Have you ever felt like you’re incredibly busy, but somehow your business isn’t growing?

It’s pretty common, and years ago I found myself in that position. Every day was full to the brim with work and there was no chance of being able to fit any more in without burning myself out. And somehow, our business was stagnant. It’s not a nice feeling.

Eventually, I hit a breaking point. Something had to change. I began looking for ways to claw some precious time back.

This led me into the world of workflow automation – a way to have software take over the repetitive processes in your business.

Once something is automated, you often never have to even think about it again! It frees up your time to work on more important things, and get back to growing your business.

One of the most popular tools in this industry is Zapier. Some rough math indicates that I save around 150 hours per month with Zapier.

In this post, you’ll learn how you can get started with Zapier and also eventually save 100s of hours.

What is Zapier?

Zapier (pronounced like “happier”) is one of the most popular workflow automation platforms.

It connects with the tools you’re already using and moves data between them.

The best way to explain is by a simple example that just about every business can relate to.

Imagine you have a contact form on your website.

Also imagine you have a place where you store your customer and lead information. This could be a CRM, or even just a spreadsheet.

A workflow could say:

> Whenever someone fills out my form, add them to my CRM

Or

> Whenever someone fills out my form, add them to my leads spreadsheet

Why bother automating?

Let’s continue with the above example.

Many contact forms send an email when someone fills it out. To get that person into your CRM, you have to manually copy and paste the data in. This automation means you never have to do that again.

At first this can seem trivial – it might only take you a minute to open your CRM and copy in the info. But consider that you have to do this every single time someone contacts you – whether it’s through your contact form or any other place your leads come from.

What started as only a minute adds up quickly. Consider how many other processes there are like this in your business. Sum all of these up, and I guarantee there are at least several hours per month spent on boring, repetitive tasks like this.

But there’s more to it than just saving time.

What if you make a mistake when copying everything over? This happens all the time. Wherever humans are involved, there will be mistakes. Then you have to go back in and correct it. You might only realise after sending a few emails to the wrong address. By then you might have lost the client.

All in all, automation helps you:

• Save time (yours, or your team’s)
• Avoid human error
• Stay focussed on more important work

Even better, when you automate things, it kind of feels like you’re a wizard. Seriously, every time I create a new automation I still get a huge kick out of it.

How to get started with automation

Getting started in automation can be intimidating. There are so many possibilities, so how are you supposed to know where to start?

The easiest way is to start exploring what Zapier can do with the apps you’re already using.

On the Zapier website, navigate to “Popular ways to use Zapier”

Scroll down to the section where you can choose your apps. It looks like the screenshot below. Notice that I have turned on “Google Sheets”, “Gmail” and “Slack”.

Search for a few of the apps you’re using and select them.

Scroll down a little further and Zapier shows you some ideas for workflows using those apps.

Not all of these will be relevant for you, but it’s a great way to build an understanding of what is possible.

Spend some time exploring this area in Zapier.

How to build your first workflow

When you’re ready, it’s time to build your first workflow.

This part could be an entire post in itself. If you’d like to see how to set up a workflow for the first time, from start to finish, watch my Zapier tutorial.

But let’s take a quick look at how to do it.

You can break a simple workflow down into 2 parts.

1. Trigger: When to start the workflow
2. Action: What the workflow should do

You can think of it as “When this happens (trigger), do this (action)”

Example: When someone fills out my contact form, add them to a spreadsheet.

Here’s how to build this workflow in Zapier. We’ll be using Typeform as the form builder. You’ll need an account, with a contact form already set up.

For testing, I suggest creating a simple form with the questions Name, Email and Message.

Step 1: Create a Zap

In your Zapier account, click the button to create a new Zap.

Step 2: Choose a trigger & event

Feel free to adapt this if you’re using a different tool for your contact form.

First, search for the tool that you’re using, then select it.

Click continue, then choose the event “New entry”

After this, you’ll be asked to connect your Typeform account. Go ahead and do that.

Finally, you’ll be asked to test your trigger. Click the button and Typeform will provide an example as if someone filled out your form.

Step 3: Set up the action

Before you do this, go and create a new Google Sheet with the columns:

• Name
• Email
• Message

Back over at Zapier, set up the action. Start by searching for Google Sheets.

Choose the action event “Create spreadsheet row”, then connect your Google account.

When setting up the action, choose the Spreadsheet you just created. As soon as you do this, Zapier will pull in the columns that you created – name, email and message.

