locally.co.uk domain for sale

private domain sale

Locally business websites

Keeping your website alive

by Leave a Comment

And we don’t mean the up time of servers!

We are continuing our theme that websites are live, living things that need to be fed and nurtured on a regular basis.

Websites objectives

Somewhere in the not-so-distant past, we have talked about website objectives. For all the fancy words and umpteen bullet points, extracted from your team over tea and biscuits, at some point we are sure, you will have mentioned getting traffic through to your site.

This means ‘traffic’ as people and, in many small, online business cases, websites objectives are about turning this traffic in to paying customers. Once you have attracted them the first time, you have the heady task of attracting them again… and again… and again…

On the face of it, this might not seem like too big a task but only if one of your website objectives it to ‘maintain the interest’ of the passing populace.

To maintain interest you must maintain the website, with up to date, vibrant content that, for many websites, means adding new content.

It is a story you will have heard before. Search engines constantly crawl websites looking for the juicy, new bits and so, making sure you have a plan to revamp or add new content – and sticking to it – is essential.

The worst case scenario – if you are worried about your website (it seems to be sinking without a trace), then take a walk through it.

  • Do the links work? (Nope).
  • Does it load quickly? (Nope)
  • Is the information current? (Nope)
  • Is it sleek, modern and fits your business? (Nope).

Need we go on?

Take away lesson – websites that are kept up to date, load quickly with fabulously engaging content will have a better chance of success and being ‘spotted’ by the search engines as being authoritative and trustworthy.

The basics of website upkeep

Just like we need to vacuum the office, wash the tea cups and take the tea towel home once a week, there are basic, menial website tasks that need to be done to maintain the website. You will need to assign this task to someone; we also suggest setting time at least once a month, to check out the whole website (we are not talking social media engagement here – that should be a daily occurrence).

Basic tasks:

  • Ensure information is up-to-date – does a product description, price or P&P rates need adjusting, for example?
  • Proofread the main pages and texts – is there an error that needs correcting? Could you re-write a paragraph so the message is clearer?
  • Graphics – these also need to be checked; are they still relevant? For example, all your Christmas graphics should be safely tucked away till next year
  • Accessibility – do customers know how to contact you? For many potential customers, knowing how they can contact the business (and when) is a sign of trustworthiness
  • Content and news – ensuring thee are kept up to date is also essential along with expansion tasks such as regular newsletters to people who have signed up to your mailing list
  • Announcements – do you have a feature that allows you to advertise promotions of flash sales? If so, have a plan for how to use these.

Take away lesson – although flashy bits are all well and good, if the basics of your website are either not functioning at all, or are not functioning to their full capacity, adding fancy extras will be a waste of time.

Create possibilities

Your website should be active in the sense that it can ‘read’ your business and market place, and create possibilities for people to engage and, if possible, buy from you. But once you have looked at your website and you think you are happy with it, then all is rosy in the garden… or is it?

Just as important as creating your website in the first place with professional help and services, so is keeping it alive and active.

Extend your thinking…

Step 1: The Website Review

YOU review your website in a regular basis, picking up odd bits of spelling and grammar mistakes. You have changed some graphics you no longer like or think are appropriate and you have some new content on there too.

Try shaking up this process:

  • If you have staff, then pass the Website Review task from one person to another; getting different perspectives can be incredibly useful but rather than going for the scattergun approach, get them to look at certain aspects
  • Feedback from customers is also a great way of gaining some knowledge and thoughts from those people who use your website; there are several ways you can entice people to do this, including a prize or two (makes a great news item for your website too!)
  • Test the findability of your website on the various search engines
  • Create a set of recommendations for a future plan for the website

Step 2: Prune, as well as add

New content is essential. In fact, a lot of your time should be about creating or finding new content for your website but, a rose bush will only grow to its true splendour if it is pruned back after a growth spurt. Getting rid of the weaker tendrils on your website will make the core stronger.

Adding more and more content can mean the ‘white space’, the place where the eye rests can be lost, making your pages appear cluttered and slightly chaotic. Look for duplication, as well as content that is no longer relevant.

Step 3: a re-shape, at some point

When you decorate your lounge, you wallow in the newness of it all but, in 2 years’ time, that same paint and finish can start to look tired and dated. You may also decide that now is the time to invest in new flooring, hence the space that was once shiny and new, is re-shaped… and you will need to do this at some point with your website.

