Is a website audit for you?

Is a website audit for you?

by | 2 Sep 2022 | Website Building, Website Design, Websites

I’m glad to see you’ve pushed past the word “audit” - it’s not a particularly exciting word, and if you link it to “tax” it’s almost certain to strike dread into your heart.

However, when it comes to websites, a website audit is a very constructive exercise with potential for very positive outcomes. If your website is a few years old or you don’t feel it’s living up to expectations, then a website audit could well point out its strengths and weakness, and opportunities for improvement.

Naturally, your best option is to get a professional to cast an experienced eye over your website and pull together a report with recommendations that you can pick and choose whether to follow up. All the same, you can run your own mini-audit yourself to check a few things - keep reading 😀

A website audit can bring a few benefits;

  • Show up better in search engines - Ensure that your key pages are following the ‘rules’ that search engines like Google expect from a well-behaved webpage, and that the important details are being made available to search engines so that they can correctly list and rank your page(s). For example, does each page have a Title that is specific to the page content? So don’t have a title of “Welcome”!
  • Improve the user experience (”UX”) - Have your webpages been constructed with the visitor-reader in mind? Think about how people will actually use the website and its pages. Can they get to and back from pages quickly and easily? Can they find what they’re most likely looking for quickly and easily, eg. your contact details?
  • Boost performance - It’s important that you don’t make people wait more than a couple of seconds for a page and its elements to load, attention spans are very short these days. Measuring how fast a page loads and what is slowing it down identifies aspects that can improve a website's performance.
  • Pinpoint strengths - It’s not all about looking for what’s wrong! As a website owner, it’s good to know what IS working for your website so that you can build on that and be sure not to interfere with it.

Here’s a few things you can do now;

Speed test - While there are many items that contribute to a slow or a fast website, and the perceived speed will vary from day to day depending on a wide variety of conditions, it’s still good to have a feel for whether your site is ‘slow’ or not. A good rule of thumb is that if a webpage is taking more than 10 seconds to load, you have a problem and you are losing visitors because of it. Head over to pingdom.com to get a rating, and also to webpagetest.org. Run a test a few times over a few days to get an average.

Search engine ranking - Have you tried looking for your own products and services, or even your own organisation/business name? You’ll need to put yourself in the head of the person you’re expecting to look for your website - what words/phrases would they look for? What results does the search engine show and where do you appear in the list? Do your webpages even contain those words/phrases so they can be matched to a search?

Content review - It may be difficult to see the wood for the trees, but here again you are trying to see your website and its content (words & images) from the perspective of your visitors who may not be familiar with what you do. Are you explaining clearly without jargon? Are you guiding visitors on what to do next eg. fill in a form, phone, buy something, sign up to a newsletter? Ask friends, colleagues, customers/clients for their opinion, odds are you’ll get great suggestions. Be sure to keep your questions specific though, eg. could you easily find what you wanted?

If you’d like to poke into your website a bit more, be sure to get our free Website Success Guide with 6 key focus points for website success. It also comes with a short sequence of emails that build on what’s in the Guide. Check it out now.

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Finding your brand personality

Finding your brand personality

by | 29 Nov 2021 | Marketing, Website Building, Website Design, Websites

What is your brand personality?

Although it might seem like a silly question, the truth is that you have one. Whether you are consciously aware of it or not, everyone and every organisation has a brand personality. Whether you think about it or not, people will be forming an opinion about your business based on how they feel when they experience your products and services.

Being a successful organisation isn't just about having a professional logo or a responsive website - those things can definitely enhance your visual identity as an organization, but they don't make you who you are as a brand. What makes you stand out from the rest is an outline of your brand identity and communicating that to your customers in a way that represents who you are as an organization as well as connecting with them as people through any pieces of content you decide to share. This connection helps build relationships, which in turn will lead to engagement.

Key points in building a brand personality;

What makes you different?

Take some time to think about what makes you different from other organisations. What is it that you really offer your clients? Not so much in terms of the specific programs, offerings and services but the characteristics you want your brand to convey. Think of things like friendliness, belonging, growth, achievements, self-worth... In other words, what would make people want to interact with your organisation?

Explore adjectives

"Brand personality" is simply your company's character - the traits that define it in everyday people's minds. We all want to develop a brand personality for our organisation because it helps potential clients understand what they can expect when dealing with us, and how we interact with them during their experience. Our advice when it comes to building your organisation's personality is to be playful. Be fun! There are many different adjectives that one could associate with your brand depending on the emotions you would like to drive home when marketing with words. A good tip for using adjectives is by keeping a list handy. When you're thinking about branding, jot down a few words that will help define the organisational voice you'd like visitors to read on your website, in your emails, or in your printed material.

