to visit a range of e-commerce websites – those you like, and those you don’t like – note what works and what doesn’t. What you will notice is that a clean, tidy and visually concise front-end is top of the list for any site selling a product. Yet the amount of broken, cluttered and ugly pages there are out there beggars belief. Ask yourself this: if shopping on your website is a chore, why should anyone bother? Chances are they won’t.

Love Those Colours
Research has long told us that colour is inextricably linked to mood and emotion, and it has long played an important role in the arsenal of the modern marketing strategy. Supermarkets and advertisers spend millions each year researching package design and the use of colour – and internet marketers should never underestimate the use of this vital facet of web design.

It’s All in The Up/Cross-Sell
Amazon is probably the best example here “customers who viewed this item also viewed…” or “like these? You may also want to try…”. How many times has your mouse cursor been drawn to one of these links placed strategically on the page? A simple, but extremely effective method of promoting related items or more expensive alternatives.

Again, it’s all in the power of suggestion, rather than forcing pages of alternatives – let the user feel they’re in control. It’s also worth mentioning the humble Wish List here – a tried and tested way of building a shopping list for return shoppers.

User Interface
A slick user interface is a vital component of any successful e-commerce website. People shop online for convenience, so presenting visitors with a cluttered, slow site encumbered with broken links will harm sales and discourage return visitors.

Ensure your hosting is up to speed and streamline the checkout process to keep them coming back for more.

Do One Thing, and Do It Well
Unless you’re Amazon (let’s not forget they started off as a book retailer predominantly), you’re unlikely to be able to get away with selling anything and everything. There’s a lot to be said for finding a niche – something you know well – and sticking to it. Remember the saying ‘jack of all trades, master of none’? Well, the same applies to e-commerce.

Even with increased competition, email newsletter marketing continues to be one of the best ways to cut marketing costs while reaching more customers than ever before. With the popularity of social media engagement and cross platform marketing, your newsletter can still play a key role in coordinating your online promotions.

Taking your Email Marketing to the Next Level
As with all forms of marketing, your company’s email newsletter shouldn’t stand still. In the second part of this two part series we look at the latest techniques to maximise your email marketing.

Perception of Value
Okay, they may have given you their email address at some point in the past, but don’t be fooled into assuming your current subscribers (a) remember who you are or (b) even care. Whether you send out weekly, monthly or quarterly newsletters – find a subtle way of reminding the reader of your unique value proposition that prompted them to sign up in the first place.

Consider the Bigger Picture
When it comes to marketing a service or product, an email is rarely just an email. It forms part of the overall customer experience (as opposed to just subscribers). Avoid slipping those blinkers on and thinking of email marketing as a sterile environment.

Consider how your marketing efforts align with your overall brand and image, and ensure your message is consistent.

Use your resources
Only by using data correctly will you ensure your subscribers’ experience is a fulfilling one. Data holds the key to any successful marketing campaign. However, as you collect data be careful not to discard or dismiss vital information such as user preferences (how information is used, frequency of messages etc.) – this information is arguably as important as your creative marketing efforts.

Listen to what they have asked for, and deliver on your promise.

Carrot and Stick
Whilst blindly firing out emails and asking for subscribers may result in an initially high success rate, the subsequent drop-off may prove less desirable. Remember, you want people to want your email.

Consider including a sample with your initial mail-out or promotional offer – this will ultimately result in an engaged, receptive readership as opposed to an indifferent one.

Bite-Sized Chunks
You can’t please all of the people all of the time, and expecting your content to be absolutely relevant to every one of your subscribers is – in short – unrealistic. With this in mind, the email ‘mini-series’ has become a popular vehicle for many email marketers.

Pick a topic that engages the reader and bears some relevance to current events – for example the 12 days of Christmas, New Year’s resolutions, 7 deadly sins and so on. Placing your message in some kind of social context provides fresh and stimulating ways to engage your readership.

So, when you sit down to write your next marketing email – consider some of the points above. Don’t be afraid however to experiment and learn from the results – the rest is up to you!

SEO and PPC are generally regarded as more substantive, ‘traditional’ approaches to driving traffic direct from search engines. Considering how often online marketers tend to bandy these terms around however, for many the benefits and drawbacks of either remain unclear. In this article we’ll try and deconstruct the myths surrounding this much-debated topic.

