Small Business Website Marketing Blog
Thanksgiving Day was last Thursday and traditionally a time for giving thanks. As busy as small business owners are, I hope you have time to stop and think about what you’re thankful for this year.
While the pundits and experts will tell us the recession ended back in 2009, 2010 was still a tough year for most entrepreneurs. If you are having trouble finding things to feel thankful for, here are some ideas:
- Be thankful you’ve made it through. Though it may not feel like the recession is over, I think most of us would agree that things are (finally) looking up and that the light at the end of the tunnel is getting closer—and brighter. If your business has survived the past two years, you’ve got something to be proud of.
- Be thankful for your employees. No business can survive without its employees—especially in the past few years. If your employees are like most, they’ve risen to the occasion, pulled together and done everything they can to help sustain your business in tough times.
- Be thankful for your customers. Customers have more options than ever in this constantly connected world. It’s easy for them to seek out new solutions when you’re no longer meeting their needs. Don’t ever take them for granted.
- Be thankful for the Internet. Innovations like cloud computing, social media, myriad free online tools to help start and grow businesses, content marketing platforms and the rise of virtual employees and remote workers—all powered by the Internet–have helped small businesses do more with less.
- Be thankful for your support system. Whether it’s your family, your friends, your colleagues or some combination of all three, no small business owner can go it alone. Today, more than ever, we’re relying on each other for moral support, ideas and encouragement.
- Be thankful for the lessons you’ve learned. You don’t make it through an economic landscape like today’s without being smart and savvy. Tough times teach us things, and the lessons we’ve learned in the past few years will help us run better, smarter, more profitable businesses in any economy.
We at Preation are extremely thankful for all of the items mentioned above and we’re looking forward to another successful year in 2012. What are you thankful for as a small business?
Redesigning your Eden website is a critical decision as it can have a strong impact on your visitors. Therefore, it is critical to evaluate the factors involved in website redesign and carefully plan it.
Before you redesign your Eden website, ensure that you really need it. Avoid redesigning your site just for the sake of it. You should consider redoing your website design only in case of the following situations:
An Unprofessional Look or Outdate Design
If your site has an unprofessional look, it can be safely said that the visitors will not give it a second glance. In such a situation, depending on your business, opting for a stylish design can be a great idea. Consider inclusion of high quality imagery to make your site more reputable.
Redesigning your site is also important when your site possesses an outdated look. The factors that make a design outdated can include distorted text, widgets, and broken images. In most cases, a design is considered outdated when it fails to support enhanced versions of plug-ins.
Remember that visitors avoid exploring a site that possesses an outdated design.
High Bounce Rate
Many sites get loads of traffic, but have a high bounce rate. The visitors explore the site for a short period and exit quickly. A poor website design could be responsible for the high bounce rate.
Consider the fact that a good website design highlights the main purposes of the site and the content. Additionally, it offers clear instructions, thus allowing visitors to navigate through it smoothly. If your site is experiencing a high bounce rate, you can consider revamping its overall look.
Low Traffic
A poor web design can be partly responsible for low traffic. If you find that people hardly visit your site, you should consider redesigning it. Pay attention to content and SEO issues as well; the reason for low traffic could be uninformative content or lack of proper Meta tags to attract search engines.
Considering these factors, and evaluating your current situation will help you to decide about website redesigning.
So what are your options?
- Bring in your own web designer that you’ve worked with before. It could be a relative or a friend if you like. Just make sure they are familiar with XHTML and CSS. We have designer documentation we can provide along with phone/email support.
- Hire one of Preation’s authorized design partners. Our designers are professional and competitively priced.
- Do the design work yourself. Once again, if you’re familiarity with XHTML and CSS is strong, we will support you with the redesign endeavor.
Make sure that you are tracking your visitors and conversions before and after a redesign to make sure that you didn’t mess anything up! Remember, conversions are the reason for having a marketing site on Eden!
Contact us today for more information on redesigning your Eden site.
After Q3 2011 brought a 13 percent increase in e-commerce sales, independent technology and market research company, Forrester, is estimating that U.S. online holiday sales will grow 15 percent this year to nearly $60 billion. The study reports that this increase will take place because of the increase in consumer-use of tablet computers for shopping combined with a growth in online holiday deals.
