Things are pretty hectic here.

We’re focusing on three areas:

1) Web Design - Great graphic design with funky layouts.

2) Web Programming - Anything that needs to happen in the background eg. enquiry form submissions, newsletter sign ups, questionnaire handling etc.

3) Search Engine Optimisation - Promoting websites in search engines etc.

All good fun - give us a call on freephone 0800 311 2135 - we’d be pleased to help you.

D.

One of the most asked questions when it comes to websites is:

“How do I get more website traffic?’

Here are 6 ways (there are loads more too!):

1) Promote your website address offline. Use it on business cards, vehicle signs, mailings, brochures and in articles.

2) Always quote your website address in email and forum signatures eg:

David Lowe
Managing Director
Maximum Web Profits Limited
http://www.maximumwebprofits.co.uk/
“Helping Small Businesses To Win On The Web”

3) Add a blog to your website. Blogs provide a way of getting web pages listed faster into search engines. A carefully worded and focused blog could be indexed in under 48 hours. A standard web page could take several weeks.

4) Add keyword focused pages to your website. Each page contains interesting content that is focused around a single keyword phrase. You should aim to have 100+ keyword pages on your site. The more pages you have, the more change you will have of the pages being listed, being searched on and being visited.

5) Add a sitemap to your site. Search engines will use a sitemap to drill down into the rest of the pages on your site. Without one, you rely on the search engine following page links etc which is less reliable. With one, you’ll find that all your website pages are indexed and potentially listed. Much better.

6) Use a good (no, a great) website analytics system. By knowing who is visiting your website and where they came from, you can refine and improve the way you attract traffic.

Hope these help.
D.

“You watch the pitlane while I stop the start watch…” - Murray Walker

Murray’s F1 commentary was worth listening to for his great ‘foot in mouth’ comments or his clear lack of wordsmanship!

Here’s another:

“And that just shows you how important the car is in Formula One Racing.”

D.

A blog on a website is a powerful asset for fresh content and search engine listings.

Your blog should be focused and relevant to your product or service and give valuable information to your audience.

By carefully selecting the blog topic, you can choose keywords that will be picked up by the search engines and used to drive traffic to your site.

Our previous blog posting (here) was posted on the 24th June 2008 and was listed in the search results of Google today (26th June). It shows that Google loves fresh content and will list it quickly.

This is great news as it means targetted traffic is being driven to your site super quick.

There are several blog packages available although our preferred blog is Wordpress (www.wordpress.org). This can be easily installed on your site and will be up and running within minutes.

Have fun!
D.

“I figure the faster I pedal, the faster I can retire.”

This is a super quote from Lance Armstrong, the seven times winner of the Tour De France.

His wins in the Tour were made even more amazing as previously he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He had a mammouth struggle to overcome the disease as his chances of survival dropped as low as 40%.

He clearly is not a quitter and puts 110% into everything he does - cycling or surviving.

This is a great lesson to bring back to your business.

Quitting is never an option and you should use all your resources to move your business forward and move into a winning position.

And it works on many levels. Remember that tricky prospect who never went ahead with your proposal?

Call them - chase it up - never quit. In sales, you find that the one of the main reasons sales fall through is because they are not properly followed up.

Remember that client who is delaying payment on an invoice?

Call them - chase it up - never quit.

You get the idea…

D.

The food retailer Sainsbury’s has experienced first hand the backlash of a failed website.

On Tuesday afternoon, a technical fault was spotted on the online ordering website. They immediately suspended the site pending getting the fault fixed.

You can read more here.

This site has been offline since then and is expected to be off until Friday. Nearly four days of lost orders … not a great week for Sainsbury’s.

It appears the crux of the problem is that they are unable to access customers’ orders. It will impact around 20,000 customers before it is fixed.

What’s the lesson?

If you rely on your website for a sizeable income then make sure you have back up methods in place to allow you to continue trading even when things go wrong.

It’s obvious, but often missed. Even on a very complex system (which this system clearly is), there should be simple methods of extracting the informaton.

D.