But websites are expensive and so you need to get the very best out of your current one, before you go for a re-vamp

Step 4: Seek help

If your website is not working for your business, and it seems like an expensive waste of time, you may need the beady eye of a professional web designer, content writer or marketing ‘expert’ to help you out…

** With the new Growth Voucher scheme in England, you could get up to £2,000 towards the cost of digital help **

The Landing Page – is it ‘fit for purpose’?

by Leave a Comment

We love posts and articles that make life a little easier especially when it comes to making sure our website is working as hard as possible for us – after all, we have invested time, money and oodles of creativity in it.

You probably feel this same sense of pride in your website but, we need to talk. It seems that landing pages – the page that attracts and converts visitors to customers – are not quite doing the job they should be doing.

The problem with creativity is that sometimes, we are just too close to it to really see what we are creating.

Sounds double-dutch BUT, it means we can’t see the wood for the trees; it is a bit like proof-reading your own article and then re-reading it on the web, months later and realising that you have made huge grammatical gaff in the second paragraph. What will people think?

But before you take the next plane to obscurity, this is a simple error to fix… You need a fresh pair of eyes to take a look at your creative creation. Whether this is reading your article or taking a look at your website for errors and faux paus, you need a pair of eyes that are kind, yet objective…

Know anyone?

It can be difficult, we know and so, out there in Internet Land, is the answer – and we have found it!

You can now assess your landing page using the alphabet (and various other hints and tips!)

The Landing Page – what is it and what should it ‘look’ like?

We are not necessarily talking design when we talk about ‘looks’, but about the content contained here-in the landing page.

This is the page that any prospective customers see when they visit your website and needs, according to a variety of web design experts to contain the following:

  • Your business’s unique selling point or proposition (also known as USP)

And so, your landing page needs to have a headline, a supporting headline (or tagline), a statement that reinforces what it is you do/offer/sell and a ‘closing argument’.

  • an appropriate graphic or short video that is directly linked to what you do/offer/sell
  • recommendations – showing customers how other people have benefitted from what you do/offer/sell
  • and finally, a call to action – in other words, what customers need to do in order to access what you do/off/sell, such as
    • “call us NOW and get 10% off!”,
    • “it couldn’t be simpler to order from ABC: fill in the online booking form and return TODAY”

Take a look at – ‘spa LONDON’ https://www.spa-london.org/swisscottage – their landing page tells you it is affordable luxury in the prefect environment, and restores your body and mind. It also tells you to ‘book NOW’!

Hush Hair, Birmingham https://hushhair.com/main/ tells you they are a premier salon, there is 25% off for new clients with selected stylists and that they used on the best styling and dye products (well-known and trusted brands listed), and they are independent, employing only the best hairdressers. Their phone number is prominent, as is their opening times.

The good, the bad and the not-so-good looking ones… we have all come across them, landing pages that tell us nothing, give us the wrong feeling, hence we navigate away to another competitor.

And so, here we look at the best bits of the Landing Page alphabet…

E is for engagement – your landing page needs to be creative, sparking an interest and an intrigue in what it is you do. Does you landing page do that? Could the content do with a re-vamp?

J if for justification – if you making claims on your landing page (and anywhere else on your website), then you need to have the facts to prove it; if you say you are the ‘best at…’ who says? Did you win an award? Beware false claims so try something generic like, ‘one of the leading massage at work companies in…’ etc.

M is for mistakes – check, check and check again for errors. And then get someone else to check. As we pointed out at the start, when you have written or created something yourself, you can become so embroiled in the content, that you cannot ‘see’ the most obvious and glaring of mistakes.

P is for performance – how many times – be honest! – have you logged on to a website only to find that waiting X number of seconds is far too long. Fingers drumming impatiently on the desk will not speed it up and, with a harrumph and sigh, you navigate away. Your landing page needs to load, and load quickly.

Y is for ‘you’ – because you – the writer, author, creator, business owner etc. – are the soul of the whole project but take care with how much you share. When we ring this note of caution, we suggest that you take care with the tone of your landing page. ‘Appropriate’ should be bamboozled across the whole website, not just your landing page…

Established and new websites need to ensure that their landing pages are working as hard as possible, converting browsing customers into paying ones. For the full landing page alphabet, check it out at Copyblogger.

Appreciating the hamster wheel

by Leave a Comment

How running an online, local business can zap you but here we look at how you can hold on to your creativity and well-being, whilst still ‘producing volume’

We came across a great article about creativity and how for us ‘creative types’ – web designers, graphic designers, writers, gardeners, teachers, any business-owner really…– struggle with this thing called creativity when clients want or demand it in VOLUME.

