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We're Hiring

Role: Assistant Project Manager Contract:4 Months Initially, 3 Days p/w

An exciting opportunity to join a growing team, working in the digital sector.

You will be working alongside our Senior Project Manager on web build projects and ongoing development work. The work will include data input and validation, research, testing and quality control, as well as day to day administration.

Applicants must have very strong web skills, and a good eye for design, although training will be provided where required. Applicants should be able to demonstrate an attention to detail, and an understanding of web-based technologies.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/blog/make-us-visible-design-award/

Make Us Visible - Design Award

It’s always nice to receive recognition for your work, but even nicer when the recognition comes from your peers.  The team at Heart Internet, the UK’s largest hosting reseller, have voted our recent project for Cartmel Village as website of the month.

We thought this might be a good opportunity to give our customers a little insight into our design and build process.

Stage 1 – Design

Every website we build is done so from a blank canvas.  We don’t use templates…… in fact we dislike templates.  We don’t believe that your business should need to fit around the structure of an off-the-shelf template.  Actually, we believe just the opposite; your website should fit around your business and how you want to present it online.

Once we have created an initial draft, we share this with the client.  Depending on the client’s feedback we will then either re-draft, make changes, or proceed to stage 2.

Analogy – The design stage is a little like your architect showing you plan for what your finished house is going to look like.  It’s important to be happy before you give the OK.

Stage 2 – Coding HTML

Once designs are approved we can begin making building your website.  This is the most complex stage of the process and involves hundreds or thousands of lines of code.  Some of the steps involved here include;

Coding your website into HTML

Determine how your website is going to function at different screen sizes

Ensure the site has consistent style sheets for fonts and colours

Testing the layout

To complete this stage, we undertake extensive testing, and the designer and coder work closely to ensure that the site is looking just as good as the approved design.

Stage 3 – Code The CMS

It’s important that once your site is completed, it can easily be edited now or in the future.  That may mean adding products, or images, or changing your prices and contact details.

In order to achieve this, we have to code your design onto a CMS.  We use 2 CMS systems.  For standard content-based websites and small selling websites, we use WordPress.  For larger e-commerce websites we use Magento.  Regardless of the platform, we ensure that site we handover can easily be edited by the customer.

Stage 4 – Done & Dusted

Depending on the client’s existing website, we always go through a careful go-live process. This includes getting Google Analytics up and running, improving the Google My Business listing, and providing any needed training on managing the site.

At the start of a project, we will discuss timeframes with you.  The timeframe is impacted mostly by design, and how many revisions of the design are needed.  As a very rough benchmark, we like to have around 8 weeks for a standard WordPress website and around 12 weeks for larger e-commerce websites.

Every business has its differences, which is why we believe every website should be unique.  Our focus is always on strong calls-to-action, to ensure that your website generates sales or leads, as well as presenting you in a professional and attractive way.  Once your website is live, we are here to help you drive traffic to it, and generate sales or leads.  We always encourage our clients to keep their websites fresh, and updated, which is something we can help with.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/portfolio/wood-importer/

Wood Importer

We were asked to create a website for a long established wood importation business.  The business is several decades old, but currently had no website.

CSI Specialities import Siberian Green Oak, which is used predominantly by the construction industry in the UK.  With this project, the imagery was key, to show the product source in Russia.  Our client had commissioned a photographer at their Russian sawmill, which has resulted in some outstanding imagery to lift the website.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/blog/website-traffic-key-sales/

Is More Website Traffic The Key To More Sales?

When we talk to customers they often have one key focus in mind; getting more website visitors.  Whilst this is an understandable goal for any business owner, we sometimes have to convince our clients that it shouldn’t always be at the top of the priority list.

The Cost Of Website Traffic

When you bring visitors to your website, there is an associated cost. The cost might come from;

Paid adverts (eg Adwords)

Cost of offline advertising

Cost of SEO

The cost of building and maintaining your website

The cost of your/staff time in editing the website’s content

The cost of building your brand

It likely that your competitors, in the same industry, will have similar costs.  For example, if your cost of a click on Adwords is £1, your competitors will have a similar cost (stick with me I’m getting to the point).  The point being that no traffic is free….there is always an associated cost (in time and/or money).