PPC or SEO – Which Is Best For You?
Billions of searches are performed on the major search engines every week, and a large percentage of those searches are made by people who are actively looking for products and services to buy online. So how does SEO and PPC differ and which will help you win more web traffic.

What’s the Difference?
Both SEO and PPC relate to driving traffic to a website directly using search engine results. More confusingly, both achieve similar results using very different methods.

An SEO strategy aims to optimise a website with a view to achieving healthy ‘organic’ rankings. PPC involves paid advertisements (on a pay-per-click basis) which appear in the sponsored column found to the top and side on most search engine results pages.

Short Term vs. Long Term
PPC can be set-up virtually immediately, with visible results within the first few days. Optimising web content with keywords, metatags and so on could involve months of testing using multiple strategies before any results are seen.

As such, PPC could be viewed as a useful tool in relation to short-term promotions and new websites looking for a quick boost. Longer-term, SEO offers a viable route to sustained traffic via consistent rankings.

Cost Effectiveness
It’s difficult to weigh which approach actually offers a greater return on investment – there are a great number of external factors involved. PPC represents the greater short-term investment by charging each time a visitor clicks through. Monitoring results carefully however, this approach represents little in the way of risk as cost can be adjusted as required.

On the other hand, SEO could prove to be truly cost-effective by providing consistent added value over a sustained period.

Measuring Results
Well known providers such as Google and Yahoo provide PPC customers with comprehensive tracking results as standard. Clicks, leads and sales can be tracked from the word go, allowing users to measure cost per sale.

Measuring SEO results may not be as straight forward, but still possible to do with any good website analytics package. Website analytics can be a complex subject – which may discourage first time users – but shouldn’t put you off considering a full SEO strategy.

How About Both?
Really it comes down to whether you’re looking for short or long-term results. The most effective online marketing strategies will often use elements of both, in conjunction with other platforms such as blogging and social media.

For example, once a website is returning healthy organic rankings, PPC can be an effective compliment to your longer-term strategy by:

• Targeting specific keywords
• Pushing promotions and driving traffic
• Testing strategies such as new keywords and landing pages
• Promoting areas of the site not showing healthy result

As with all forms of marketing, your company’s email newsletter shouldn’t stand still. If it’s time for you to take a look at your email practices, then read this two-part summary on the latest techniques to better maximise your marketing channels and increase conversions.

Making Sure Your Email Marketing is Still Effective
Regular check-ups on the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts will ensure that you catch any potential problems before they hinder your marketing plan. The following five tips are designed to help you keep your finger on the email pulse.

1. It’s Good To Talk
Whilst auto-responders and do-not-reply mail addresses have their place, as a marketing tool they are extremely ineffective. Communication is a two-way street after all, and if your clients feel you are uninterested in what they have to say (or even in receiving a response), they are likely to be uninterested in what you have to say.

Foster a sound relationship from the outset by engaging your audience. Encourage them to respond with thoughts and feedback – you never know, they might just have something useful to say.

2. Set Your Own Targets
Generic benchmarks often bear little relevance to a particular product, service or demographic. Rather than worrying about broad terms such as average open rates and click-throughs, consider defining your own set of parameters based on more relevant data such as demographic and past successes or failures. This will give you a much better idea of how effective your own particular strategies are.

3. Social Media
Nowadays it’s rare to receive an email or marketing letter without an RSS feed, Twitter or Facebook link. Social Media has changed the way we do business forever – ushering in a new age in marketing. The opportunities are limitless, with the power to reach more people than ever before.

Think beyond providing a simple link however – give your readers a reason to spread the word by providing compelling, engaging content (video content is a fantastic tool for this). Experiment with different types of content and placement, and include regular offers as an incentive for your readers to engage.

4. Less is More
Consider the last marketing email you opened (if you even opened it). How much time did you spend reading it? How much text was included on the page? Did anything in particular grab your attention? The accepted rule of thumb is 7 seconds – that’s 7 second to grab their attention before they either click delete or decide to carry on reading.

Draw the recipient in by making your headline engaging, succinct and brief. If you’re sending a promotional email, make your point in no more than a few lines. Not only are they far more likely to read the email, but this represents a great opportunity to leave them wanting more.