Volume is a word that sends shivers down many a creative person’s spine, which is not surprising when you consider the implications it has for you, so we will try not to mention it again.

But we all know the tug, push and pull of it.

You started you company or business, got it going on line and in the pull to make money and create a viable business, you needed (and still need) to pull in paying customers but you want to remain true to the smaller details that you think sets you apart from everyone else.

You want to maintain quality, but still bust the quantity targets every month… you see where we are going with this, don’t you?

It’s a never-ending task

In fact, it’s a hamster wheel that you keep on turning until you fall off, exhausted at the end of the day, sleep, eat and then get back on.

In fact, it’s not really a ‘task’; it is life and it is business but, just as you want to avoid the treadmill and the rat race of working for someone else, preferring to set your own hours and working conditions, you find that the treadmill has crept back in.

But, every turn of your hamster wheel is creating something. You just need to start appreciating it…

There are all kinds of hints and tips that you may find useful and, here at Locally, we are a great believer in sharing with others and using what works for us. And so, as we trawl around the web, just going about our daily stuff, we come across all kinds of great things and we stumbled across this little gem of an app… idonethis.

Go find it at www.idonethis.com

At first glance…

It doesn’t look much; it’s free to register and then basically, it sends you an email every day at a time that suits you (you set it) and in this email it asks you “what have you done today?”.

In the email is a highlighted box and you press the ‘today’s dones’ (not brilliant grammar but wait for it…) and you complete the box.

Is that it?

Well, er… yes and no. You can also ask it for analysis, spotting keywords and it can then tell you what you seem to be spending most of your time on.

Not that interesting is it?

Well, er, no BUT it does something that is psychologically amazing.

Picture the scene…

You have been at your desk since 7.30am. You have completed various menial admin tasks and created a few exquisite products. It is not 5pm and people are leaving for home and you should be too but you feel somehow deflated. The day has been busy but you don’t seem to have banked any money – in fact, the bank balance is the same as it was this morning. Everyone else seems to have been beavering away too but what have they done, what have they achieved?

Up bobs your email from ‘idonethis’ and hey presto, you have to think about what you HAVE done…

As you start to type in those small boxes, the list starts to lengthen and, before you know it, you flick the desk light off and skip out the door because, actually you have achieved quite a lot – a lot more than you think.

Instant positive mental stroke. G-R-E-A-T!

Other features

Add a team!

It also has, as part of the ‘free’ app the possibility of adding team members; so if you work with people remotely it is a great way of sharing what people have done and when. Rather than seeing this as monitoring their work or assessing the quality, it is about touching base, just seeing where people are at. We also like the fact that if people are struggling, they are more likely to point this out and ask for help.

Or, like us, you may find that your small team will be dispersed across the country and if you have a client waiting for a website, just knowing what the left hand is doing/has done also means you have the information at your fingertips.

Export and create spreadsheets

This is great for those of us that like graphs and spreadsheets that pick out key data but, you need to be systematic not just in entering data but how you add it, the language you use etc. (* see ‘tags’ below)

The downside – well, we quite like this little app. It’s inoffensive and have a gentle purpose that some people will love. Others will find this simplicity annoying and others will find it unnecessary, hence some people will not fill it in and it becomes like ‘the diet’ – always starting it tomorrow.

On the up side – It can be linked to various other apps and programs; for example, it can be a delightful little icon that can be added to the Google Chrome desk top and it also has some quite helpful features for when working on multiple projects.

For example, you can create a * tag for a pieces of work such as ‘#projectX’ or highlighting some tasks as being part of a wide business objective.

Again, like most apps and program you get out what you put in.

In summary…

  • Gentle, non-intrusive and easy to set up, it is an app that can be used for you alone or spread across you team
  • It can from part of project management, especially useful at busier times of year or when your team is dispersed across the country
  • You can see, at a glance what each other have done and what is left outstanding
  • It is a great way, by spending literally seconds, to log what you have actually done and appreciate the volume of work that you have achieved

There are other more ‘bespoke’ packages out there for specific project management purposes; Wrike, for example, is increasing in popularity and, as we always say, it is worth taking time to research apps and packages that are right for you.

WordPress – a counter argument

by Leave a Comment

WordPress WebsitesHere at Locally, we use WordPress as the basis for great business websites. We work with a growing range of clients, all local businesses making their presence felt online too.

We work with start-ups through to larger companies who offer a range of high quality products and services locally, as well as nationally and, in the vast majority of cases, globally too.

We know that websites need to be creative showcases that have high quality content, great graphics that are not overdone and that the whole thing needs to search engine optimised.