Know your audience

To ensure that your branding and communication strategy succeeds, you need to know exactly who your target audience is. Try to identify what kind of communication preferences they have and how you can put them right at ease with a branding tone that resonates. What do they like to read about? Where do they hang out online? Are they in their teens or middle-aged adults or seniors? And more importantly, how can communication mirror - or better yet, complement - the experience the target market member already has while interacting with your product?

Set your tone

Keep your tone playful and upbeat by synthesising humour with the choice of words you use to talk about your organisation or product/service, or making it personable - avoid creating an overly formal tone (i.e. too stuffy), as users will tune out immediately. If you let your voice shine through positive affirmations like “we love” or lighthearted exclamations that include words like “best” or “never,” customers feel more comfortable interacting with you than they otherwise might.

Get visual

Sometimes integrating all of your brand's visuals can be daunting, but you'll find once you've got it done it makes everything so much easier. Whether you're looking to design your very first logo or it's time for an image update, picking out colour schemes, finding the right fonts and so on will be essential to finishing the package off. We highly recommend enlisting the services of a professional graphic designer to help you put together a branding guidelines package. Make sure everyone in the organisation has it, refers to it, and uses it all the time.

Of course it goes without saying that if any additional promotion is needed, web design layout is also a great asset - marketing wise at least! The internet has indeed changed how we advertise our brands, but just because crowds hit websites in masses nowadays doesn't mean graphic design only has space online. It still holds true that strong logos and graphics are some of the best trademarks an entrepreneur could hope for when they're looking to put their name across. A consistent look and feel is essential, wherever a client comes into contact with you and your organisation.

Conclusion

When it comes to your brand, it is important to think about how you want your organisation to be portrayed. In order to do this, you need to work on defining your brand personality . Your brand personality is essentially the way you want your customers to feel when they interact with your brand. You want them to feel that you offer a great service and that you care about them and the problems they are facing. To help demonstrate this, we've put together these aspects that we think can help you start developing your brand personality.

And if you'd like some help with conveying your brand through your website, be sure to get in touch to find out more!

How low are YOUR barriers to entry?

How low are YOUR barriers to entry?

by | 2 Sep 2019 | Outsourcing, Take Care, Web services, Webhosting, Website Building, Website Care, Website Design, Websites

Let's focus on my business for a bit. Usually, I'm all about my client's business (the "if they do well, I do well" perspective), but we'll flip it around for a change.

The websites/web-marketing industry is undergoing huge changes. Has been for years, of course, along with technology in general. Ask a website designer/builder to go back 5 years and recall how websites were built, and compare to today's tools and techniques. It's chalk and cheese.

  • faster
  • easier
  • slicker
  • more effective.

And cheaper. Like most technology (except iPhones, it seems...!).

In the last couple of years, there have been 2 major developments that have led to a massive surge in the number of people who say they are available to build you a fabulous website. "Page builders" which greatly reduce or even eliminate the technical knowledge needed. And "Software as a Service" which lets you subscribe to functions & tools & facilities that you need, when you need them, without having any hassles with installation, maintenance, upgrades or backups.

You may have seen the Wix ads, or Squarespace, or GoDaddy. Yes, you can DIY - build a website right now, and it will indeed look good, at low cost (to start with). Get up and running in an hour or two. They don't lie.

So we have a huge number of 'experts' out there now. The web industry has such low barriers to entry that it has become an enticing side-gig, a part-time activity that fits in with the full-time job or study. All you need is a reasonable internet connection.

The result is apparently a reverse hourglass effect. Squeeze at the bottom of the market (lots and lots of competition for low-priced projects), squeeze at the top of the market (high-ticket projects attracting increased attention from mid-range players who can easily access more advanced capabilities).

In the middle, though, there seems to be a more positive effect for business such as Winch Websites. A project can now include functions and facilities that would have been financially out of reach to small and micro businesses or non-profits. It's here that clients typically already have experience with owning a website, and recognise the skills, expertise and benefits that a professional brings to play. Websites are no longer about the technology - it's about what they are there to achieve for the organisation. More sales? More signups? More donations? More enquiries or leads? The focus is on the outcome, not the tool. Find out what the outcome is first, then find the best tool to make that happen. Then fine-tune and optimise, forever. Something worth investing in, in other words.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that although the website and web-marketing industries have very low barriers to entry (and therefore many, many participants), it doesn't mean that getting something good is easy and cheap as chips. A decent investment really should pay dividends.

However, riding shotgun with the low barriers to entry is the lack of regulation and control. If you haven't come across outrageous claims already, you won't have to go far to find some. Think "website in a day", "Google page 1", "10x your sales".

