In the latest in the series helping businesses to generate sales and leads online, STEVE RICHARDS, the Western Telegraph’s digital marketing expert, explains the importance of getting your business online. LOCALiQ, the company behind the Western Telegraph, has invested more than £230 million in our new digital marketing platform.
This means we are becoming one of the UK’s fastest growing digital marketing agencies, using our best-in-class marketing technology to generate leads for our clients.
I’m a small business, do I need a website?
Yes – not only is it an online ‘shop front’ for your business, but in this day and age, it is expected that businesses will be online. If a consumer cannot find you online, this leads to dis-trust and makes it unlikely they will use your business. 87 per cent of consumers use search engines as their FIRST stage of looking for a business, and 68 per cent of consumers search online to research long term purchases. If you’re not online, you’re missing out on being considered by these consumers.
Aren’t websites expensive?
You need to consider a website is an investment, not a cost. The price depends your requirements.
There are many options to consider, but just think about your key goals first – if you are looking for leads, then a non e-commerce website will suit you fine, (One you cannot buy from). These usually involve less investment than e-commerce sites and act like an online ‘brochure’ for your business.
If you are a retailer, an e-commerce store can open up your opportunities vastly – over £279billion of sales were made via websites in the UK in 2017. However, before delving into an online e-commerce store you need to consider if your business is ready to ship products to consumers, and, of course, collect any transit damaged or warranty related claims back.
If your not ready for e-commerce, you should still be online. You could go for a ‘catalogue’ style set-up. This is a website which lists products but doesn’t have the ability to buy. Use strong calls to action to try and drive footfall to your store.
Ok, I want a website, what should I do?
First, decide on your goals. This will help the agency guide you through the best type of website to go for. Using an experienced agency like us takes a huge strain off you.
What to consider when getting a website?
Without being too technical, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), is the practise used to get your website found in search results on search engines. This is broadly split in two – ‘on-site SEO’ which are factors to consider with the build of the site, and ‘off-site SEO’ which are things you can do externally to help get your site ranked higher.
When building a website, the ‘on-site’ or ‘technical’ SEO is what you need to consider. Getting the website right at the start makes it much easier to implement an off-site strategy longer term.
Here’s a few considerations:
Think mobile first – As mentioned earlier 68per cent of consumers use search engines to look into long term purchases – out of those 68per cent of people a staggering 97per cent of those use their smartphones. Your website must be responsive, which basically means it adapts to work well on any device. Google also prefers websites to be mobile friendly.
Good content – Write the content so it is easy to read and relevant to the product or service on that page. The general rule of thumb is that each page should have a certain topic or theme. Try not to put two services or products on the same page as that can confuse search engines. Write content for the reader, not for search engines. Your keyword density (words related to the topic/service/product you want this page to be found for) should be around 3per cent of the overall word count.
Easy – Your website needs to be clean, easy to navigate and easy for users to find what they want. Ideally use a search bar if you have product listings, or display your phone number in the top of each page if you are looking for leads.
Load speed – A major factor in ranking position is the speed the pages load. Make sure the images are compressed, and ask your agency about using a cache and CDN network to help decrease loading times.
Alt tags – When you upload images, Google cannot ‘read’ them – it ‘reads’ words. You can ‘label’ images with Alt tags which tell Google what the image is of. The image should match the theme and content on the rest of the page.
SSL certificate – An SSL certificate basically encrypts any information that you input into a website (card details, email addresses…etc), so that it goes directly from the website you are on to the server. This prevents anyone stealing the information. You can tell if a website has an SSL as a padlock will be displayed in the address bar.
There are many more factors that go into building a good website, such as meta titles, descriptions, header tags, and as a business owner it would be an overwhelming task to consider them all. That is where we come in. LOCALiQ offer expert web design for all businesses.
Who is LOCALiQ?
So, LOCALiQ is the digital marketing agency that sits within Newsquest Media Group – the publisher of the Western Telegraph, amongst more than 200 other local and regional news brands. LOCALiQ offer a full portfolio of digital marketing solutions, such as website builds, SEO, PPC, Targeted banner advertising and social media marketing to name a few. Whatever your business objectives, we will have a solution to match your needs. We are a friendly team of local experts helping businesses like yours navigate the complex digital landscape. Visit localiq.co.uk to find out more about us and our services.
Why should I use LOCALiQ?
Because we’re ace! Haha. No, in all seriousness, we are a long-established company, which is helping almost
20,000 clients worldwide. Unlike traditional agencies we utilise our best-in-class technology. We have developed unparalleled software that optimises campaigns automatically to maximise the volume of leads generated – we do not focus just on traffic or clicks. We focus on actual leads and enquiries. Another real benefit is that we focus heavily on the support we offer, every client receives support and advice from a consultant and a dedicated marketing expert. This ensures you get the return on investment from your marketing and maximise your sales.
We offer a completely free consultation and ‘digital health check’ to see if your online presence matches your objectives. Give me a call to arrange a no obligation meeting – I’ll even bring the biscuits!
Look out for next month’s article when I will be talking about the importance of a website and offering some tips on what to look for in a ‘good’ website. To learn more about how LocaliQ can help your business to thrive online, visit