Now imagine your website converts at 1%, which means you gain one sale for every 100 visits.  Now imagine your competitors convert at 5% on average.  This means one simple thing;

“You have no chance of competing with your competitors. Full stop, the end, time to re-think”.

But before you shut the doors and lock up…..let’s just clarify;

If you and your competitor’s average sale is £50.  Let’s say that on average a visit to your website is costing you £1 and you get 1,000 visits;

You

(1,000 visits * 0.01% (conversion rate))  = sales per 1,000 visits * £50 (average sale value) = £500 (Total Revenue)

Your Competitors

(1,000 visits * 0.05% (conversion rate))  = sales per 1,000 visits * £50 (average sale value) = £2,500 (Total Revenue)

And here is a very sobering thought;  The above means that you’re going to have to get 5 times more visitors to your website than your competitors.  Which is going to mean spending 5 times more than they do on advertising, or spend 5 times more time than they do on gaining the traffic.  Either way….your not going to be able to compete.

So What Should You Focus On?

In the above scenario, you should shelve any ideas about getting more visitors to your website. Shelve any ideas about spending more money on advertising….and focus on just one thing…..improving your conversion rate.

A good conversion rate varies from sector to sector, but as a very rough benchmark, an acceptable conversion rate will be 2% minimum, with 10% being on the high end.  Keep in mind that a conversion from your website isn’t always a sale…..sometimes a conversion might be an enquiry form being completed.  Either way, you should have conversions setup in Google Analytics.

How To Improve Conversion Rate?

There’s the million dollar (pound) question.  It very much varies from website to website and sector to sector.  But some things which could impact your conversion rate include;

Are your prices too high?

Are you not providing visitors with clear calls to action

Does your website have functional problems (bugs)

Are you building trust

When investigating poor conversion rates for our clients, the order of play is always as follows;

Check technical aspects

Check pricing

Check calls to action

The Technical Aspects

When it comes to the technical aspects of investigating low conversion rate, the place to start is Google Analytics.  Navigate to the Audience > Mobile >Overview section of analytics, and you should see a report similar to the following;

In the above example, we can see one very obvious statistic which is leaping out.  The mobile and tablet conversion rate is around 5% less than desktop.  Desktop is converting at a superb 14%, and mobile just 9%.  In this example, had mobile converted at 14%, the revenue would have increased by just under £250,000.

The above example is quite extreme, but not unusual.  As users are moving away from desktops to mobile, this is often a great place to start when trying to understand why your customers are not checking out.

Pricing

There’s no getting away from the fact, that when it comes to e-commerce, “price is king”.  Gone are the days when price comparison meant a 2-mile hike across town; now tab-based browsing is the norm, and users will rarely be willing to shop with you unless you can show the best price, or a better inclusive (eg bundles or free delivery).

Create a list of your main competitors, and try to establish to your price competitive, and if not why not.

You may have set margins in your business plan, but when it comes to e-commerce, the first customer should lead to many more repeat purchases.  Building buyer confidence through efficient delivery times, and good service will result in a better conversion rate through repeat custom.

Calls To Action

Often customers want to know that the conversion (sale or form), is going to be quick and easy to complete.  Signposting the way at every step is key to building confidence that using your website will be quick, and straightforward.  The wording of the text is crucial, as much as having clear and sharp images which work well on a desktop, mobile and tablet.

The wording of text on buttons is also crucial, as is the colour of any buttons, and their position.  If you have a decent volume of traffic, you can test colour variations, tweaking text and moving the positions, to split test which works best.

This article from MOZ is a good reference point when experimenting with Call-To-Action buttons, and conversion optimisation.

In Summary

Getting more website visitors is always important, and something every website owner should look to achieve.  However, it can be a much easier and more lucrative exercise to look at the existing traffic, and try to understand how you can take more of them from being visitors to customers.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/portfolio/dentii/

DENTII

DENTII is an innovative new brand of toothbrushed, currently in Kickstarter phase. Our client has created and patented technology which is designed to revolutionise the way people brush their teeth.

