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  • Where to begin – How to start your website

    How to start a website

    Whether you want to start a website to sell sock monsters or to showcase your handy photography skills, the process you go through to start your website should be the same. By the end of this post you will realise how simple & straight forward it can be getting your website online in an affordable & efficient way.

    As with pretty much everything on the internet, information becomes dated over time so I felt that it was time for some new relevant & straight forward information to help you get your website up and running!

    Put your wallet away

    Before you even think about getting your bankcard out and buy a domain or hosting you need to have a clear picture in your head (ideally on paper as well) of what you want or expect your new website to do for you. ‘Make me money!’ I hear you cry, but more specific than that – how?! Will you be selling a product through your website or will you be offering a unique service only you can provide?

    Jot it down

    Create a document & call it ‘my new website’ every time you think of a good idea or come across a website you like the look of place it in the notes section – no idea is irrelevant until you explore it first.  Another handy tool that I like to use is Pocket. It works as a cross platform bookmark – you can save all the websites you come across & want to keep note of in one place – so if you’re on your laptop you can bookmark the website & have a closer look later on the train whilst browsing on your smart phone – very handy!

    In your ‘new website’ document decide how many pages you want and what you want to call them – For example if you were a gardener you might want to title your webpages by the services you provide as well as a gallery of the work you have done. If you’re a small company you are the unique selling point or your company, many businesses fall at the first hurdle by not ‘selling’ themselves. Think of your new website as your shop window, you have one opportunity to give a good first impression, make sure it’s a good personal one that is relevant to the passerbys.

    Once you’re happy & got a clearer idea with your new websites structure, you need to decide who is going to write the text to go on your website. The content on your website is a key ingredient to catalyse business to your website, if you’re confident & got the time doing it yourself would be the cheapest (free) option, otherwise you can outsource the work to write website content .

    On your level

    OK so you’ve got a fair idea how your website to be laid out & the text & images to load up to your website now all you need is someone to help put it all together.

    The quickest and easiest way to find out within 10 secs whether the website company you’re thinking of going with  is worth its weight is to ask this simple question. “Will my website get to the first page of the search engines”. If they answer “YES”  run a mile, if they answer “Your website can get to page one for certain keywords, but it won’t happen magically over night, we can point you in the right direction” Then you know you’re in safe hands.

    From experience I would recommend getting your website built on a well known content management system (CMS) like, for example, WordPress. The reason for this is that if you leave yourself with options if you decide it’s time to move on. If you get your website built on a homemade CMS that only your web developer and his mate knows how to use, you have immediately placed yourself into a monopoly. I’ve heard many horror stories where developers charge £100’s for small changes that they could have done themselves with a decent popular content management system.

    Get training if you can,  good reliable website developers should, as part of the project build, show you how to add pages content & images to the website – if they don’t ask how much they charge. The last thing you want is to be stuck with a website that you cannot change when you get a new telephone number.

    To summarise

    • Put pen to paper and structure your website, a simple word document will be fine.
    • If you are promised a website that will make you a first page cash-printing wizard, run away faster…
    • Get your website build on a well known CMS like WordPress
    • There are good developers out there, if yours doesn’t sound transparent your probably not talking to one of them

    Because I’m feeling nice I’ve put together an example of how you could structure your website using Goalscape – a tool we and or members find very useful to use.

  • Using Featured Images in WordPress Posts and Pages

    WordPress has the ability to assign a featured image to posts and pages.

    A featured image is  an image from your media library that has a special meaning to your WordPress theme.

    Each theme styling has a different way of presenting the featured image. Some themes will only show it on the single post or page, others will show it on summary and archive lists too. Some themes will present a large image, others just a thumbnail. Themes like TwentyTwelve will actually use the featured image as the header background, but only if it is large enough. The best way to find out what featured images look like in the theme you are using is to try one out.

    Adding a featured image is simply a matter of editing the post or page and scrolling down (or across) and finding the ‘featured image block’

    Featured Image

  • Locally cloud based collaboration

    Locally like to keep our clients informed and at times it is necessary to collaborate at various planning stages of a project.  We use a variety of cloud based tools to help us communicate.

    One of our favorites is GoalScape Connect ( see https://www.goalscape.com/ ). Whilst originally designed as a goal setting tool for, it has proved invaluable both for setting strategy and for managing  projects (both classic & agile).