Click into each box (name, email & message) and Zapier will show you the different questions on the form that you can send to each column in the sheet. Choose the respective data from Typeform.

It should look like this:

Click continue and then run the test. Then, Zapier will ask you if you’d like to turn on your Zap.

Click that button, and you’ve completed your first workflow!

Every workflow you’ll create is just a variation of this. For example, if you were using email marketing software like MooSend, you would follow the same steps to add a lead to your account.

Over time, you’ll be able to build more and more complicated workflows.

How to work out what to automate

Knowing how to create a simple workflow is a great place to start, but the thing I see people struggling with the most is working out what to automate in their business.

Bear in mind that as you build more knowledge and try more things, you will naturally start coming up with more ideas. It’s only really difficult in the beginning. So let’s look at how you can start coming up with ideas.

As we spoke about earlier, you can simply explore the Zapier website.

But to come up with ideas specific to your business, create an “automation wish list”. This can be a spreadsheet or document that you add to as you come up with ideas.

As you complete your work each day, consider if a task is something that you’re doing over and over again. If so, write it down. When you’re ready, dedicate some time to go through your list, experiment with Zapier and see if you can find a way to automate the things on your list.

To help you come up with ideas, most automations fall into one of these categories.

1. Repetitive tasks

This is anything you have to do over and over, like moving data from one system to another.

Examples:

• Keeping contact information accurate. When you get a new lead, or when a person’s details change, there are usually a few places you have to update it. If you’re copying data between systems to keep them in sync, it’s a great opportunity for automation.
• Onboarding new clients. As part of your client onboarding process, you’ll likely repeat some steps with every client. This might include sending invoices, sending emails, getting contracts signed or creating folders in your online storage.
• Social media posts. If you post the same or a similar thing to multiple channels, you can create workflows that do this automatically. E.g. When you post on Instagram, automatically repost it to Twitter

2. Tasks that cause excessive email

Anything that clogs up your inbox is bad news for productivity. You don’t want to be spending all day handling email.

Here are some ideas for reducing your email workload. Note that these automations don’t necessarily use Zapier. Automating your business often requires using a few different apps, and sometimes chaining them together with Zapier.

• Meeting bookings. Instead of going back and forth with people to find a meeting time that works, use a tool like Calendly. With Zapier, you could then update your CRM to say that your client has booked a meeting
• Notifications and alerts. Any notifications that come in via email can be handled with Zapier. For example, you could say that when you get an email that your website is down, post a message in Slack.
• Collecting information or documents from clients. Instead of using email to ask clients to send you information, send them a “request” with Content Snare. You can send out the request using Zapier automatically, and then Content Snare will automatically remind your clients via email.

3. Things you forget to do

When you’re super busy, it’s easy to forget about things that you’re supposed to be doing, like checking in on your team. Automation can help you stay on top of this in a few ways:

• Email follow ups. If you’re expecting a reply to an email, use a tool like Follow Up Then or Boomerang to bounce the email back to if the person doesn’t reply in a certain time.
• Project management activity. It’s easy to lose sight of everything that is happening in your business. With “Digest by Zapier”, you can create mini-reports that roll up lots of events into one. For example, you could get a daily email with all the tasks that got checked off in your project management system.
• Social media monitoring. With Zapier you can monitor Google, Twitter or Reddit for brand mentions, and notify yourself via email or Slack when it happens.

In summary

Automation can help you save a ton of time in your business.

Start out just by building an understanding of what is possible, then just be mindful of the tasks you do day to day. As your knowledge grows, you should naturally begin spotting opportunities to automate more and more tasks.

The more you automate, the more time saved and the less you have to think about boring parts of your business. At first, you may only save a few hours per month, but as your knowledge grows, you’ll start measuring time saved in 100’s of hours. Some people even manage to delay the need to hire someone, as their automation does so much work for them. Needless to say, the cost saving there is insanely helpful for scaling your business.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post How to use Zapier to save 100s of hours every month appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

It’s taken months of planning, designing and building and it has cost a small fortune.

Now it looks exactly how you want it to, and you want to keep it that way.

The problem is, websites are prone to tech issues, downtime or even hacking.

Scary I know.

So what can you do to keep your website safe and secure?

In this post, I want to tell you why setting up a maintenance plan for your website can save you lots of time and money when things go wrong.

What is a maintenance plan?

A maintenance plan is something you can set up with your web design agency for an additional fee. It’s a monthly service that they charge to keep your website up-to-date and secure.

Usually, prices range from £50–£200 per month depending on what’s included in the package and how much support you need.