For marketing messages, arrange your content in the most visually engaging way possible, and test different approaches to find the ideal layout.

5. Keep It Relevant
Lazy marketers may rely on the draw of multimedia and social platforms alone, but unless there is substance beneath the flashy exterior, the audience is likely to lose interest and fast.

Sending the right message to push the right buttons at the right time – it may all sound like a game of chance, but there’s no luck involved. From direct marketing, email and B2B campaigns down to your company website, it’s all about the words. No matter how aesthetically pleasing your approach may be, pretty pictures alone are unlikely to reach out to your audience. Understand what they need, why they need it and when.

The new position is for an Internet Savvy Account Manager to help promote our internet marketing services to our customers and to help plan and manage or Internet Marketing Campaigns. No campaign is the same. We may mix such techniques as: SEO – Search Engine Optimisation, PPC Pay Per Click Google Adwords Marketing, Social Media,  E-mail Marketing, Internet Analysis, Internet Consultancy and Web Analytics.

We have achieved outstanding results for our customers and are looking for a new member of our team who will add value to our customers.

The Job Specification is below.

New Internet Marketing Jobs at WSI

Role: Internet Marketing Account Manager
Location: Huddersfield
Salary: £20k-£25K according to experience

As the Internet Marketing Account Manager in our growing Digital Marketing Agency you will be responsible for the planning and management of SEO and PPC for client websites. You will also be responsible for analysis and research of prospects. Training will be given, and you will have access to the latest SEO and analysis tools. You will also analyse the results implemented by our SEO Consultants and liaise with clients, looking for opportunities to improve the clients’ online business. You will attend client meetings and be in constant communication with the client to ensure all Search projects are achieving their targets.

You should have hands on experience of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Google Analytics. As this role is client facing you must have strong communication and presentation skills. You will implement Search Marketing strategies and be competent in the delivery of SEO & PPC Social Media and Conversion Analysis. You will also be responsible for making ongoing recommendations and campaign improvements.

There will be significant training opportunities to further develop your skills.

If you would like to apply, please e-mail your CV and a covering letterincluding salary expectations to lisa@wsi-ebizsolutions.biz.

You can checkout the person spec on our careers page

This role overlaps with similar jobs such as

Internet Consultant, Internet Marketing Consultant, Internet Marketing Analyst, Internet Marketing Account Manager, and is based in Holmfirth near Huddersfield

Isn’t it about time you started managing your website like your sales people? Everyone knows if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Although most companies now have a website, very few company Directors get any viable and actionable information on their website, worst still many Sales & Marketing Managers don’t value their website like their sales and marketing teams.

In an economic environment where value for money is important; where everyone needs sales and new accounts and where there is extreme pressure on costs, “it is a relatively easy win for companies to make more out of their websites” says Steve Harvey-Franklin Internet Consultant with WSI, “most senior executives and marketers should seek training on at least the basics of Internet Marketing such as Search Marketing, Web Analytics and Social Media, so that they can understand the jargon, realise what hidden profits they could be tapping into and better manage their own web marketing agency.”

So what are the key steps to make more out of your internet marketing budget?

1. Start Measuring. Google Analytics is excellent for most sizes of business; use analytics to measure key statistics on a regular basis.
2. Set Goals and Targets. Identify the website behaviour that you want to encourage

Goals may include:

• Sales
• Leads
• Brochure Downloads
• Contact Requests
• Time on Site
• Specific Page Paths

Ie anything that you consider valuable economically or to your brand

Targets may include: Increasing Sales or Leads. This may be additionally broken down to include:

• Increasing Conversion rates
• Decreasing Bounce rates on a page
• Increasing visitors to the Basket
• Decreasing Basket Drop out

1. Set up a simple 1 page report of the vital information that you need either daily, weekly or monthly, depending on the intensity, importance  and volatility of your traffic and  goals.
2. Make the targets measurable and quantifiable

As your system gathers data, you can then start to hone in and ask very specific questions to determine what is making you money and what is losing you money, then your marketing investment decisions become very easy.