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Health Care

Our client was a new startup ‘My Beautiful Baby’, specialising in pre and post natal care.  With a blank canvas to work with, Make Us Visible were able to develop a brand and which presented our customer’s key services in an informative and straightforward way.

The website was developed onto a CMS, so that text and images can easily be changed now and in the future. This includes adding new services.

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Tua Optimum

Our clients had a requirement to create a brand and web presence which would allow them to be represented well online, to prospective clients, who are predominantly in the Sea, Oil & Gas industry.

We liaised with the client to gain a strong understanding of their business, so that the focus of the website could be geared around the key aspects for decision makers.  We adopted a content driven approach, where the client was able to provide clear and concise copy, which the Make Us Visible team were able to deploy onto the website in a visually attractive style.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/portfolio/accomodation/

Accomodation

Our customer had a quite dated website, aimed at showcasing their holiday rental properties.  Despite being on the edge of the English Lake District, in a stunning setting, the website failed to show visitors the quality of accommodation on offer, or clear calls to action in order to make bookings.

The new website was designed around showcasing the property images, the local area, and with a focus on taking customers quickly and easily to the booking enquiry pages.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/portfolio/aircon-installer/

Aircon Installer

Our brief was to replace a site now over 10 years old, with a modern crisp design which would reflect the nature of professionalism of the business.

We initially worked with the customer to understand their products and service, and to understand the types of customer they have.  From this we created a navigational structure for the site, which would allow users to get to the point of interest within just a couple of clicks.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/blog/measure-website-conversion-rate/

How To Measure Website Conversion Rate

Your website conversion rate is a crucial figure when it comes to measuring the success of your website.  Being able to measure the success of your website, will underpin how scale-able your digital marketing plan is.  Unless you able to see which parts of your digital marketing is working (and which is not), dividing budgets, splitting campaigns, and understanding ROI will be almost impossible.

What Is A Website Conversion Rate

The way a conversion rate is calculated differs from website to website.  If you are selling products on a bog standard e-commerce website, your conversion rate will generally equate to the number of website sales divided by the number of website visitors, times by 100.  For example, if your website has 100 sales, from 1,000 visitors, the calculation would be;

(100 / 1,000) * 100 = 10%

Things become a little more complex if you are not selling something, but instead generating leads.  For example, imagine a business to business website providing accountancy services.  Clearly this is not an off-the-shelf product and conversion rate cannot be measured in the same way.  With this type of site, a conversion would normally be classed as a lead / enquiry.  For example, someone asking for a call-back, or a written quotation.  This type of lead is not as clear cut, as the customer is simply coming into the sales funnel, and may not actually become a paying customer.

What Should My Conversion Rate Be

This is a question you really need to answer yourself.  Every business will have a different figure in mind, and it essentially boils down to your cost-of-sales, as well as your customer life cycle.  For example, if you are selling watch straps for £10, and your margin is 50%, you need to have a cost-per-conversion of less than £5.  If your advertising method is Pay-Per-Click, and each click is costing you £0.50p, it means that your conversion rate needs to be a minimum of 10% in order to be in profit.  If you have tight margins, and high cost-per-click, your website will need to convert extremely well in order to make a PPC campaign profitable.

How To Measure Website Conversion Rate

There are a number of tools which can help, but the industry standard method, and ours, is to use Google Analytics.  By setting up goals, you can track every action on your site, including sales and form completions.  For e-commerce sites you can also track sales figures against the goals.  Adding the Google tracking code to your website is fairly straightforward, but does require some technical ability.  There is also some work to undertake within your Google Analytics account in order to setup your goal markers, which again requires a certain degree of technical ability.  Once setup, they can be left alone, and data will continuously be tracked.

How Should I Use The Conversion Rate Data

Conversion rate data becomes especially useful from Google Analytics when run in conjunction with Pay-Per-Click advertising, Social Media Advertising or Organic Search.  Why?  Because you can see conversion data combined with any other data within Google Analytics.  A few examples….