We don’t sell maintenance plans. Sorry

Before you ask, this is not a sales pitch. We don’t sell standalone maintenance packages unless we have built your website.

We only offer this service as a special offer to our web design clients.

The reason I wrote this post is not to sell to you but instead explain all the potential risks of managing your website without extra support and guidance. Read more about why we won’t touch your website unless we’ve built it.

1. You might break something

When you get access to your website, it’s understandable you’ll want to have a play around and make some updates and amendments. After all, you need to feel confident that you know what you’re doing.

The only problem is, you might make a mistake and accidentally delete something that you shouldn’t or change the layout when you didn’t mean to. It happens to the best of us. But this does mean you might spend hours trying to get it back to the way it was.

Surely your time is better well spent building and growing your business rather than sifting through your website working out what went wrong.

If you have a maintenance package, this often means your web designer (or the company you’re paying) can fix it for you. At the very least they’ll be able to restore a previous version of your website to put it back the way it was.

2. Save money on hosting and domain name renewals

Hosting is like renting space on the internet, every website needs it and you have to pay annual fees to keep your website and domain name live.

Normally, this would cost you anything between £50–£500 per year depending on who you choose.

Some web designers include these fees within their monthly maintenance plan so you don’t get a surprise invoice every year.

This is exactly what we do with our clients and they save between £100–£150 per year on hosting fees. A nice little bonus at no extra cost.

3. Protection from hackers

The security of your website is VERY important, and you as the website owner need to take this seriously. I don’t mean to scare you but websites get hacked all the time. It sometimes happens without you knowing and it can cause a lot of damage to your site. Not fun.

It’s not just your website that’s at risk. Most websites collect and store personal information about customers and potential customers. If you don’t have efficient security on your website, you could put all this data at risk.

With a maintenance plan, you will have an extra layer of security to protect your website. This could include:

• Spam detection (that detects any suspicious activity)
• SSL certificate (this helps protect passwords, credit card details and other data that you and your customers use on your website.)
• Monitoring AT RISK plugins and extensions (that could cause your website to be hacked)

Those are just a few of the things that a maintenance plan could include to help keep your website safer and more secure.

4. Website Backups

A website “backup” is a saved copy of your website from a previous time e.g. a day ago, a week ago, a month ago and so on… This can be stored in the website files and can be restored if something goes wrong with the website.

If you don’t have regular backups of your website then you are leaving yourself open to one big headache if you break something or you get hacked.

When you have a maintenance plan, a backup of your website will be stored (usually daily) so it can always be recovered if need be.

In the past, we’ve had customers call us and say, “we accidentally messed up the website and can’t get it back” in that case, I can go back to a specific date and recover all the previous settings.

With our maintenance plans, we actually do two backups of your website every day for extra security. One backup with the host and one stored AWAY from the website, so it can always be recovered if your website is not accessible.

5. Software needs updating constantly

Your website is ever changing. Even if you don’t make website changes yourself, the tech behind the scenes will need to be monitored and kept up-to-date. Most websites have additional plugins or themes that have new releases all the time. You NEED to stay on top of these to keep your site running smoothly.

Content management systems (like WordPress, Joomla and Opencart) should also be kept on the latest versions too to prevent any potential issues.

Trying to manage all these updates yourself can be a tedious and time-consuming task, especially if you’re not a techie.

With all these updates you have to do, it’s not uncommon that something can go wrong. Plugins can stop working or they’ll stop playing nicely with other plugins. In the meantime, your website might not be working properly.

When you have a maintenance plan, these updates are done for you so you don’t have to worry. They’ll be kept up-to-date and if something goes wrong during an update, it will be fixed and your website will be back to normal in no time at all.

6. Additional support and questions you might have

If you’re a forward-thinking business owner, you’ll be learning about new ways to promote and market your business online such as social media, SEO and content marketing. You might have lots of questions and want some advice on how to use these tools to your advantage.

Some maintenance plans include email support and/or phone support as part of their package. This means if you have any nagging questions or need some extra guidance you’ll always have someone on hand to help.

The level of support you need will determine how much the maintenance plan will cost each month. For instance, we have some clients who pay hundreds of pounds per month for regular online coaching sessions as part of their support plan.

7. Ad hoc website amendments

In addition to support and guidance, you might need someone to work on your website on a regular basis. This could include, creating new pages, adding images and text and making structural changes.

