00:00 Installing Google Analytics
00:22 Importance of good quality graphics and photos on an e-commerce site
01:17 Guest Blogging
02:55 Content Management Systems – use WordPress, make life easy for yourself (low cost WordPress training videos)
04:20 Throw away domain names
Transcript:
Okay, if you don’t have Google Analytics installed in your website, then it’s really something to consider. It’s not only pretty quick and easy to set up and it’s going to give you a lot of data that you can dive into and see what’s working and what’s not. So if you don’t have it set up or you’re not sure, it’s something to investigate and look into. So that’s Google Analytics and there are also paid services out there but Google Analytics I would recommend as a free one to start with.
I’ve just been working with a client on her e-Commerce website and if you’re selling something online or you’ve got your own e-Commerce website, it’s really important that the graphics and the pictures that you have on the site are really high quality because it comes down to a trust and authority based thing that you’re asking someone to buy something off your website without being able to pick it up off the shelf and see it. And they can’t normally talk with a salesperson so they’re relying on passing their credit card details over the web and then have your business fulfill and actually mail out or deliver the product they’re buying. So to give them that nice sort of warm fuzzy feeling of trust, you want to make sure that your logo’s and your graphics are crisp, clean, really high quality, and the photos that you’ve got for your products are again, also really high quality photos. This is going to improve the trust factor and how much people will put through your e-Commerce website.
Now, if you’re looking into content marketing and you’re trying to up the amount of blog post that you’re able to push out, then I tell you to look at is guest blogging. So if you’re quite a good writer and you find it easy and you like doing it, guest blogging is a way you reach out to other websites in your area that might not be directly in competition with you or in your sort of industry. And approach the company or webmaster and offer to write for them. And in most cases, you going to be quite welcome to the offer and they’ll really appreciate the fact that they’ll be able to put out some fresh content on their website because it helps in their search engine ranking, but for you, it also gives you greater exposure to their readers and generally a link back from their website to yours, which again is going to help the authority and the trust of your website in the eyes of the search engines.
On the flip side though, if you find writing painful and the idea of sitting down and trying to write content or blog post for your website is just something that you really don’t want to do, well again you can reach out to companies that are in similar market with you which are non-compete or in similar industry or area and ask them if they’re willing to provide an article or a blog post that you can put up on your website. That way you get fresh content on your website, get something interesting there that you can email out or have people from Facebook come and read about. And then the plus is that the person doing the guest posting, they get some exposure on your website which might bring people back to their website as well.
So guest blogging works both ways and it’s certainly something to check out if you’re in the content marketing space, which all of us should be now because basically we need to be our own publishers and creating information around our business and around what it is we do and we sell.
This one’s probably going to get a few comments and maybe some questions come back in, but I’ve been looking at client websites recently and we talk about a content management system or a CMS. This is generally a website platform where instead of the website being a static website that is very difficult to change, the idea of a content management system is that you can log in as a business owner and update your own website to add fresh information and change things around. Probably the big three that you come across in the market is WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
Now, I’m going to suggest that if you’re looking at a new website or upgrading, you really want to stick with WordPress or the WordPress platform. I know there’s lots of web developers who prefer to develop websites in Joomla and again in Drupal, but all of those, if you want to manage your website and update it later on without having to go back to a web developer and incur those high editing charges, then you really do want to be on WordPress. There is a much wider range of support – whether it is training videos, extra functionality that you can add to your website later on, and there is new things coming online all the time, there are fresh updates and overall the lifetime cost of your website is going to be dramatically less on WordPress. So look at your options, but my strong recommendation is to stick with WordPress if you’re looking for a new website.
I want to just quickly chat about throwaway domain names. So this is the www.yourcompany.com.au type of domain name that you have on your website. A lot of business owners don’t really understand how cheap domain names are. It can go for less than $20 and go grab a domain name for the year. So if you’re running a special promotion or a campaign in your business, give some thought to going out and just grabbing a specific domain name that relates to that campaign and you can then link that back to your main website or have a dedicated standalone temporary website on that domain, and then when it’s finished, just let it expire and basically you throw it away for the cost of what it is.
What that allows you to do though, say you’re a hairdresser and you are running a special and your campaign is talking about $9 haircuts. Well, you can go out and register NineDollarHaircuts.com.au and then use that on your marketing or your flyers, your ads for that campaign. And that’s just going to tie in the domain name of the website address with the rest of the ad or the marketing message that you are providing and it just gels everything together, and when they type that in, it might be easier to type in than your normal company domain, it’s catchy and it’s something they’re going to remember easier. It can still take them to your main website, you just redirect the domain name. But having NineDollarHaircuts.com.au is going to catch their attention – get more people through and at the end of the day, just throw it away when you’re finished with it.
Maybe you found some of those tips useful. If you have any questions or feedback, it would be awesome if you can leave a comment below and I’ll answer it there. I’d love to communicate with you that way. So have a fantastic week and I’ll talk to you shortly. Cheers!
End Transcript