We also know that every business is different and so every website needs to be different; what suits one free school in one area of the country will not suit another free school is another area. Businesses may occupy the same trade or industry, but it doesn’t mean they offer the same product or service, in the same way.

So, we don’t have ‘templates’ as such, although we have an innate understanding of what a business could want and, working alongside our clients, we create great websites that work.

WordPress – not everyone’s cup of tea

WordPress is an open source platform, which, without getting too technical, means that brilliantly technically minded people (like us here at Locally!) can create rather wonderful and spectacular websites for businesses (for anyone, in fact). Associated with a  vibrant and fabulous blogging movement, you can create, with the addition of plug-ins and design creativity, a bespoke WordPress website.

But it’s not everyone’s cup of tea as highlighted in a recent article we came across and so, we think it is only fair to present the other side of the argument and why WordPress can create fabulous, creative websites that really do work…

The criticisms levelled at WordPress websites were:

  • WordPress sites are not ‘truly’ able to be updated or created in a bespoke way – not true! And we think we have a growing portfolio that points to evidence to the contrary. There is also mention that people who create such websites do not know much about code and that they hitch a ride on other developers, using their ideas and creations. Here at Locally we add to the WordPress community, as well as share ideas. Since when has this been a bad thing?
  • Plug ins – as an open and sharing community, developers from across the web community create plug ins that others can use of their websites to enhance it. Detractors suggest that these plug ins often conflict and break, suggesting that the security of the website will be compromised. With all the recent hacking scandals and dodgy photos making their way online this is, to all intents and purposes, playing on people’s vulnerability. With the right technical help from a company like us, these breakages and conflicts in plug ins can be avoided.
  • Security – continuing with the theme of security, some industry experts also suggest that the open community behind WordPress is also its greatest weakness. As the platform is written by and shared by large numbers of people, suggestions are it is easier to hack and therefore, your WordPress website could be compromised. Funny how the recent hacking scandals have not affected WordPress but other open source programs…
  • Every site is the same – again, a common misconception we feel around WordPress is that people assume that because there are thousands of themes to choose from that this means every website looks and feels the same; we disagree. We do create bespoke WordPress websites. Simple.
  • Lacking in originality – another criticism of WordPress is the perceived lack of originality and that search engines, such as Google, will note this, giving such website a ‘miss’ when it comes to page 1 rankings. This doesn’t seem to affect Beyonce’s WordPress site… hers seems far from lacking in originality and ranking. In fact, research any major topic online and you will come across many bespoke websites that use WordPress and do not seem to struggle from lack of originality.
  • Updating – apparently the penchant for updating WordPress every few months is an issue that some find deplorable. We think that keep your website fresh, with all the latest technical wizardry a rather fabulous thing…
  • SEO – ah, the old search engine optimisation argument. In fact, we think our earlier point about WordPress websites figuring high in the rankings more than blows this point out of the water…

For those that knock WordPress we think you are trying to kick an open door; it is a futile exercise! Take another look at what this platform can offer your business.

WordPress 3.6

by Leave a Comment

One of the many benefit business members of Locally get is their WordPress powered website gets updated in the background by us.  Several times a year WordPress release a new version of software which includes security and functionality releases. We at Locally test each new version of WordPress and when we are happy that it performs correctly we role it out to our Locally business level members’ WordPress based websites.

On 1st of August, WordPress release 3.6. This was a release they called ‘Oscar’ in the honor of the jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. 3.6 is mainly a ‘features’ release which means that it contains mainly new functionality and easier to use features.

The main features of this release are:

  • Revamped Revisions. When looking at page or post revisions it is now easier to compare side by side the versions, making it easier to select the right one if you need to step back to an earlier version. I would add that the revisions are still displayed in HTML, which while is technically a precise way of comparison, we look forward to the day that we also have the choice of visually rendering the revisions.
  • Augmented Auto save and Post Locking.  Not many of our members will see a benefit here, as this mainly applies to sites that have multiple people working on the same content, but it is nice to know that the risk of losing edits in this situation has been dramatically reduced.
  • Built in HTML media player. This means that you can now upload and  preview  Audio and Video on the Media edit screens (normal upload file size limits apply) and easily add and Audio player or Video Player into your pages or posts. For videos, we still recommend you use YouTube, as there are definitely traffic advantages to that, but now you have the option to upload small Videos.
  • The navigation menu editor has now been made easier to understand and use.

And over 700 technical improvements in the background.

WordPress 3.6 was rolled out to the appropriate Locally websites on 13th August 2013.