For Example:

Once you can focus on a specific section of the site that is driving the most interest, the marketing campaign can be fine tuned or even reduced, by focussing on what is successful or by refining what is not successful. For example,  on the same Keyword :

• Establish the best format for your advert by running 2 adverts with identical headers but different text bodies. Then reverse the test keep the best advert  body  and testing the heading. Using your analytics see which advert works best over time.
• Establish the best page layout and images for your adverts to land on, again in a controlled way varying elements of your web page, possibly running them side by side over time, to eliminate seasonal factors.

This process is known as split testing or multi variant testing

Steve Harvey-Franklin commented that he has seen “remarkable results for our customers by testing and varying significant elements on page. If we can move a client’s conversion rate from 1% to 1.5% their sales are actually increasing by 50%, who wouldn’t be interested in increasing their sales by such volumes?”

Google Landing Page Analysis

In tests that Google performed, they increased their own sign up conversion rate by 56% by testing and making 4 relatively simple changes. In the image above. The page on the right outperformed the page on the left by 56%.

Mike Smith from Ripley Training who runs courses on Internet Marketing and Web Analytics commented that “the need for this level of knowledge, and the results that our courses can drive are switching senior executives onto our new Internet Marketing Courses…….  where we educate them to improve their return on internet investment ”

Most businesses today do not take advantage of how important it is to test regularly. The key for any business wanting to achieve online success is knowing how to communicate to your target audience and knowing that all parties do not act on the same principles. This also allows you to figure out your online ad spend in an effective manner. The average online conversion today is between 1% and 2%, which means that a large portion of ad budgets is not being used effectively.

The key is really to keep the testing simple and uncomplicated and once you have established your benchmarks then you can start the process to target, measure and refine. This can be a simple process or a more complicated one but the key is simply testing, testing and more testing of the right things and you will increase your online conversion.

Steve Harvey-Franklin is an Internet Marketing Consultant
at WSI Yorkshire, the Huddersfield Based Digital Agency

The definition of bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a site who leave the site without viewing any more pages. Bounce rate is calculated using the bounce rate is: bounce rate = total number of visitors who view one page / total number of visits. A visitor can bounce by:

• Clicking the “Back” button to leave the site
• Clicking a link to a page on a different web site
• Closing the window or tab the page is being viewed in
• Typing and navigating to a new URL
• Session timeout: commonly 30 minutes

Bounce rate can vary between different data sources depending on the session timeout value. A session timeout out is where a visitors views a page, doesn’t navigate or bounce and leave the browser idle for longer than the timeout period. If after the session timeout period the visitor resumes activity and navigates on the site, it will be recorded as a new session. Bounce rate data in Google Analytics uses the period of 30 minutes.

Why is bounce rate important

The importance of bounce rate is very much dependant on the natures of the website and the “bounces.” The way bounce rate is interpreted is different for ecommerce websites, blogs, news websites, affiliate sites, social networking sites and so on. Below are some examples of the how the importance of bounce rate can vary between different websites.

Ecommerce and Bounce Rate

The goal of ecommerce websites is to convert visitors into sales. To complete a sale it is necessary to navigate through the purchase process. A high bounce rate on ecommerce websites indicates that there is an issue with traffic relevancy (visitors weren’t looking to buy the products and/or services offered) or the websites persuasion architecture (web page design, prices, content and calls to action). Bounce rate is important on ecommerce websites because it is one of the metrics that can be used to determine the performance of web pages.

Blogs, News Sites and Bounce Rate

Blogs and new websites etc provide articles about all manner of subjects. If you’re looking for information about a sports event, brewing beer, world politics, whatever is may be a good article on a news website or blog site should provide you with the information you were looking for. In which case you will bounce but the website will have achieved its primary goal. Many blogs are monetized using affiliate banners and Google Adsense, clicking on adverts is also counted as a bounce. Visitors clicking on adverts would also be one of the goals of a blog site or news website. Another reason why high bounce rate isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Affiliate and Adsense Sites and Bounce Rate

Some websites use search engine optimisation or paid search marketing to drive traffic to pages with an extensive amount of advertising. The intended goal of these websites is to get as many visitors to click on adverts as possible. Because clicking on adverts is counted as a bounce a high bounce rate may be a good thing. The web statistics analyst would compare bounce rate with clicks to determine what percentage of the bounce rate is from activities other than clicking on adverts. So bounce rate is also important on these websites but with clicks taken into account.