See your conversion rate on mobile phones compared to tablets

See your conversion rates of different age groups

Compare conversion rate of Twitter to Facebook

Compare conversion rate of different campaigns within your Adwords account

This data then allows you to target your budget to the areas which convert the best, or of course to improve under performing areas.  We have had many clients where it is identified that their mobile phone traffic is converting at a rate far less than their tablets and desktop visitors, which can be rectified and measured.

So, What Should My Conversion Rate Be?

As mentioned above, this is different for every business and every website.  It really depends on your margins and cost of sales.  However, as a bare minimum we would consider 2% to be a bottom line conversion rate.  On the opposite end of the spectrum we have clients running campaigns at close to 15% conversion rate.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/blog/choose-ppc-seo/

Should You Choose PPC Or SEO?

In times gone by, simply having a website was enough to generate business.  In today’s digital age however, with competition stiff in almost every sector, you have to think about how you will bring customers to your website.  Some of our clients treat their website as a presence, and are only concerned about existing customers seeing that they have a professional presence.

However, some of our customers rely on their website as their main form of lead generation. In this situation there are generally two main ways to bring traffic to your site; SEO, or PPC (Adwords).  In this article we will looking at the differences and the pros and cons of both.

PPC – Adwords

PPC stands for Pay Per Click.  As the name suggests, it is a form of advertising where you pay when a potential customer clicks on your advertisement.  The largest provider of PPC advertising is Google, via their Adwords platform.  Adwords is the main way Google generates revenue, and has been around for over 15 years.  when you type something into Google, and you see Adverts at the top and bottom of the page, those are Adwords Ads.  If you click on one of those Ads, the advertiser is paying a fee to Google.

The fee you pay depends on the competition.  If you are advertising a low value product, you might find the cost is just pence per click.  However, if you are advertising an expensive service, eg mortgages or loans, you might pay £10+ per click.

The big advantage of PPC is that it is very quick to get up and running.  Within hours you can be driving traffic to your website.

The disadvantage is cost.  We always advise our clients that in order to run a good PPC campaign, we need an understanding of the % conversion rate of your website.  Using this figure we can than calculate how much a lead (or sale) is going to cost to generate on average, and thus you can work out if PPC is viable for you.  If you are starting from scratch, it does take time (and money) to establish the conversion rate of your website, and the average cost per clicks, so the initial period is very much a market research exercise.

Undertaking an Adwords campaign without a good understanding of the Adwords platform, can be a very expensive and fruitless exercise, which is why (if budget allows) you should always emply the services of an Agency.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is the process of making improvements and changes to your website, in order to encourage Google to rank you higher for a specific keyword.  For many years this has been known as a black art, but in recent times is more about having a properly structured website, with unique and quality content.

Let’s imagine you want to rank for ‘builder in london’.   You need to demonstrate to Google that your website is more worthy than all the other companies who also want to rank for the same phrase.  Worthy means;

How good is your website in terms of usability How relevant is your website to the search term How well is your website structured and coded

The big advantage of SEO is that most people still click on organic search results, rather than paid adverts, so the traffic potential is huge.

There are some major drawbacks.  Ranking for most competitive keywords is very time consuming, complex and expensive.  However, we believe the key dissadvantage is that once you rank, there is no guarantees that you will generate leads/sales from the keyword…. which can mean wasted time and/or money.

Our Advice

Unless you are 100% certain that your website is performing well for a particular keyword, don’t spend significant funds on targeting that keywords with SEO. First, ensure that your website converts visitors into sales for that keyword, which is best done via PPC advertising.  If for example you find your site converts at 10% for a specific keyword in your PPC campaign, then by all means target it with some SEO.

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How To Optimise A Page On Your Website For A Keyword

Note: This article is aimed at new website owners getting started with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

So you have your shiny new website, and it’s ready to handle the huge influx of visitors you know your business deserves.  It’s time to start tailoring your content for some target keywords, and work on organic traffic.

What Is Organic Traffic

Organic traffic refers to traffic which comes to your site naturally via listings on search engines, social media, directories, and  other online resources. For the purpose of this article, when we talk about “organic” we are talking about traffic from ‘Google‘, which accounts for over 90% of UK search engine traffic.  When we talk about your ‘organic’ listing’ we are talking about where you appear in Google search results.