You can try and do this yourself if you like but if you have better things to do and you have the budget, you can pay for a maintenance plan that includes a certain amount of development hours per month. If this is something you think you’ll need, my advice is to start with 1-2 hrs per month and go from there.

8. Peace of mind

You’re in safe hands. Managing a website can be very time-consuming, especially if something goes wrong.

It’s nice to know someone is there taking care of your website behind the scenes. Even if they’re simply keeping track of the basics. Having an extra pair of eyes look over your website will help you sleep easier at night.

Summary

I get it. You’ve spent potentially thousands on a new website, and you don’t want to spend more each month. However, investing in a maintenance plan only serves to protect your original investment. Unfortunately, we cannot leave websites. At a minimum, we need to keep them healthy and up-to-date. You have to decide whether you want to spend the time doing this or pay for a maintenance plan. Either way, you’ll have to take some action, or you run the risk of damaging, or even losing your website.

Please note, having a maintenance plan doesn’t guarantee you won’t get hacked or lose some of your work. Every website is susceptible. But it will significantly reduce the chances of it happening and limit the damage if it does.

Like I said before, you CAN’T sign up with us unless we’ve built your website but spend some time researching different companies.

Over to you

Have you ever been a victim of hacking? Maybe one of your out-of-date plugins caused your website to go down. I’d love to hear from you, please leave a comment below.

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post Why you NEED a maintenance plan for your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

There’s just one problem, where do you start?

It can be difficult searching for the right web design agency/freelancer to work with. There are thousands of companies out there. So how do you know who to choose?

Here are four ways you can find the right agency/freelancer for you, and what to look out for when you’re doing your research.

So let’s get started…

1. Ask friends and family

Do you know anyone who has had a website designed in the past? Ask them if they can recommend a web designer.

Pros

• Usually, your family and friends can be trusted to recommend good people. They have your back and so will only recommend designers who they feel have done a good job.

Cons

• The likelihood is, your friends and family might not know much about web design. Sure your cousin might think their friend is a great web designer, but do they know enough about the industry to provide a good recommendation?
• Asking friends and family is not the best option when looking for a web designer unless someone in your family is clued up on good design.

2. Google Search

This is probably the most common way people find a website designer. Head over to Google and type in “web design company” or “web design + your city”. You will be presented with pages of potential companies you can work with.

Pros

• You get to see what websites are performing well in search results. Just be mindful not to click on the paid advertising section at the top.
• You get to niche down to your industry, whether you want someone local ‘freelance web designer Cambridge’ or something specific ‘WordPress web design’.

Cons

• Just because a company is on the first page of Google does not make them the best web designer for you.
• You miss out on other companies outside of what you’ve searched for. For example, why focus solely on local web designers when there are others out there that could do wonders for your business?

Google search is a good research tool. You can find reviews, more about the company, links to their social media etc., but it’s not something we’d rely on to find a web designer.

3. Free Groups on Social Media

A lot of us are members of Facebook Groups that are related to our industries. Why not ask in there if anyone knows of any good website designers?

Pros

• The answers are from people in your industry, who know about business and have had experience with website design
  You can see real-life examples by visiting their sites to see the quality of design

Cons

• Sometimes, people just recommend their friends or family rather than giving you unbiased recommendations
  These threads can get overwhelming, sometimes with lots of recommendations!

Overall, this is a good starting point to finding a decent web design agency, but you’ll still need to undertake your own research following it.

4. Premium business communities

If you join a paid business community (we’re members of Content Marketing Academy and Andrew and Pete’s, Atomic), then it’s a good idea to ask for recommendations for website design.

Pros

• You’re getting recommendations from business people similar to you
• There’s less ‘selling’ than in Facebook groups, and you’re more likely to find helpful advice

Cons

• You have to pay to be a member. We wouldn’t recommend paying just to find recommendations for web designers, but it’s worth joining a group like this for business support and advice

We’d recommend using a few of these and then carrying out the necessary research on five-ten agencies/freelancers you’ve compiled.

However, your job is not done just yet.

This is only step one.

Our advice is to use the 4 steps above to gather a list of potential companies and then use the steps below to whittle them down even further.

So, once you’ve done your research and found some potential agencies to work with, what should you do to find out if they’re good enough?

Reviews and testimonials

Reviews are a good place to start when researching a company. Look at Google reviews, sites like FreeIndex and reviews on Facebook. Any decent company should have 90% good reviews or more. If they have bad reviews, look at how the company responded.

Portfolio

Every half-decent web designer should showcase their portfolio of work. Have a look through it. Often, their clients will have added things to the website like images, so if there are small things you don’t like, these are easy to discuss. If however, their designs are hideous then move on!

