Category: News

In simple terms page load speed is the number of seconds it takes for the content on your web pages to appear in front of visitors. As technology moves forward at lightening speed consumers are requiring faster responses to their clicks and if your website page load speed is slow it may cause visitors to leave your site possibly costing you sales. In addition, user behaviour on your website sends important signals to search engines which in turn can impact your ranking.

The page speed of your website is the first impression people get even before they have a chance to see your products and/or services. Visitors may get frustrated while they are waiting for your page to load and there is nothing more frustrating than waiting. Recent research found that 47% of people expect a website to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will give up if it takes more than 3 seconds to load so if your page speed is not fast the chances are you will have a high bounce rate and low time on page too.

If users get past the first page and start to browse around your website then are continually faced with delays again they will probably leave the site which ultimately will cost your company revenue.

When you build a website you not only have to make sure that all the information on it is factual or that you state if not, but you also need to ensure that it complies to the latest rules and regulations. One big regulation that must be adhered to it GDPR. GDPR came in to action in May 2018 and was bought in to help protect the data of individuals. It relates to the collecting, storing and using of personal data and can be a bit of a minefield. It is vital that you not only get permission off your customers to obtain and store their data but also tell them what you are going to do with it, how it is stored and how they can remove consent. You should also ensure you get permission to pass or sell their details on to third parties. Businesses that do not comply to GDPR could risk a hefty fine, court cases or worse.

Promoting finance is another area that you need to take great care in. You have to ensure that you are clear and concise when mentioning any financial gain or investment. There are very tight regulations around this subject matter so you need to ensure that you find out exactly what you can and can’t do.

Many businesses have started to panic about the drop in traffic to their website. It may be that they are still able to trade but have noticed they are not getting as many visitors, enquiries or sales. This may well be linked to the lockdown as a certain number of your visitors may have decided that they need to watch what they are spending until there is a bit more certainty. It may not matter how hard you market, if the business isn’t out there are the moment then your visitors will not increase. That being said it is important to carry on with your marketing as there are still people out there willing to spend money and also when the economy does start to open up, you want to be ahead of your game to ensure you get a piece of the pie.

If you are experiencing a drop in traffic, have a look back to the previous lockdowns, particularly the one in March to see if you can notice a pattern. If your visits dropped off then as well then it is likely the cause of the drop this time. Over the next few weeks you can expect the traffic to start to increase again as the country starts to get back to some sort of normality.

This pandemic has hit everybody really hard. We have all been affected by it even if it’s just a small way but for many business owners, the effects are huge.

It may be that your business has had to shut entirely or that you can now only trade online and not face to face. It is important to keep your customers and your potential customers updated as to changes with how you are operating your business during these unprecedented times.

Firstly, to trade online you really should try and have a website. You may have a social media presence but ideally you should have a website too. It is vital that the information on your website is current and correct and updated as and when needed. If you sell cars for example but your showroom is closed then you should state this on the home page of your website. If you are able to offer something else such as virtual appointments or video walk rounds of the vehicles then you want to make this prominent so people are aware of other options. Not advertising this may mean that you lose out on sales to companies that are continuing to advertise their new ways of working.

For many business owners the need to promote their business effectively is paramount as without successful marketing and promotion the business may fail to grow but what are the best and most cost-effective ways to do this?

One of the ways in which you can choose to promote your business is to adopt a referral or recommendation scheme whereby existing customers are rewarded for referrals that they make which result in sales. If you offer an excellent level of customer service and customers are happy with the products or services you sell, you can use this to your advantage. The way forward is to offer your existing customers a reward if they refer a new customer to your business. The referral process needs to be easy to follow as people will be put off by processes that are too complicated and once a referral has been converted into sales the reward should follow rapidly.

The rewards that are offered should be valuable to the recipient and could be in the form of vouchers off further products and services, vouchers for other retailers or promotional materials such as mugs, bags or other items. Free delivery could also be used as a reward especially on heavier items where delivery charges may be expensive.

You may have a new offer coming up and wonder how is the best way to inform your customers of this offer. Ideally you want it to cost as little as possible but get you the most coverage and in turn sales.  If your website ranks highly on the search engines for your main phrases, then you may find that new content gets indexed quite quickly and will appear in the search engine results when someone makes a search. But even for the sites that do perform well, it still may not be as quick as you would like or need it to be. Also you are having to rely on people searching for the right thing for your product or service to come up and if it is a new concept you may not get much traffic this way.

Always add new products / offers on to your website, but then you need to direct your customers to this new information and there are a number of ways to do this. To notify existing clients you could do a physical postal mail out or send out an email with links to the new content on the site, but to reach a wider audience, then you could use a pay per click campaign such as Google Adwords. Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter also work really well.