Bounce Rate: A Summary

With the knowledge of what bounce rate is and an understanding of the implications of bounce rate data for your website it’s possible to use it alongside other metrics to monitor, test and improve performance based and your websites goals. Using bounce rate it’s possible to streamline SEO, improve return on investment on PPC advertising and more!

Different Ways to Use Twitter Marketing

There are many different ways to incorporate Twitter into your current marketing campaigns.  Possibly the most common method is to utilise Twitter to share information.  Twitter allows you to share small snippets of information with a large number of followers at the click of a mouse.  These small snippets of information can be public service announcements, news updates, business news or family or friend updates.

As Twitter was primarily developed to constantly feed current updates to followers, it is a natural tool for the marketing of a business.  Most commonly short marketing messages are shared over Twitter through a Tweet which contains a link to more relevant information.  Twitter allows businesses to share information over a global network allowing both prospective customers and existing customers to discover and follow the information you share across the network.

Twitter Etiquette

When conducting marketing activities on Twitter a strict etiquette must be followed.  If this etiquette is not followed then followers can quickly feel alienated leading to potential damage to your brand.

Twitter is primarily focussed on the here and now.  It makes a great marketing tool for promoting timely news and products, for example today’s lunch special offers.  The promotion of events is also an excellent and highly rewarding use of Twitter.  Tweets should ideally be kept conversation in tone and casual in tone.  Advertising should not appear as “in your face” advertising.

Give Your Tweets Personality

The more personality you create for your brand, the easier it will be to tweet about it.  A unique voice will make your tweets entertaining.  Entertaining Tweets help to engage readers and attract more followers.  Ideally you should attempt to wrap your tweets around a nugget of important information, and then deliver the tweet in an entertaining and conversational manner. Ideally your followers should look forward to hearing from you, this will increase the likelihood of them reading your tweets and marketing messages.

Another area where Twitter is particularly beneficial is in the area of customer communication and feedback.  Twitter is designed to be conversational, and it is a great way to keep a dialogue going with your existing customers and prospective customers.  Twitter is a great way to collect feedback from existing customers and particularly useful for reputation building.  Both essential if you wish to retain customers and learn how to attract increases numbers of prospective customers.

There is a real danger when selecting a web design company that they don’t know what they are doing ! Harsh? Well possibly not.

Many companies are graphic designers first, which is fine as long as Graphic Design Agencies play to their strengths and develop effective partnerships with other online experts. A website of course should look great, but it also needs to get found on Google, Yahoo & Bing, it also vital that those designing websites, particularly e-commerce websites, design the website using best conversion practices, so that the traffic coming to the website is really maximised.

It is therefore incumbent on all web designers to know about:

• Usability & Conversion Strategy
• Web Analytics
• Business and Business Trading principles
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Social Media Marketing (SMO)
• A host of other good practice principles such as build quality, W3C Compliance, Accessibility

We’ll cover off many of these points later in the article.

So why is this so important, doesn’t a picture tell a thousand words? Well yes!! But it’s more than just great looking web pages.

So Why Should Your Web Company need to know about all of this. Well because a good website and especially a good e-commerce website should be more than just a vanity purchase, it should deliver a real return on investment and if done properly will represent possibly the best value for money marketing.

Usability & Conversion Strategy

Whether your e-commerce website is your main path to market or not, be sure not to leave “money on the table” by making simple usability and conversion mistakes. Some common mistakes include:

• Bolting an online shop onto an existing site. If you intend selling online, then that is what your site needs to be about, not just a single button taking the user to what may look like another site, not sure about this? well just checkout best in class sites like Amazon & Next.
• Small navigation with Products & Services buttons. nearly all low end websites have buttons for “products” or “services”. This tells your potential customers nothing, it tells Google even less. Instead, your left navigation should be persistent on all or most pages and be your main product categories.

When considering content for your website, you need the right amount of detail at the right time. For Landing Pages, the information needs to be direct. Top 3-5 key points, a great image or graphic with a call to action. the idea being to convert your visitor as quickly as possible making it as easy as possible to see your offering and move on to the next stage. Good practice is often honesty and good layout:

• No hidden surprises
• Clear prices
• Clear call to action
• Key information above the fold
• Uncluttered so as not to distract

It’s a good idea to offer comfort such as:

• A friendly customer service face
• Clear telephone help
• Live help
• Goody badges (showing your security standards, awards, service levels)
• Guarantees & money back offers

This will work very effectively with an allied Social Media Marketing Strategy, we find that of our customers that use us for Social Media Marketing experience conversion rates 2-4 times greater than those that do not use Social Media.