Your website will have many different organic results.  Let’s look at the fashion website ‘New Look‘ by way of example.

If you type into Google, “red shoes”, you will see this listing on page 1 for the ‘New Look’ website;

But if you type into Google “blue shoes”, you will see this;

These are two completely different pages of the New Look website, both geared towards different keywords.  In an ideal world, every page of your website should be geared towards a target keyword.  Which brings us onto the topic of ‘how you can optimise your pages for specific keywords’.

Yoast

Google will pick up the target keyword of your site almost autonomously.  their algorithms are hugely complex,  and spend their days reading pages on websites, and determining when and if to display those in the results.  Google’s aim to to give the user the most relevant website’s first.  However, there are several things you can do to encourage Google to list your site closer to the top of the search results.  This process is known as search engine optimisation, or SEO.

Let’s say for example you wanted to target the keyword ‘plumber in oxford’, and you have a WordPress based website for your building company.  The first step would be to create a new page on your site to target the keyword ‘plumber in Oxford’.  Keep in mind this is the page people are going to land on when they have found the page on Google.  So your content needs to be relevant to those people, make clear concise sense to them, and should provide them with a good call to action….a contact form, a phone number, etc etc.  You’re going to put a lot of effort into this page, so you need to make certain that people are finding it useful and concise.

With most of our WordPress based site’s we install a plugin called Yoast SEO.  It is a huge help for website owners in optimising pages for specific keywords.  Let’s work through how you would do this;

Page Title

This is, arguably, the most important aspect that Google will consider when ranking your page.  I say ‘arguably’ because there are thousands of factors, of which this is just one….but it’s a big one.  When you create your new page, ensure that your target keyword is in the title.  so in this example;

This is a good title for the page, and would be viable to target the keyword “Plumber In Oxford’.  It isn’t spammy, it makes sense, and it contains the target keyword…..tick tick tick.

Google may also display this title in search results, as well as using it to determine where your page should rank.  So, your title should be enticing for users to click on, but not spammy.

Your Page Content

This is obviously what will make or break the page.  You should write informative, jaw dropping, head turning content.  Do not;

Copy from other websites

Write spammy text

Write text which is too salesy

Do;

Write unique text of at least a few hundred words

Write for your visitors, not for search engines

Double and triple test for typos, spelling and layout issues

I cannot stress enough the important of having good text on the page.  But you should also include some images.  Once you get more familiar with WordPress there are  a few other things you might want to do to improve your chances, especially for more competitive keywords;

Set alt text on images

Try to use H2 headings, with some relevance to your keyword

Use bold and italics where appropriate

Try to use word which are similar to your keyword (eg plumbing is similar to plumber).

Once you have written your content, it’s time to look at some extra little pieces of information which your visitors won’t see, which Google will see.  We call this META DATA.

Meta Data

Every page of a website can have meta data.  This is information you are giving google about your page.  If you are using WordPress with Yoast installed, you will see this box at the bottom of the editor when making changes to pages;

The ‘snippet’ preview is an estimation of how your page might currently be displayed if it appears on Google.  But the first thing you will want to do is enter your ‘focus keyword’ because this will then allow Yoast to start giving your guidance about the page.

Once you enter your target keyword, keep watching the Analysis section for tips on how to further improve the page.

Title & Description

Imagine you were placing an advertisement into a newspaper.  The newspaper tells you that you can have a heading of 60 characters, and your can have text of 160 characters.  You can now envisage how crucially important this is….it’s your big chance to tell Google what you would like to appear in search results.

Click the ‘edit snippet’ button;

SEO title will be the heading, and ‘meta description’ will be the text below.  Keep in mind the restriction of 60/160 characters, but the Yoast plugin will warn you if you are exceeding these.   Make sure you use your target keyword in the title.

Having the keyword in the description is not a ranking factor with Google, but what it will do is turn users on or off….. if people don’t like your description, they won’t click your listing.  Going back to the newspaper analogy, if people don’t like your advert, they are unlikely to phone you.