Their Content

Look at their blog and YouTube channel. How active are they with their content marketing? Are they helpful? Do they appear to know their stuff? This can be a great way to judge how much a web designer can advise you through the process. If their content is merely about them, consider if they actually ‘get’ content marketing and whether you’d want to work with them.

If their content hasn’t been updated since 2015, move on!

Social Media

How active are they on social media? Do they interact with people on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram? Do they post videos on YouTube? This is a good indicator as to how the company communicates. Do they just talk about themselves? Or are they also helpful? Do they promote others content? Do they start conversations?

And again, like the one above, if they haven’t updated their social media in a while, it’s time to move on!

Look at Who Works There

Research the people who work at the company. Find their social media accounts. Do they guest post elsewhere? Do they attend lots of training in their industry?

You might think that all this research is excessive, but what you’re really doing is looking at the ethos of the company. Do they look like they care? Are they passionate about what they do? Is it something they talk about and take pride in? You live and breathe your business, and your web designer should live and breathe their’s, right? Because that’s the only way, you’re going to land a company that cares about you and your success.

This might seem extensive, however, if you’re looking to invest thousands in a new website, it’s worth doing some proper research first. You don’t want to dive straight in only to regret it later on.

How did you find a suitable website design agency? Do you think there’s anything I’ve missed off? Let me know in the comments below…

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post 4 ways to find web designers to work with appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

It could cost you anywhere between £500–£5000+ depending on who you choose and what you need.

For example, when we build websites we charge between £3,500 – £5,000. That being said, we usually work with established businesses who are already making money. For more info check our web design pricing visit this page.

But what if you’re just starting out in business? You might not have a big budget and every penny counts.

This is why I wrote this article; I wanted to give you five ways to get a cheap website and talk about the pros and cons of each.

My advice for anyone when starting a business for the first time is to set up a cheap website so you can test your idea and see what works.

1. Free website builders (Free – £20 per month)

Head over to Google and type in “free website” and hit enter. You’ll be presented with lots of companies that allow you to sign up for free and create a website DIY style.

Companies like Wix, Weebly and 1and1 allow you to pick from pre-made templates and get your website online fast.

You can even create your website from scratch if you’re brave enough. You can use their drag and drop software to move your images and text around the page until you’re happy.

Pros of using cheap web builders

• It’s free or very cheap to get started
• Most of these platforms are user-friendly
• Because they’re bigger companies, they usually have support departments to help you if you get stuck
• Hosting and domain fees are usually included

Cons of using cheap web builders

• The cost can increase with every additional feature
• If you do stay on the cheapest plan, they will usually advertise themselves on your website
• The added software that comes with drag and drop can sometimes slow down your website
• Some of these platforms don’t have search engine friendly system which means you could have lower rankings
• You don’t get any 1-2-1 advice about how to build and grow your website like you would if you were working with an agency

2. Use a cheap WordPress template
(Free – £30+ plus hosting)

WordPress (.org) is the most widely used system of its kind. This is the system that I use to build all our clients websites, and I love it.

As long as you have paid for hosting with a company like Siteground, you can install WordPress for free and add a cheap pre-made template for around £30. You can then customise the template and add your content.

WordPress also allows you to add lots of additional add-ons (plugins) for things like image galleries, social media sharing buttons, emails signup forms and lots more.

WordPress websites are also set up for blogging too, which means you can keep your website up-to-date with new content all the time.

Pros of using a WordPress template

• You have a huge library of FREE and paid templates to choose from. Just Google “WordPress templates”
• There are 50,000+ FREE add-ons (plugins) available for all your extra functionality. There are thousands of websites online that help with WordPress problems so you’ll always have help if you need it. Including the WordPress forum which is free.
• WordPress is widely recognised as one of the most search engines friendly platforms

Cons of using a WordPress template

• WordPress comes with a learning curve. Although you don’t have to know code, this can take more time than the DIY option.
• Most templates are built differently, which means if you change it in the future you might have to spend some time learning the new framework
• Like the DIY option above, you don’t have advice along the way. Yes, you can ask questions online, but you don’t have someone guiding you like you would if you hire a company

3. Find a cheap web designer (£100–£300 plus hosting)

If you really don’t want to do it yourself, you can hire a very cheap web designer. There companies online who will build you a website for around £100-£300.

This means you don’t need to spend your time building a site and have the headaches of trying to make it look how you want it to.