    You don’t need a licence for use to share reports, however is you want to collaborate and share updates with us you will need to subscribe. There is a free 14 day trial on this page https://www.goalscape.com/

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  • WordPress Release 3.6.1

    WordPress released a security and maintenance update to 3.6 on 11th September 2013. Release 3.6.1 includes three important security fixes and some other additional security hardening.
    Details of the release can be read here https://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.6.1

    All Locally fully managed site have been updated to the most recent version.

    We recommend any self managed / hosted websites are updated for security reasons. Speak to your developer or get in touch with us for more information how to update your WordPress website to 3.6.1

  • How to start an online shop

    Selling online

    Many people are looking to sell online. Online sales are now significant but still growing. Consumers are becoming more familiar with online shopping and even if they buy in store will often research their purchases online, either before or after a visit.

    Also the ability to sell online is now pretty much the starting point for the new generation of shop keepers.  If you think about it, why would anyone go through the commitment of leasing a shop and fitting it out when they can create an online shop at a fraction of the price, to at least test the market?

    So whether you are an existing retailer that is looking to join the ecommerce revolution so you are not left behind, or you are a new start up the first question you will have is where do you start?  And the answer is, by doing some searches on the internet, and maybe you did that and came across this article. I can’t cover everything here, but I hope to give you a few more ideas so you can further narrow down your search. Of course we are in the website business, but I won’t try and sell you our services, I will just give you the benefit of some of my experience.

    “If you build it, he will come”

    “If you build it, he will come”,  from the film Field of Dreams sticks in my mind when talking about website, ecommerce or not.  In terms of websites, build it and no one will come, trust me on this. You need to work hard to get website visitors, and that means having a marketing plan and marketing budget. The cost of your online presence pales into insignificance compared to your marketing costs. Of course the amount you have to spend on marketing will vary on your product, the competition and your client base, but if you have nothing to go, as a new business, a cost marketing cost of 20% of turnover is not a bad starting point.  So what does that mean?  Well if your business plan is a turnover of £6,000 a month, expect to spend £1,200 per month on advertising and other forms of marketing.

    Let someone else do the hard work

    I have already said that marketing costs in time and money, and it is also a skill and hard work.  So my first bit of advice is to outsource all that to someone who has already done that.  And here the obvious candidates are eBay store & Amazon Webstore. If you have no online selling experience, these are definitely places you should consider to gain experience. Their fees may seem to be steep initially ( if you haven’t read my paragraph above ) but at around 11% for eBay & 15% for Amazon (and Amazon includes finance costs – which you will have to pay in all other solution at around 3%) plus a very small (£15-£30) monthly fees, you can see that they are very attractive.

    eBay and Amazon already have the footfall.  Using eBay or Amazon is the equivalent of setting up shop in the middle of a very busy mega shopping centre.

    There are some additional benefits to a new ecommercer, in using Amazon or eBay, in that you learn a lot of ancillary things, mainly because their policies are designed to weed out rogue traders, as they want to maintain their reputation and ‘footfall’, such as Distance Selling Regs (DSRs) and appropriate  levels of online customer services.

    For some, eBay or Amazon just isn’t right for their product or customer base, if that is you, then fine, but don’t dismiss them unless you really have to.  But research to find out if there are any other online market places that can work with your products, e.g. Etsy for handmade / vintage products, Guntrader for second hand guns (of course you can’t sell guns on eBay / Amazon) etc.

    I Want My Own Shop

    Now either you have got some experience online (as above) and you think having your own online store will help sales, or you really have no choice for your market. And you have researched online marketing methods, including PPC, SEO, eShots, Social media and offline methods such as magazines, radio etc, and you have formulated a marketing strategy at least. You now need to think about your online store solution.

    The temptation is to search for ‘what is the best ecommerce platform’  but that isn’t the right question. The right question is ‘what is the best ecommerce platform for my requirements?’ and as no one knows your requirements you will have to write them down and evaluate the different solutions.

    Your requirements may be (these are just starting lists to explain what I mean, you need to expand these)

    functional

    e.g.