Web Analytics

All of our websites come with Google Analytics ready installed. We also recommend that functions like Goals and E-commerce tracking are set up as well, particularly if about to run a comprehensive marketing campaign. Analytics is the information system that can turn a bad campaign into a great campaign. Typical measurements we report include some obvious web statistics:

• Time on site
• Number of visitors
• Bounce rates (the number of people who stay for less than 5 seconds)
• Pages Visited / Pages Per Visit

We also track more complex information like

• Campaign ROI
• Brand mentions
• Social Media Traffic
• Keywords and pages that deliver traffic / goals / sales / bounces
• Campaign statistics

And countless more statistics can be extracted and derived from Analytics depending on what is required to be measured. Like all marketing campaigns targets should be set, key metrics measured and reported on. Once we know what works best then that is the best place to divert resources to. We are fortunate in having our own web analytics qualified consultant on staff.

Understanding Your Business Online

Pretty websites are great, but be sure your Web Designer or Internet Consultant understands your business. For example:

• Do they understand your products, is it highly customisable, does it come in different sizes and colours, are ther factors that affect the price?
• What is the call to action? Download a brochure?, Buy, Request a Quote, Request a Consultation? Call?
• What are the Checkout issues? Vat Exemptions, Different VAT Rates, Delivery Policies, Discounts?
• Delivery Policy Issues, Courier rates, Bulky Deliveries, Highland & Island Rates, Postage Rates, Integration with Label Printing and Despatch Systems? Integration with the Courier? Free Delivery Policy etc
• Marketing Discounts Policies, Free delivery above a certain spend? % discounts on spend, offer codes, vouchers.

It’s no good spending £5,000 or £25,000 on a website to find that what you take for granted has been overlooked. Make sure that your Web People ASK these questions.

Search Engine and Online Marketing

It’s important to get your web designers, your offline agency and your Internet consultants fully aligned to your strategy, to both avoid duplication and to ensure that they are complementing each other to your benefit.

Web Design, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, E-Mail Marketing and Social Media all work together. Make sure that your Digital Marketing Agency has expertise in all of these areas, this isn’t always easy for business owners and marketing departments, but here are a few pointers that may help when selecting an agency:

• Can your Internet Consultant explain Internet Marketing without getting overly technical. At the end of the day it is all common sense once you know how. If they know what they are doing, they will be able to explain quite clearly and easily.
• Do they understand business, most of all YOUR business, this should be reflected in their specification and proposal to you.
• Pick on one or two of your own competitors, see if your web designer can tell you why they do so well or so badly.
• Don’t accept broad generic answers and don’t be fobbed off with “It’s a trade secret”
• Ask for testimonials and ask them to demonstrate what they have done with other companies.
• Do they seem experienced enough to give you high quality professional advice
• Do their claims sound too good to be true? If so they probably are.
• Have they provided a comprehensive and comprehensible analysis of your website?
• Are they able to propose a coherent Internet marketing plan, that changes through time as results and analytics change? or are they a one trick pony just offering Google AdWords or just Link Building?
• Who will they be putting on your account? are they qualified? Will they appoint a qualified project manager?
• Are they Google AdWords and Analytics qualified
• Are they members of a body like SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organisation)

If they can’t or won’t answer move on to someone who will give you peace of mind, because they will probably give you results. 

About WSI In Huddersfield Yorkshire

We are a Digital Marketing and Design Agency based in Huddersfield West Yorkshire and part of the worlds largest network of Internet Consultants. We have specialists in the following fields:

• Website Design
• Website Development including Advanced PHP Programming
• Internet Consultancy
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing, also known as Social Networking and Social Media Optimisation (SMO)
• Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) also known as Paid Search and Google AdWords (we also run campaigns on Bing, Yahoo and also sites like Facebook and Linked In
• E-Mail Marketing

Talk to us about our no surprises site engagement policy and our customer testimonials.