These companies can vary from freelancers just starting out or big companies who sell hundreds of these websites a month.

This could be an option for you if you really hate technology, but you only have a very small budget.

Pros of hiring a cheap web designer

• You don’t have to do anything yourself
• It’s cheap; there are many web designers who charge between £100–£300

Cons of hiring a cheap web designer

• The quality of your website will vary dramatically depending on who you choose
• The level of support you will get will be limited. You can’t possibly get much support for such a low price
• You might not have access to update the website once it’s been built
• They might charge you for additional changes which will cost more
• These companies probably won’t take the time to make your website search engine friendly
• For the price you’re paying, they will usually use a pre-made template

4. Ask for favours from friends and family (Free–? plus hosting)

Another option you have when trying to keep costs low is to ask a friend or family member to help design your website.

Everyone knows a “techie”; it’s usually someone’s cousin, niece or nephew. You might think that because someone uses technology more than you, they’re able to design a website for your business. You might get lucky and end up with a half decent website saving yourself hundreds of pounds in the process.

On the other hand, it might take you a lot longer if you’re asking for favours, and you might not get a website that isn’t of the highest standard.

Pros of asking for favours

• It’s free or at least very cheap

Cons of asking for favours

• Your “techie” friend probably doesn’t know how to build websites properly which means there might be lots of website errors
• They probably won’t understand SEO either, so your rankings might suffer
• They might not understand the basic principles of design which will impact your user experience
• If anything goes wrong, they probably won’t know how to fix it.

5. Outsource your website overseas (£50 – £100 plus hosting)

Over the past few years, businesses have become more open to outsourcing certain jobs overseas.

If you’re looking to save money on a website, you can hire a web designer at a fraction of the price of one back home.

Companies like Fiverr and Odesk allow you to browse through hundreds of freelance web designers who are all eager to work with you.

Pros of outsourcing abroad

• It can be a lot cheaper than working with someone in the UK
• You have “some” protection if you use a marketplace like Fiverr

Cons of outsourcing abroad

• The quality of the freelancers work can vary dramatically
• There could be a language barrier which makes communication difficult
• It can be difficult to vet the freelancer or company
• Freelancers will generally do what you ask but won’t usually offer advice or suggestions
• It can be risky if you hire the wrong freelancer and they don’t complete the job
• All round, it can be a bit of a minefield if you don’t know what you’re doing

My thoughts on the cheap web design options above

So there you have it, five ways to save money on your new website.

None of these options are ideal, but if you’re just starting out and budget is an issue, they can be a great starter platform until you start making money.

It depends on your circumstances, but my advice is to use option 2. Use WordPress and install a cheap template.

Spend some time playing around and learning the system; it will allow you to grow your business at your pace.

If you do decide to hire an agency in the future, chances are they will also use WordPress, so you don’t need to learn a brand new system all over again.

My clients have seen great results simply from switching from a DIY website to a WordPress website.

Over to you

Have you tried any of the options above, how did you find the process? I’d love to get your opinion so please leave a comment below.

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post 5 Ways to get a CHEAP website designed appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

But when you’re not pulling in enough enquiries or sales, it might be time to examine what’s going wrong.

The only thing is, it’s often difficult for you to identify any issues with your site, especially if you’ve designed it yourself, and haven’t had a professional to help.

When you’re building a website yourself, you tend to focus on one thing…how it looks.

This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s only ONE of the MANY factors that go into a successful website. And if you’re not careful, you could be missing out on business.

Over the years, we’ve noticed that many business owners make the same mistakes with their websites. Consequently, they see limited results.

This is why we launched our “website critique” service. This is where we review your website and send you a 30-minute video with our advice and feedback so you can make improvements.

Over the past 12 months since starting this service, our clients have experienced dramatic growth as a result of our feedback.

But how do you know if YOU will benefit from a website critique? Below, I’ve listed the six main reasons you might need some honest feedback about your website.

1. You need some honest feedback on the design

The way your website looks is SO important, and it can make the difference between generating sales and hearing crickets. If you have an attractive, easy-to-use website, then more people will stick around and potentially do business with you.

However, if your website looks dated and it’s difficult to use, it WILL affect your bottom line. It’s a real shame because you might have spent time creating a useful website, but an unattractive or un-user-friendly design will put people off.

How will a website critique help?

We’ll give you some honest feedback about the design of your website. From our years of experience, we understand what makes a good website and what doesn’t.

