Some Common Webmaster Mistakes

Note that this video is from 2013, although I doubt much would change if it were answered now in 2016. Same philosophy, different implementation.

What Is Your Website's Call To Action?

Throughout all of your marketing efforts, your business must present consistent messages, offers, and calls to action to your prospects and customers. This includes your website.

Someone in the company, whether owner, manager, marketing department, or sales team, needs to determine a basic sales approach that all of your promotional material will adhere to and support. Some companies have newspaper ads that say one thing, salespeople saying other things, and a website with yet another focus. Coherence is the name of the game.

Your print advertising, emails, business cards, website, and other marketing material should work together toward the same underlying outcome. Don't just lay a heap of information on people then offer no direction about what to do with it or how to benefit from it.

What is your broadest, most basic marketing goal? To get people into your store, get people to call or email, buy products through your website, or something else?

Now, considering this, does your website have a clear and obvious call to action on every page? Does your website ask people to pick up the phone and call? To come to your store or office? To subscribe to a newsletter? To participate in a poll? To leave a comment? To sign up for a free sample or demo? To click and buy now? If you came to this page about online security guard training would it be apparent what action to take?

Does your website clearly ask visitors to do something simple, specific, and logical? And have you made it incredibly easy for them to?

Five Business Uses For Social Media

Are you using social networking sites to full potential for your business? How many of these 5 different applications do you currently take advantage of?

1) To get breaking industry news. Since social media is real-time, you can often get advance notice or inside information about events, announcements, regulations, innovations, and more. Staying in touch with a community of customers, competitors, suppliers, distributors, consultants, regulators, and others can help keep you on the leading edge in your industry. Note: the quality of what you can learn will depend on the quality of people you follow and interact with.

2) To research your competitors. To observe what competitors are doing, what they are saying, what they are offering, how they may be expanding, and what consumers think of them.

3) To research your prospects. To observe what consumers are saying to each other, what they are wishing for, where there might be opportunities for new products or services, where needs aren't being met in the marketplace. (Killer bonus: learn exact words and phrases to use in keyword targeting for your advertising and website!)

4) To connect with prospects. Be careful how you approach this. Most people on social media networks are there to be social, and may lash out at people who are obviously trying to sell them something. Answer? Leave the sales pitch at the door. If you offer good advice consistently, people will learn to trust you and will come to you when they need to buy what you sell. Just link to your website and carry on.

5) To connect with other businesses. You can promote your products or services by interacting with your retailers and resellers. Or you can put yourself in front of thousands of new consumers by connecting with complimentary businesses. Or you can help promote your industry by working with your competitors. (For example, if you have a local business (landscaping, painting, computer installation, hair salon, clothing store, etc.), you can chat and share tips with identical businesses and consumers in other cities without risk. This makes you both look great.)

Give some thought to this list, as it may help add depth or scope to your social media activities, or it may help you focus on the primary reason that you're on there. Remember, the benefits of using social media will be different for a dentist, car dealer, musician, manufacturer, retailer, etc. And remember to be social before anything else!

Credibility Checklist For Business Web Sites

1) Eliminate All Typos And Poor Grammar: Spelling mistakes, incorrect use of punctuation, incorrect use of words, and other grammatical errors are more than embarrassing. Don't minimize the importance of this. Visitors who are literate can find this almost unbearable, regardless of the industry you are in. This sort of thing is particularly inexcusable because fixing this type of mistake should take a webmaster just minutes.

2) Correct And Up-To-Date Content: Your site must be accurate and current. Any changes, updates, or redesigns can easily be created offline and posted in one shot. You should never have to say "Sorry, we no longer offer that product/service", or "We just haven't put up the new prices yet", or "We're in the process of updating our site".

3) Prove You Are Real: Have photographs of key employees, photos of your office or facility, photos of products, photos of you with clients. Give real contact info, phone numbers, and street address. (Never reveal too much personal information about your people or your other clients.)

4) Prove You Are Legitimate: Make prominent use of client testimonials, employee credentials, courses, awards, community endeavours. Mention past accomplishments of employees and/or management. Tell how you created specific tangible results for a previous client.

5) Educate Visitors/Potential Clients: Giving free advice, free articles, free videos, useful internet links, and/or a routinely updated blog are all good for establishing credibility. If you can help your visitors learn or discover something new, it will stick in their mind and set you apart as an authority on the subject.

See our Articles page at Second Glance Digital Media for more good stuff.

Excerpt: Why Local Businesses Need Web Sites

Here's an excerpt from one of the articles on our site:
Why Local Businesses Need Web Sites.

"Local businesses serve clients who live or work physically near the business. Local businesses can be small or large, but the key factors that make them "local" are: they offer products or services that people need to experience first-hand (like eating in a restaurant), or prefer to try first (like trying on shoes or clothing before purchase), or are impossible to do at any distance (like getting your car fixed)..."

When you think about it, our lives revolve around local businesses: dentists, realtors, accountants, lawyers, optometrists, auto dealers, repair shops, hair salons, etc. The funny thing is many of these businesses and professionals don't understand the benefits of advertising their services, including having a proper web site. Some of them will happily run ads in the local newspaper, yet never spend a few hundred dollars to have even a simple site built. Hard to believe.

This is a fairly long article, designed to help business owners and managers understand the value of a web site. Pass it along or leave a comment if you find it helpful.

More About Me

Here's a little info about me. The profile section on Blogger is sort of lacking, and I didn't want to make a whole page just for this. And one benefit of using a regular blog post is I can link directly to this message from elsewhere.

My name is Jeff. I'm the owner of Second Glance Digital Media, and author of this blog. I'm a Search Engine Optimization specialist with a proven track record, and have been doing web design and graphics for about 10 years. Lately I've been building sites for small local businesses and getting them top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

You can read more on the Second Glance Digital Media site.

I also trade forex, and enjoy bicycling and sometimes video games. My pet peeve is local (Peterborough) "web designers" who don't know anything about web design. Especially the ones who say they do SEO, yet don't show up in searches because they haven't even coded their own sites properly! I hate the fact that business owners are being ripped off by amateurs. GRRRR! So I try to educate people the best I can.

You should also know that my brother Scott is an online marketing specialist, with about 12 years experience. He'll organize an entire online advertising campaign, do testing and tracking of different strategies, generate leads, and take commission from the new business he brings in. He currently works with a select few clients as a marketing consultant.

My expertise is building sites and getting them ranked high through proper design principles, and understanding how both people and search engines look at websites. Scott's expertise is finding out where your customers are, advertising to them in ways they'll respond to, and driving them to your site. So between us, you can get maximum traffic from both sides of the equation: organic and paid advertising.

If there's anything on your mind you'd like some advice on, leave a comment or drop me an email.