Author: Ross
Why you need to ensure your website is updated on a regular basis
If you have a website then you need to understand the importance of making changes and updates regularly. All websites should be updated for customer experience, Search Engine Optimisation and for security reasons. You may have a brochure type website which purely offers information, and which is aimed at generating enquiries or you may have an ecommerce website where you sell products or services online. Regardless of the type of site you have updates are still needed. As a potential customer, you want to be able to read the most up to date information and know that what is on the website reflects what’s going on instore or in the industry.
Security is another reason why a website should be updated regularly. The code may need to be tweaked or the content management system updated to allow if to function as it should and to be less likely to become victim to security breach. This is of the utmost importance when it comes to ecommerce sites which sell through a payment gateway.
SEO (search engine optimisation) also requires fresh and relevant content to be added to the site to help boost the rankings of the site on the search engines such as Google. If your site is left for months and months on end with no changes the chances are it will start to fall down the search engine results listings.
What is your marketing strategy?
As a business owner it is very important to have some sort of a marketing strategy. There so are many different marketing avenues that you may get confused about where and when you should invest your time and money to get the best return. The first thing you need to do is work out how much you can afford to spend on marketing in the short term. Once you know your budget you will be able to work out which marketing avenues are open to you. If for example you only have a budget of £100 per month then you may not want to use a third party marketing company as they are unlikely to be able to do much with your £100. Instead you may decide to do it yourself or find a freelance marketing guru.
If you want to keep your marketing in-
When creating a marketing strategy try to think of short term and long term goals and some things are pretty instant and others take time. You may decide to give Pay per Click marketing a go or social media marketing which can often have very quick results.
Marketing your company through online avenues
Marketing is a vast industry. All businesses have to do some forms of marketing in order to get orders and retain customers. Even if this marketing is done through word of mouth, it still plays a huge roll in the success of a business.
Some businesses manage to carry out marketing on a shoe string and are still very successful, meaning you don’t have to spend thousands to notice a big difference. If you are going in to an industry which is highly competitive then you may need a larger budget. When it comes to marketing online or offline, the more you invest the bigger return you should see. If not, then it may be that you are not doing it correctly or you are not marketing through the right channels. When having a website created there needs to be a lot of thought that goes in to how it will function but also the appearance.
A good way to market on a budget is to make sure that you take advantage of all the free or low cost marketing online such social media marketing and word of mouth / networking. Ensure your business is listed on free directories and make sure you have a listing on Google Maps.
How often should you back up your documents?
Laptops and PC’s are great when they are working correctly, but as with any technology they can often be a bit temperamental, especially as they get older. Many of us rely on our computers for work and for in our personal life, storing important photos and documents, but how many of us back up our computers as often as we should? The answer is very few. We often carry on saving files and photos to our computers and then delete the originals thinking that we have a copy, but if something should happen to the computer, all your files can be lost in an instances and may not be able to be retrieved. This can happen for a number of reasons such as a corrupt hard drive, accidental deletion of files or folders and losing or having your computer stolen. If you have not taken backups of all or your files and folders, you may have lost them forever.
There are a number of way in which you can secure another copy of your files and folders. One is to purchase an external hard drive and back up everything you need on t that. You should also ensure you keep the originals or create a second back up on a different drive in case the first one fails. Another way to back up your documents is to use the Cloud. You can purchase cloud space through a number of different companies and back up your files to this account meaning you can access them anywhere you have an internet connection. This is a great way to ensure you will not lose the documents or photos you need but some people worry about the security implications of this.
Having procedures in place to deal with a website security breach
Unfortunately website hacking and security breaches are happening more and more. Websites need to be programmed in such a way that they are as secure as possible and there should be procedures in place to let everyone involved know what to do should the worse happen.
If you are in charge of running a business that has a website then you should have some sort of plan laid out of what to do should your website come under attack and get hacked.
Firstly you need to ensure that your website is up to date in terms of the software that you use, the servers it is hosted on etc. Your programmer should try to eliminate any possible hacks that can be done through good coding practice.
If you do become victim to a website attack you need to take action immediately. If
.jpg)
Social media marketing and your website
Social media plays a big part in the online world. Many of us have profiles on at least one of the main social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram so it makes sense to marketing your business or products using social media as an avenue.
It is important to try and link your social media pages in to your website to increase traffic to your site. Social media posts should be quite short and to the point but there may be times when you want to give your readers more information. This is the time when you can refer them to a page on your site with further detail or to allow them to make a purchase. Adding the relevant link to your posts will help with this. When using links in social media posts, be sure to direct people to the correct page. It is not ideal if you put the links going straight to your home page as people will then have to search around to find what they wanted and you may end up losing people because of this. For this reason it may be better to keep your posts quite specific (such as about a product or service in particular) rather than being generic. It is also important to create posts and updates regularly on social media sites to keep readers interested and to give them a reason to follow you.
Choosing the right laptop
When you are looking for a new laptop you need to think carefully about what you want to use it for in order to establish which laptop is best for you. If you are looking to play games on it for example then you need to find one with a large hard disk drive, good amount of RAM and good graphics card.
You will often have to pay quite a bit more for a laptop that is going to be good for gaming.
If you want a laptop for work then you need to ensure that it is going to be reliable. Buying a good brand of laptop with at least a 12 months warranty on it is a good idea. If you are going to be storing files which are important then security and back up is also essential. You will want to invest in a high quality anti-virus package and also a backup drive that can be easily connected to the laptop. Portable hard drives are often the easiest way to do this.
Most computer shops will be able to discuss with you what you want the laptop for and then advise you of which models will be best suited. If the laptop is out of your price bracket you may need to sacrifice some elements of the spec to be able to afford one.
Too many changes to an existing site can be dangerous
Over time as your business grows your website often needs to as well. You may want to add additional pages, functionality or change the way it works. Often business owners want to cut down on costs so rather than having a new site, they will continue to adapt their old site. This can work well for small changes but over time sites often become disjointed and certain elements start to work against each other. If you are just wanting to update images and add new pages for content then your existing site will probably work perfectly.
Sometimes it can actually be more cost effective t essentially start over with a new website. This doesn’t mean that your existing content and images cannot be used, but it does mean you can have a new look and feel to your site and design I around the functionality that is needed and may be needed in the near future. It is important to bear in mind changes that may be coming soon that you will need to incorporate in your design as this will make it easier to implement when the time comes. When you set your new site live, be sure to tell Google and other search engines if your domain has changed and redirect old links to the new site.
Don’t forget the importance of customer feedback
When it comes to running a successful business, you need to ensure that you are delivering a high quality product and service and that your customers are happy. Happy customers will return to you for business and will also recommend you to others, increasing your sales.
It is very easy to get carried away with different forms of marketing and forget to listen to what your customers are saying. You need to establish what it is they want from you and track your performance rates.
One way to do this is to send out questionnaires but these often get little response with people feeling they do not have the time to fill them in. giving them plenty of ways to leave reviews can help and social media has made this even more easy to do so. Always keep track of the feedback you receive as not all of it will be good, but that’s ok as you can use this to help improve the service you offer. If you have a disgruntled customer, be sure to thoroughly investigate what the issues are and whether you need to make any changes to avoid it happening again.