You can take advantage of this increase by preparing your content marketing/e-commerce website for the ‘price-savvy’ shopper and present more lucrative deals for online shopping and free shipping, especially on high-volume shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. One key way to take advantage of this up-tick as an Eden Platform user is by optimizing the middle to bottom of your online sales funnel through the use of SEO and Offers. Check out this article to learn more.
The report shows that 58 percent of Americans say they are more price-conscious today than they were a year ago and nearly half believe they find better values online. With Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday only weeks away, we’ll see soon if shoppers flock online for deals and savings, as is predicted.
Sign up for your free trial of Eden today and prepare for the holiday masses!
Today, Google announced a change to its search algorithm that the company says will impact 35% of Web searches. The change builds on top of its previous “Caffeine” update in order to deliver more up-to-date and relevant search results, specifically those in areas where freshness matters. This includes things like recent events, hot topics, current reviews and breaking news items.
Google says that the new algorithm knows that different types of searches have different freshness needs, and weighs them accordingly. For example, a search for a favorite recipe posted a few years ago may still be popular enough to rank highly, but searches for an unfolding news story or the latest review of the iPhone 4S should bring the newer, fresher content first, followed by older results.
How does this change impact Eden users?
This is certainly great news for Eden users. We’ve been preaching for over 8 months to create a content schedule and stick to it by adding and optimizing at least one page to your site a week. Google is now going to reward websites that have fresh content by pushing them up higher in the search results. Be sure to take advantage of this update! Thank you Google!
Are you relying on a “professional” search engine optimization (SEO) consultant to optimize your website? Are you tired of paying expensive monthly retainer costs just to show up higher in the search engine results? Are you being kept in the dark when it comes to knowing what’s going on with the day to day operations of your site? Are you being nickled-and-dimed for every little change that needs to be made on your site?
We at The Eden Platform believe that SEO and content management should be easily accessible and understood by everyday small business professionals. SEO is not some sort of rocket science only reserved for the super-techy. It’s actually a somewhat simple concept that once grasped, can propel your website to the top of the search results, and in turn grow your revenue!
What is your web company doing to help you with your marketing efforts and SEO? Do they provide you with step by step instructions on how to properly optimize your pages? Do they suggest implementing strategies to generate more leads? Do they know the current optimization trends and techniques used to boost results? Do they teach and consult you so that you learn the SEO process and understand why you’re doing what you’re doing? If you’ve answered no to any of these questions, it’s time that you give Eden a try.
We are dedicated to the online success of our clients. Our goal is to empower small business owners with the tools necessary to take their online marketing efforts into their own hands and teach them along the way so they can be self-reliant and self-sufficient in the future. The holidays are almost here! Don’t waste another minute being held hostage by your web firm and paying too much for results! Grab the reins and take control of your marketing destiny!
In last week’s blog post, we discussed the process of optimizing your websites traffic aka “Top of the Funnel” optimization. This process results in not only more traffic, but qualified traffic. Today we’ll be looking at the middle to bottom rungs of the funnel, conversion optimization. Obligatory rhetorical question time: what’s the point of getting visitors to your site if they do not convert into leads? Every business needs customers, and you have the highest probability of converting leads into customers on your Eden website by optimizing your on-site conversion percentage.
Looking at the graphic on the right (click for expanded view), you’ll see a sales funnel graphic that is representative of a 4 month period for an Eden client, Southern Energy Management. The funnel is broken into three sections/rungs. The top rung is monthly website visitors, those visitors filter down through the second band, monthly visitor conversion percentage, then down to the third/bottom rung with is conversions per month. Southern Energy Management was able to use Eden’s SEO and Offers features to effectively maximize their online sales funnel potential. As a result, Southern Energy Management increased their on-site conversion percentage by 419%.
We asked Heather Pownall, Director of Business Operations at SEM, how Eden’s Offers Feature has optimized their conversion percentage and as a result, increased their leads significantly. Here’s her response:
“We now know exactly what messaging works best at convincing our online visitors to fill out our lead forms. Thanks to Offers, our we marketing program is now performing better than ever!”
