Ensure your website looks professional.

A professionally presented business website is a powerful and essential marketing tool: it’s the first thing prospective customers will look at before they decide to contact you. If the copy on your website is not written to an acceptable standard, it may be losing you customers. It's not enough just to have amazing graphics and imagery: you need the words to make it complete. Is the spelling correct? Are punctuation marks in place? Does the copy make sense? These are questions that your website designer and you should be asking before a new site is uploaded.

One of the biggest flaws with website copy is inconsistency: for example the word website. Some sites spell it as one word, website, some as two words, web site; as far as I am aware both are acceptable, but not both versions on the same site! Personally I prefer website. In my opinion, a lack of consistency will deter a significant amount of would-be customers from using the services of a company that has not taken the trouble to proofread their website.

Poor spelling on a website is another costly but avoidable mistake.

The majority of visitors will leave the site very quickly if they find too many spelling errors. This again will give them the impression that the site owners don't really care; and they would be right! I am also convinced that copy that has been padded out with insignificant trivia is also a big turn-off for visitors clear, concise and informative is the order of the day.

Anything containing textual content should as a matter of course be proofread: it’s important that not only are mistakes in spelling, punctuation and grammar found and corrected, but that the text flows smoothly for the reader. The copy on a website should not be treated as the ‘poor relation’ of the project. You can have the most up-to-date, eye-catching graphics available but you will still need well-written copy to compliment them.

There are the odd few web design companies around that will happily inform visitors how they can supply them with a state-of-the-art website but then insert second-rate copy, which totally negates any good work they have achieved. This will reduce the initial impact of the site, and more often than not will have an adverse effect on business. Here at Convallis our customers generally provide us with content, either from themselves or a copywriter. It is difficult for us as an IT company to totally understand another business (we like to learn as much as we can about our customers and their business), but in the end it is you the business owner that knows the most about your own business.

It pays to have the copy checked professionally; it may cost a lot less than you think to have a website proofread – it could cost you considerably more if you don’t!

Remember: if visitors to your site cannot find the information they are looking for because of badly written copy they will simply leave the site. The only people to benefit will be your competitors.

Are you looking for a new website? Take a look at our website packages, a range of affordable website solutions.

Do you ask for Customer Testimonials?

How do you get an independent review of your business? Are you asking your customers for testimonials?

Testimonials are a great way of getting feedback from your customers and also offer an independent review of the work that you have done for them. If a customer is happy with a product or service and you approach them for a testimonial most are happy to provide one for you so don't be afraid to ask.

Once you have a testimonial for your business make sure that you put them on your website, if you add a link to your customers' website it will be positive for them too as your website visitors might be interested in what they do. Other uses for testimonials are your marketing materials, add quotes to your leaflets and brochures and let your potential customers know what a good job you have done for your previous customers and give them an idea of what to expect from you.

Like to see some of our testimonials? Please check out the links below:

Testimonials

Website Testimonials

ConvallisCRM Testimonials

How to Deliver a Quality Service to your Customers Using CRM

In these challenging economic times we are all aware how important and cost effective it is to retain existing customers and build future loyalty when securing new business.

Many small to medium sized businesses find that as they grow, to ensure efficiency and effectiveness, it is vital to move from informal systems to more efficient computer based records. This helps to ensure that any information that you have is up to date and accurate, contacts are made when promised and all staff can access a central database for consistency.

To deliver a quality service to customers you need to:

• Keep Clear Records: if you want to give a professional service you cannot rely on a messy collection of scribbled notes plus a random collection of sticky notes, held in different places or even by a number of different people! Consistency and ease of access have to be the order of the day. A computer based system can help store emails, details of quotes and orders, notes from telephone calls, letters, appointments etc and recall them at the touch of a button.
• Save Time: you don't need multiple software packages. Use a CRM to store all of your customer or contact information allows you to have instant access to it in one place. This helps save time searching for what you need and helps improve efficiency. A CRM also allows searches to be saved to use again and again.
• Ensure Everyone has Access to Consistent Records: anyone from your business who speaks to customers should be able to access customer records. People are busy and wish to achieve their outcome in a single call where possible, so help them achieve this. All staff involved in service delivery need to know of the promises or deals made, so then can ensure successful, timely delivery.
• Email/SMS: save time by sending messages directly from your contact information. Use mailing lists for sending messages to specific groups and personalise these messages.
• Target Your Marketing: marketing is now probably more vital than ever before, but it can be expensive in terms of both time and money. Ensure that all marketing and sales activities are as targeted as possible by mailing specific sectors of your database.
• Use Mail Merge: set up your own direct mail campaigns to promote your special offers, exhibitions, vouchers or other events. Remember you need a critical mass of people to hear about your offers to help ensure that your marketing initiatives succeed!
• Create Task Lists: start each day with a clear list of things to be achieved and ensure that every promise to contact a prospect or customer by a certain day is honoured. Ensure you never forget that follow up call or mislay contact details again!

If you would like to deliver a quality service to your customers why not consider ConvallisCRM a simple to use customer relationship management solution. Available as either desktop or cloud based solution please take a look at our dedicated website and take your free trial today.

Digital Marketing - The Way Forward

Yesterday evening I attended a seminar at Sandy Park, Exeter, hosted by e-strategy discussing Digital Marketing Trends and how things are changing in the world of marketing.

Our first speaker, Collette Easton of Linkdex discussed social bonds. This is creating new links between your brand, your customers and their social networks. She also discussed the relevance of your marketing - the content and are you using the right platforms to convey the right message to your customers?

The second speaker was Stuart Devlin of e-strategy who discussed how search is changing and how businesses can adapt to this change by the use of different ways of how customers can find you and how the search engines are always changing.

The world is changing and technology is evolving all the time and so are the social networks. Who would have thought 5 - 10 years ago that we would be moving away from so called "traditional" marketing to what is now termed "content" marketing. Rather than selling your product, provide your existing and potential customers with valuable content across different forms of media that will encourage them to contact you to find out more.

In my opinion, we certainly have to look to the new technologies for our marketing, but sometimes deciding which ones to use can be a difficult decision and has to be thought about carefully before going ahead with any form of plan to use them.

There certainly was a lot of food for thought and I look forward to seeing the presentation slides to remind myself of what we were told and to help me plan my future marketing.