    • Able to import products from spreadsheet
    • Have an affiliate programme
    • Be able to track sales in Google Analytics (I’ll get to that)
    • Have an integrated Blog
    • Be able to have product videos
    • Be able to pay via Paypal / Credit Cards (I’ll get to that too)
    • Be able to link inventory between my Amazon  / eBay stores and this eshop

    [br]non functional

    e.g.

    • Technology
      • Run on mobiles as well as desktop
      • Response times
    • Support
      • hours of support
      • telephone or email
      • upgrades / fixes enhancements
    • Budgetary
      • Within £xx/month running cost
      • Within £y,yyy set up costs

    [br]Armed with your functional requirements  you can go off and study what sort of  eshop you want. You will find eshops fall into two broad categories, which I will explain further.

    Hosted solution

    By Hosted solution, what this means is basically a fully packaged solution. Every thing you need is provided via an online solution. A bit like having an eBay shop or Amazon store but you have to deal with the marketing. You generally get exactly what they state is provided in terms of functionality and normally a selection of templates of styles and easy ways of customsing  the way your shop looks.

    Advantages

    • No (ok very low) technical skills required
    • Fixed costs

    [br]Disadvantages

    • No flexibility, if your requirement isn’t supported you are unlikely to be able to change the situation
    • Most solutions are built for the US

    [br]Providers with UK solutions include:

    • Shopify
    • Volusion
    • BluePark[br][br]

    Self  Hosted Solution

    A Self Hosted solution means  that the software is installed on a hosting account specifically for you. You don’t share the software with anyone else.

    Advantages

    • You can add new features and designs to you site as you and your budget feels fit
    • You can control the performance of your site (by paying for appropriate hosting power)
    • Your running costs may be lower (depending on hosting and your technical skills)

    [br]Disadvantages

    • You need technical skills (or you need a web design / support company to supply those skills)
    • Your costs are not fixed (if you pay for adhoc technical changes, support)
    • Cost maybe higher (depending on many factors)

    [br]The main contenders for self hosted solutions are:

    • Magento
    • Prestashop
    • OpenCart
    • Woocommerce (WordPress)

    [br]As these are widely used, there is not much to chose between them. They all have plenty of  optional add on features and of course can be modified by a competent programmer, so the choice, if your are not technical, would be more down the the familiarity that your web developer has with a particular product.

    A couple of footnotes

    Analytics

    With ecommerce marketing you are flying blind regarding the effectiveness of your marketing / advertising spend unless you have an Analytics solution integrated to your eshop.  eBay & Amazon shop give you some inhouse tools, but if you go with a hosted or self hosted solution, you really need an Analytics package to tell you were your sales came from. There are plenty of tools, but the most popular is Google Analytics.

    Payment with Credit Cards

    Taking credit card payments from your own website, especially if it is self hosted, can increase your costs substantially. There are factors such as PCI compliance and the requirements for SSLs to be factored in. Ownership of a Merchant Account with monthly minimums (you need an online merchant account, separate from your bricks and mortar shop’s account) and a software gateway to the payment provider and of course a software module set up on your own site. All these can easily add up to over £40/month, so you can see that paying PayPal 3.5%  can easily be cheaper than paying 2% to your merchant account plus fixed costs.  Using these example figures it is cheaper to use PayPal until your turnover is greater than £2,666 per month.

  • How to improve your local SEO by setting up a Google+Local page.

    Google have been busy integrating their products and moving everything towards Social Media. For Google, this means Google+.  A while back you could get your business onto Google Maps as a map pin, via their Google Places, but now you should use Google+Local.

    1. Creating a Google+Local page for your business is fairly straight forward
    2. If you haven’y got one yet, get a google account https://accounts.google.com/SignUp   (if you have a gmail account you are ready)
    3. Then join Google+ https://plus.google.com/up/accounts/upgrade/
    4. Under the ‘Home’ button menu, top left, you will find ‘Pages’, click on that
    5. On the right you will see ‘Create a Page’, click
    6. Select ‘Local Business or Place’ and start filling in as much detail as you can in the sections provided, address, website, categories, opening hours etc
    7. At some point you will need to verify you own this business, this is either b a call to your business phone line, or a registration card through the post
    8. Once activated, you are ‘live’

    Having a Google+Local page for your business is a key aspect to local SEO.  A properly formatted and approved entry will appear in searches where a local map is appropriate.

    Google+Local SERP results