In this issue and future issues we will give you insights into our own experience in how to increase the traffic and conversion based on our own 16 sites and 230 of our customers sites. All of them - The good, the Bad and the Ugly!

Table of Contents:

1. The importance of having a plan
2. Converting more of your visitors to sales/leads
3. Ways to drive more quality Traffic to your site
4. Website management

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you get more out of your websites.
If you’ve found the content useful we would value your feedback and contributions. Please also pass this newsletter on to your friends.

The importance of having a plan

Someone once said “fail to plan is planning to fail”.

Nothing is more evident than in today’s Internet world. Gone are the days of sticking up a few pages and getting listed high on all the major search engines with relative ease.

Most web design companies just built great looking sites for clients but with little or no thought for any sales process or marketing, upload the pages and hope for the best!

Did you know that it would now take Google over 300 years to index all the information out there?! Neither did we until they announced it last month.

So what does this all mean?

Well, while online spending has enjoyed massive growth over the last few years.
Creating a site that turns a profit is no longer just a case of having a web presence.

Guess what?

We’ve all been guilty of the gold rush mentality and have invested huge amounts of money in our haste to get onto the web.
No real thought given to simple things like:
• Navigation,
• Workflow,
• Content
• Sales funnel
• Marketing the site

All of the above need to be carefully planned for and budgeted.

After all, if you were going to build a house would you just have the builders turn up and start digging? Of course not!!
Without following a set of architect’s plans, this would be disastrous and very expensive. Your website or more accurately your online business is no different. Whether building a new site or updating an existing one, some careful planning and focus can make all the difference.

Over the last 6 months we’ve been working on 4 types of plan these are:

1) Increase your Websites Search Engine Results Plan

2) Increase your Websites Customer Conversion Plan

3) Increase your Websites Visitors Plan

4) Build a new Website Plan

So far over 60 companies have bought one or all of these plans and the feedback so far have been extremely positive.

For more information contact Paull or Mike viasales@mklink.com or 01454 852414 or visit http://www.mklink.com/

Converting more of your visitors to sales/leads
We’re constantly are asked to help companies with way of increasing their websites traffic, what we’ve noticed is 9 times out of 10 what the site needs is to convert more of the visits it’s getting before embarking on a potentially expensive traffic generation campaign.

If your site is producing a conversion rate of visits to leads/Sales of a minimum of 1% you need to consider the following:

1. The Home page 10 second rule
Your home page has 10 seconds to compel a visitor to come in and browse much the same as a great window display.
Avoid mistakes like premature ordering information, banner ads and fancy graphics.Remember KISS(Keep it simple Sells).
Establish your sites biggest benefit and create effective links to guide your visitor through the site.

2. Clear and compelling Navigation
This needs to be clear, unabigious, and consistent throughout your site. That includes the words you use to describe each link, it’s important to be descriptive and compel the visitor to want to click on them. They should also leave them in no doubt as what to expect.
Also, make it easy for anyone to recognise a link by making it blue and underlined.
Don’t underline anything that isn’t a link.

3. Consider using an Opt-in Newsletter or Offer
This is a great way to develop a large database that you can market to over time.
Remember, most of your visitors came to your site as part of their research in solving a particular problem and may not be ready to do business with you yet.
Our own personal experience is that these databases if looked after properly can yield massive results over a period of time.

4. Compelling Sales Copy
The fact is that no matter how glitzy and glamorous your site is, you wont sell very much at all without good sale copy.
Even if you have the greatest product on earth, your visitors will never know it unless you can present them with an offer using compelling, credible sales copy and only then can they be convinced of the value of your product or service!

5. Remove the risk of doing business with a strong guarantee
A strong guarantee is crucial to doing business online and without one you’ll have trouble closing many sales at all.
On the internet, sceptical buyers need the safety of a guarantee to help them decide to purchase your product or service.

For more information contact Paull or Mike viasales@mklink.com or 01454 852414 or visit http://www.mklink.com/

Ways to drive more quality Traffic to your site

Most website owners have become more and more frustrated with trying to have their website found naturally on the search engines.
Whilst it’s been proven that natural listings produce the best quality of traffic getting on the 1st page of Google is getting harder and more expensive.
Something we’ve used recently has increased our traffic by 355% and has become the most cost effective and fastest traffic generator to date...

Google Ad words
This is an often misunderstood method of driving traffic to your site and on the face of it can appear to be a little daunting.
Don't be put off as it is well worth taking some time to understand it and use it to your advantage.

A fairer way to do business
The way Google ranks its Ad words position is not just based on your budget it also takes into consideration the Click through rate of your ad which means popular and effective ads get a higher placement that don’t encourage people to click on them. It’s Googles' way of making sure that the top positions are filled by ads that are actually producing meaningful results. Google doesn’t want the companies with the largest advertising budgets to buy up all the good spots and leave their competitors, who might offer quality products and services in the dust!

Why use them
Google advertising network is the largest on the internet and with the advent of Google ad-sense this will only increase in size as Google allows others to benefit financially from it’s own success.

Conversion tracking one of the many benefits of using Google
This feature of Ad words allows you to track the conversion rate of your ads in many different formats for more information click on the following link https://adwords.google.com/select/convtracking

For more information contact Paull or Mike viasales@mklink.com or 01454 852414 or visit http://www.mklink.com/

Website Management

"What you can measure you can manage"
A tool that has started to become far more important in recent months is something referred to as 'Website Analytics'.
This allows you to collate all of your websites data in one place.

Why is this so important?
Well, in a recent survey carried out by Web-Trends (a well respected producer of useful internet marketing trends) found that only one in four of marketing professionals had a complete picture of their websites performance data and 26% admitted to flying completely blind! The internet more than any other media provides us with total access to data as everything that happens is recorded which means that as website owners we can test and measure far more accurately than ever before.

Better measurement. Improved Results. Increased confidence
Research shows that companies that establish comprehensive measurement achieve greater financial returns and higher confidence in the marketing function.
So as you read this, consider how you can use analytics toward improving your websites results, it can have some dramatic impact on the success of your site.

For T-Mobile, it’s meant a 27% increase in conversion.
For Volvo a 700% increase in Conversion and La Quinta Hotels, a 63% increase in online revenue.
What could it mean for you?

For more information contact Paull or Mike via sales@mklink.com or 01454 852414 or visit http://www.mklink.com/
For a free E-Book or a free search engine report - please click here.
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