For a more in-depth description on how this process worked for SEM, check out their Offers case study.
With only 59 days until the holidays, the time to get your marketing site up and running is wearing thin! If you want to see the same results that SEM has seen, you need to get started right away building a content schedule, creating/optimizing at least one page of content a week. You should also add some intriguing offers to provide additional incentive for your visitors to convert and implementing them on your pages.
Sign up for a free 15 day trial of Eden today and get started generating leads immediately!
With the holidays just a few weeks away, it is extremely important to make sure you’re not only getting traffic to your marketing site, but that the traffic is optimized. This means that your website visitors are genuinely interested in your product and/or service. A higher level of interest leads to a higher likelihood of converting visitors into a leads/customers!
If you look at the graphic on the right (click for expanded view), you’ll see a sales funnel graphic that is representative of a 4 month period for an Eden client, The Healing Arts & Massage School. The funnel is broken into three sections/bands. The top band is monthly website visitors, those visitors filter down through the second band, monthly visitor conversion percentage, then down to the third/bottom band which is conversions per month. Healing Arts was able to use Eden’s SEO optimization features to effectively maximize their online sales funnel potential. As a result, Healing Arts increased their targeted traffic by 412% and their online conversions by 400%.
We asked Keith Bouchard, CEO of Healing Arts & Massage School, where they get their leads and how they’ve been able to increase traffic/enrollments on their website. Here’s his response:
“Google searches are our primary source of leads from marketing. I add and optimize 3-5 new pages to the website each week. Enrollments are way up and have more than tripled or quadrupled in the last three months.”
Do you want to see these types of results on your site? The opportunity to get started preparing your Eden site for the holiday traffic boom is now. All you need to do is set a content schedule where you can create/optimize at least one page of content a week, then think of some intriguing offers to provide additional incentive to your visitors to convert and implement them on your pages. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to increase your qualified traffic and revenues!
Don’t have an Eden site yet? Sign up for a free 15-day trial today!
We’ve been keeping an eye on our client, Southern Energy Management, ever since they implemented the Eden Offers feature on their site nearly 2 months ago.
They were looking at a way to increase their website leads, so we suggested Offers. We’ve tallied the results and you’ll definitely want to check them out.
See how Eden Offers have helped increase website leads by 419%.
Demo a product, make a sales pitch, train clients and employees. All of these things can be accomplished through the use of video on your website. Follow the steps below to add a video to your Eden site.
1. Copy the “embed code” from your YouTube or Vimeo video. Make sure when copying from YouTube, you select the checkbox that reads “Use old embed code” below the box where you copy it. If the code starts with ”
2. Login to your Eden website and edit the page you’d like to add the video to.
3. Add or edit a content element on the page.
4. Click the “HTML” button in the rich text editor.
5. Paste the embed code within the HTML source editor pop up window.
6. Click the “Update” button in the pop up.
7. Click the “Save” button in the content element.
This is an obvious rhetorical question that we hope small business owners would say “yes” to. Maybe your business wouldn’t be able to handle an increase in traffic of that magnitude, but most small business owners would jump at the opportunity to increase their targeted traffic numbers during the holidays. It is, after all, the season for giving. And by giving, we mean paying.
Small businesses are gearing up for a holiday season chock-full of online shopping and e-commerce transactions. With gas prices through the roof, less shoppers will be taking the trip down to their local shopping malls to purchase gifts. Therefore, having an online presence that acts as a marketing/sales tool for prospective buyers is paramount for increasing holiday revenues.
Ask yourself this: is your marketing site ready for the holidays?
You can bolster your qualified traffic numbers this holiday season by using Eden, but you need to get started TODAY. All you need to do is create a content schedule and follow these 3 easy steps and you will set yourself up for some generous holiday traffic numbers. The math is simple: more optimized content + more qualified visitors = more revenue. Don’t get caught being a naughty procrastinator. You might just miss out on all those nice sales!
Thanksgiving Day was last Thursday and traditionally a time for giving thanks. As busy as small business owners are, I hope you have time to stop and think about what you’re thankful for this year.
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