In a website critique, we will tell you what we think about your site and what we would change. It might be as simple as changing a few colours or fonts, or we might suggest changing the layout and style to make it more user-friendly.

2. You’re not ranking well on Google, and you don’t know why

Every day, people are using search engines to find products and services like yours, and people trust Google to deliver the best results. This is why it’s so important that you are found online.

If you’re not ranking on the first page of search results for relevant key phrases, you’re likely missing out on visitors and sales.

For most businesses, organic search is the number one source of traffic, so it’s understandable why so many people need help increasing their rankings.

How will a website critique help?

We will analyse your website from a search engine perspective and give you specific changes that you can make to improve your search engine rankings.

We’ll look through your website and tell you if you’re making any mistakes and how to correct them.

We’ll also run a full technical audit to see if there are any underlying issues that are preventing you from being found online.

3. You’re not converting visitors into leads

Your website is not just an online business card, it has a job to do. It should be delivering a steady flow of new enquires all the time. The type of lead or enquiry depends on your business but here are a few examples:

• Contact form entries
• Phone calls
• Free online consultations
• Email subscribers

Whatever it is you want your visitors to do, your website needs to encourage your users to take some kind of action.

Far too often we don’t give our users clear direction. We leave them to wander around our website in the hopes that they will get in touch, and they rarely do.

How will a website critique help?

We’ll review your website fully and assess how you can increase your lead generation. There could be a problem with the design and layout of your website, or there could be an issue with the copy you’re using. We’ll give you some tips to improve your leads and enquiries.

4. You’re not making enough sales

You could have the best-looking website in the world, but if nobody is buying from you what’s the point? There’s nothing worse than spending time and money building a new website only to have it generate no sales.

The old adage “build it and they will come” is simply not true when it comes to your website. There is so much competition out there you have to be extremely focused on making your products and service stand out from the crowd.

For someone to feel confident buying from you, you need to build up a certain amount of trust. Your prospects want to feel like they’re making the right decision and it’s your job to make them feel safe when handing over their cash.

How will a website critique help?

There are a few key things you can do on your website to build trust, that you might not already be doing. We’ll review your website and identify any opportunities to improve this and increase sales.

We’ll also take a look at you sales pages and product pages to see if you’re including all the right information and addressing your visitors objections.

Another reason people might not buy from you is because they have certain questions that you might not answer on your website. We’ll help you come up with a content plan so your visitors learn more about your products and services, which should lead to more customers.

5. Users are leaving your website quickly

You only have a few seconds to grab someone’s attention when they visit your website. Fail to do this, and they’ll lose interest and click the back button. You probably do this when browsing online too.

There are many reasons someone might leave your site quickly, including a lack of clear direction, inability to communicate what it is you do, messy design, etc.

All of this will impact user experience and cause your visitor to be frustrated and leave quickly.

How will a website critique help?

We can advise you how to captivate your audience before they leave your site. There are certain design principles you can do to engage your visitors and keep them around for longer.

We’ll take a look at your website and tell you what you can do to help your users consume more of your content.

6. Your traffic numbers are low

If your website isn’t getting a lot of traffic, it can be really frustrating. You’ve spent time creating a website, and nobody is visiting it. The more relevant visitors you have, the more potential buyers you have.

It’s also worth mentioning that without a consistent flow of visitors, you won’t be able to get a good understanding of how people are using your website, what you can improve and what you may need to get rid of.

Having the data will allow you to make certain adjustments to your website that will increase sales.

How will a website critique help?

There are many things you can do to start generating more website traffic, and I’m not talking about paying for advertising.

We’ll help you come up with a strategy so you can start reaching more people. This might mean making your website more search engine friendly, or we can spend some time looking at your content to see if it’s good enough to attract more visitors.

Summary

If you’re concerned about your website and think it might not be performing well enough, let us know. We can tell you if we think a website critique is the right way to go.

If you want to book your website critique now, then click the button below and get started. We’ll send you your 30-minute video in the next seven days.

Over to you

Have you suffered from any of these website problems before, how did you overcome them? I’d be interested to know in the comments below.

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post 6 warning signs you need a website critique appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Images are one of the most important aspects of your site. Even if the design, copy and user experience are perfect, if your images are poor the whole site is going to look naff. Images are the first thing your user will see when they land on your site. It’s vital you get them right!

We recommend our clients use a mix of photographs from their own collection and stock photos. Stock photos work well, but more natural images give the user an insight into you and your business, particularly with images of yourself and your team.

We hired Rustic Lovebirds, a team of two professional photographers – Matt and Sabina, to help us create brand new photographs for our new website.