Summary

You have to keep in mind that the above is a basic guide.  Doing all of the above is not going to guarantee you appear on the first page of Google.  If it did, everyone would be optimising for ‘gold watches’ and ‘payday loans’.  How easy it is to rank depends entirely on how competitive the keyword is, and how many people are also optimised for it….which is when the other few thousand ranking factors come into play.

Focus on writing good quality, unique text.  Write it for your target audience, and not Google.  Make sure someone visiting will find it helpful, and informative, and that you give them ample opportunity to get in touch.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/blog/going-from-facebook-zero-to-facebook-hero/

Going From Facebook Zero To Facebook Hero

This is a topic which impacts almost every business at some time or another. Maybe you are starting a new venture, or perhaps your existing business simply never got around to opening social media accounts.

There is nothing more daunting that starting from zero. Zero is scary place! Here are some tips to get you started with Facebook.

Quality Not Quantity

The first thing to keep in mind. Never was a truer word spoken than ‘quality not quantity’. There are multiple reasons why you absolutely don’t want a Facebook following made up of mainly friends and family.

Your friends and family are not customers, so there is zero chance of generating any sales from them seeing your posts. When you publish something on Facebook, only a small percentage of your followers will see it. This percentage is determined by Facebook’s complex algorithms, and is driven by their revenue generation model. If Facebook displayed your posts to ALL your followers, they would be cutting off their major revenue stream.

So keeping this in mind, imagine you publish a post on your Facebook page, and you have 100 followers. 800 of them are friends and family, and 200 are real genuine customers (or potential customers).

Lets presume Facebook decides to show your post to 30% of your followers…. Hopefully by now you can see the problem…. more than likely you are going to be hitting mostly friends and family, and just a splattering of potential clients. If you hadn’t bothered asking the friends and family to like your page, you would have a far better quality audience, and more potential clients seeing your posts. Yes….. less is more.

Of course this doesn’t mean you should actively discourage friends and family, but don’t build an audience dominated by them.

Tagging

This works particularly well if you are a business-to-business service. When you write content, try to tag businesses in a relevant way. Those business owners may in turn LIKE you, and most crucially (if they do) you will gain exposure to their customers.

If you are providing a service to consumers you might want to tag companies who your customers also like, but not competitors. For example, if you are selling dog leads, and your target market is ‘dog owners’, you may have a relationship with another company who sell ‘dog food’….. Tagging them into some of your posts will increase your exposure to like-minded customers.

Invite

You can invite people to like your page. Best of all you can use your existing database of customer emails to do so. Perhaps you have a database of customers who have previously purchased from you?

From the ellipsis (…) button on your page, click INVITE EMAIL CONTACTS

Facebook will give you a number of automated methods to get your email contacts into Facebook.

Promote Your Page On Your Website

Facebook provide a tool ‘The Facebook Page Plugin’, which was formerly called the ‘Facebook Likebox’.

Facebook’s tool allows you to enter a few details about your page, and then provides you with some code to paste onto your website. This code will make a widget appear, a preview of which you get along the way.

In Summary

In short, aim for targeted likes, not every Tom, Dick and Harry. Build an audience which you know you will be able to write engaging content for, which they will like, and share.

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/blog/what-is-an-ssl-do-i-need-one/

What Is An SSL & Do I Need One?

The topic of having an SSL on your website is often raised on business forums and webmaster blogs.  Often the subject of much confusion, SSLs are actually quite simple, but yet do have huge potential, good and bad. So what is an SSL, and what exactly does it do?

What Does An SSL Do?

In simple terms, once installed an SSL Encrypts (scrambles) information sent to and from your website.  The obvious question is, “why would you want to do this”?  The reason quite simply is security.

Imagine you have a form on your website, the form may ask personal question, or it might even take credit or debit card details.  If someone (a customer) completes this from, the data is sent FROM the user’s computer, TO your website.  The data is sent pretty much as-is.

However, if someone, a hacker for example, wished to intercept this data, they potentially could.  In fact, this would be as easy as being within range of the user’s wifi router with some free software installed on their laptop.  Once they run the software and intercept the data, they would very easily be able to read it.  Obviously if this data includes credit/debit card details this is a major security concern.