We learnt a heck of a lot from the experience. So we’d like to share with you what we learned, as well as a sneaky-peek of a few photographs too!

Send Your Photographers Photos You Like

In preparation for our photoshoot, we sent Matt and Sabina some photographs we found appealing. These were surprisingly hard to find as we wanted a very informal business photoshoot, when it’s mostly serious headshot photographs out there.

I created a board on Pinterest with the kind of photographs we were looking for. It worked very well, with Matt and Sabina taking inspiration from the relaxed and natural style!

Don’t Leave It Until The Day

Preparing for website photography is hard. At first, I tried to think about the exact shots we needed, and where they would go on the site. But this quickly became a tiresome task and one that was futile. Any good web designer should be able to work photos into the design; they just might take a little editing.

But I did think about the following:

What do you want to feature in your photographs?

For example, we knew we wanted photographs of us on the phone, poring over our laptops and web schematics, presenting and showing our training sessions.

Where will these photographs take place?

We used many different locations for our photographs – Martin’s office, my office and even the beach!

What props do you need?

Props made the photographs look more natural and colourful. Even simple things like plants, a couple of coffee mugs and some glasses really brought this shoot to life! As you can see from one of the photographs from our shoot below…

Do You Feel Comfortable With Your Photographers?

Let’s face it; sometimes photography can make you feel a little awkward, so you need to find photographers that put you at ease. Matt and Sabina had previously photographed us for our wedding, so we already had a great relationship with them.

We felt completely comfortable being silly in front of Matt and Sabina and you should with your photographers too! A photoshoot can be (and certainly was for us) an enjoyable experience, but having the right photographers is key.

Make Sure You Don’t Over Organise

It was tempting to over organise during the prep stage for our photography. I tried to think about every shot and everything we needed. But some of the best photos were the ones I’d never even thought of! Ones where our photographers used their skill and imagination – because at the end of the day, they’re the experts and they certainly knew what they’re doing!

Have Several Wardrobe Changes

So, I’m giving away the secret here!

The shoot only took place over the course of an afternoon, not a few days!

So if you’re planning on photographing yourself and staff for the whole site, it’s a good idea to have wardrobe changes. This makes it look natural, as though the images give a snapshot of you during different days and times.

Don’t Underestimate the Time it Takes

I remember looking at my phone and being shocked that two hours went by. It felt like two minutes!

Don’t get me wrong, we’d gone through a lot of separate locations and types of images by that time, but with wardrobe changes on top of everything else, time flew by.

It may be tempting to save on costs and book a photographer for only one or two hours, but remember that this time will go quickly. Your photographers are there anyway, so you may as well pay that little extra for more shots.

Show Your Personality

Like I said before, it was difficult for us to find relaxed and natural business photographs. A lot were of people are suited and booted and standing straight and tall. But that’s just not us. And it’s certainly not how we work every day.

So we decided to keep our (slightly messy) offices as they were, complete with star wars toys and sweets, family photos and paperwork. It shows a little glimpse of our personality.

I’m certainly not saying you have to show people what you’re up to at home on a Saturday night. But try to show a little bit of yourself.

Don’t Forget To Check the Weather

If you’re thinking of shooting outside, don’t forget to check the weather. Sabina, one of our photographers, was kindly chatting to us the night before our shoot to arrange the best times to go to the beach. We also checked the tide times too so we had some sand!

But hey, this is the UK and we all know that weather reports are no guarantee of anything at all. So have a backup just in case it pours down with rain. If worst comes to the worst, brollies make great props!

Photograph Objects

Matt and Sabina had the great idea of photographing little details, such as our keyboard, the computer and our offices in general. These will be really handy going forward as our own version of stock photographs. A great idea!

Use More Than One Location

Having photographs taken in the same place can get a little dull.

So if you can, try to use different rooms or areas. Even if you just use different corners of the room to maximise your space.

If you can, get outside too!

Make Sure You Have Lots of Natural Light

This was a great tip from our photographers! Make sure you open all blinds and curtains and select rooms with plenty of light!

The more natural light you have, the better the photographs will be.

Summary

Is getting professional website photography worth it? Absolutely yes! We cannot wait to get our new site live with these new photographs. If this is something you’re thinking of doing, just make sure you showcase your personality, allow yourself enough time, and plan ahead with your photographers.

So what about you? Have you ever used professional business photographers before? How did you find the process?

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Lessons We Learned From Our Business Photoshoot appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.