However, with an SSL things are a little different.  A hacker could still intercept the data, but it would be completely unreadable to them.  Because of the encryption applied by the SSL, the data is converted into complex code at the users end, and decoded back at the website server’s end.  At the point the hacker could intercept over wifi, the data would be unreadable.

How Do You Know If A Site Has An SSL?

There are a couple of ways you will know this.

Most web browsers will display a small LOCK or PADLOCK icon if you are viewing a secure site. You can see examples for Chrome, Safari and Firefox below.

The address of a secure website will start with HTTPS:// rather than HTTP://

Do Users Care?

Overwhelming evidence suggests that they do care.  The confidence of knowing a website is protected by an SSL allows users to enter personal information without the worry of that data being insecure.  Showing your customers that you have taken the effort (and cost) to install an SSL, shows them that you are conscious of security, and you are concerned about protecting their privacy.

Is An SSL Required?

It very much depends on your website.

If you are taking credit or debit card details directly on your site, you may be subject to terms and conditions of privacy, and PCI regulations which require you to transmit data securely.

If you are planning to sell via your website on Google Shopping, you will need to have an SSL.

It is also important to note that Google’s Official Webmaster Guidelines do clarify that having an SSL IS a ranking factor, and as such your website will perform better on Google search if it has an SSL installed.

What Are The Dangers

Whilst having an SSL is almost a no-brainer, it is very important to have your SSL installed properly.  All pages of your website should perform a 301 redirect to the new HTTPS url, and you should also take actions with your Search Console and analytics accounts to account for the change of address.

Remember, changing your website address to HTTPS is effectively as dangerous as moving your website to a totally new address, and should be handled with extreme care.

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John Coward Architects

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/case_study/architect-website-design/

Architect Website Design

New Post has been published on https://www.makeusvisible.co.uk/blog/conversion-optimisation/

Conversion Optimisation - Make The Most Of What You've Got!

A lot of our blog posts touch on the topics of generating business, and driving new traffic to your website.  This time we thought we would look at it from a slightly different angle…. making the most of what you already have…. or as it’s more often referred to ‘conversion optimisation’.

What Is Conversion Optimisation

It pretty much what it says on the tin; making sure that you are converting at a high a rate as humanly possible.  This may sound like the most mundane task of all time, but conversion optimisation is a pretty exciting topic, because unlike many other areas of digital marketing, the results are almost instant.

Take for example that you run an e-commerce website.  The site receives around 20k visitors per month.  The conversion rate of the site is around 3%, which whilst not a disaster could be improved upon.  In addition to the 600 people who do checkout every month, around 50 people leave the site from the checkout page.  It would be an obvious decision to target this page for improvement.

This kind of data can been seen within your Google Analytics account as follows;

In Google Analytics simply click, Behaviour > Site Content > Exit Pages.  Sort this data by the exits column, and you will see the pages on your site causing the most exits.

Conversion Optimisation is about reducing this figure of 50, and trying to stop people leaving the site.  So, why might people be leaving a checkout page;

  Perhaps the page is not loading properly on some browsers

Is it obvious what to do next?

Is the page slow to load?

Does the page make it clear that the payment details are secure?

  After investigation, changes may be made to the page to try to reduce the number of people leaving the site.  For example, optimising for speed, introducing secure shopping icons, or improving the mobile layout.

Whilst not major changes, they may help to reduce the number of people leaving this area of the site by a significant portion, and thus increase the conversion rate of the site.

Analysing The Data

When you decide to undertake an exercise in conversion optimisation, it is best to first decide which pages you will focus on.  The obvious decision here is to focus on the pages which are causing the most visitor drop outs.  Some common examples include;

The checkout

The basket

Enquiry forms

Try to look first at the pages where the visitor has most likely already decided to contact you or purchase, but for some reason isn’t following through. An enquiry form which doesn’t work, or a badly formatted checkout page are good examples. Look at the statistics within your Google analytics account, and make an informed decision based on not just numbers, but also how quickly you think you could make changes to deliver improvements. Often just a few minutes work can make all the difference.