How about your own industry? How easy is it for a newcomer to come along and think "Hmm, that looks like an easy way to earn money. I'll say I can do it and then work it out from there!"?

If you too have low barriers to entry, you'll be familiar with all of the above. And like as not, you too will have had customers who've tried the cheap and the quick, been burned, and are now looking for experience and knowledge.

When you go looking for website and web-marketing services, please bear in mind that there's little to stop people saying what they like in internet-land. Take claims with a small pinch of cynicism and maybe do a bit of due diligence. Ask or look for evidence that your chosen service provider has done this sort of thing, and that it's worked. Be ever-so-slightly distrustful of reviews and testimonials unless there's evidence to back them up as genuine customers.

At Winch Websites, I'm well aware that the competition for your web-marketing dollars is global, huge, and a minefield of options, technicalities, capabilities and playing with the truth. I aim to provide honest and accurate advice, and if we aren't a good fit for each other in terms of outcomes and objectives, I'll happily refer you to services or businesses that are.

I want to take care of your website so that you can take care of your business - over the long term, ongoing. That's not going to happen unless you get great value from Winch Websites. So next time you're looking for website design & build, website care or email automation services, please get in touch. At the very least, you'll get something to compare against. And I'd love to hear what you think when you do compare, business feedback is so hard to come by!

Good luck in your business, and may low barriers to entry be no barriers to your success!!

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The 2nd Most Important Thing On Your Website

The 2nd Most Important Thing On Your Website

by | 20 Jul 2018 | Website Building, Website Design

Your website has to be about your business - the products/services that you provide. That comes first. When visitors land on your website (however you drive them there), they'll be looking to check they've come to the right place. So Step 1 is to provide whatever it is that lets the visitors know that you are a potential match for whatever they are looking for.

But then what? We have someone who's confirmed that you are potentially able to provide the solution required. S/he has seen enough to think it's worth pursuing.

Here is the 2nd Most Important Thing your website should have. The fabled "Call To Action". In other words, don't leave the interested visitors hanging - guessing what the next step should be. Do they phone you? Email you? Fill in an online enquiry? Can they buy it there and then? It's up to YOU to tell them - and the easier you make it, the more likely it is to happen.

Don't ask for a long form to be filled in with lots of deep-thought answers, unless it's important to you that they do. On this website, I have a quick and easy Contact form (see that "Contact" link up in the menu). But I also have a much more involved form for potential clients that may want to work with Winch Websites, in the Project Enquiry form - this is an essential pre-qualification to see if the business owner knows enough and cares enough to be able to clearly set what the project is to achieve. It saves time on both sides if we both know what we're doing, why, who for, and for what objectives.

So look through the home page on the Winch Websites site - you'll regularly see a big orange button asking for the visitor to get in touch. These lead to a short and easy form - and the less a form asks for, the better (less 'friction' = more submissions).

Make sure ALL your webpages include a Call To Action (or CTA, in marketing-speak). Each page, at the top, the middle, the bottom, tell your potential clients exactly what you prefer they do next to go to the next step. Then make that action as easy and simple as possible (and make sure it runs on both desktop and mobiles!).

Is your website working for or against you? If you're missing CTAs and you think it's time to get a website that is effective and pays for itself, get in touch. (See what I did there? CTA again!)

Interested in working with us?

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Interested in working with us?

Get In Touch Now

Just quickly send us your contact info and what you're looking for - eg. why you want a website (starting from scratch, remaking an existing one, etc) and any particular features or questions you have in mind.

<form name="insightly_web_to_lead" action="https://googleapps.insight.ly/WebToLead/Create" method="post"><input type="hidden" name="formId" value="yZfvVUI4kYNi98miu9+atw==" /><label for="insightly_firstName">First Name: </label><br /><input id="insightly_firstName" name="FirstName" type="text"/><br/><label for="insightly_lastName">Last Name: </label><br /><input id="insightly_lastName" name="LastName" type="text"/><br/><label for="insightly_organization">Organisation: </label><br /><input id="insightly_organization" name="OrganizationName" type="text"/><br/><label for="insightly_industry">Industry: </label><br /><input id="insightly_Industry" name="Industry" type="text"/><br/><br /><label for="email">Email: </label><br /><input id="insightly_Email" name="email" type="text"/><br/><label for="phone">Phone: </label><br /><input id="insightly_Phone" name="phone" type="text"/><br/><br /><label for="Description">Briefly tell me what you want from a website: </label><br /><input id="insightly_Description" name="Description" type="textbox" style="height:100px; width:100%;"/><br/><input type="hidden" id="insightly_ResponsibleUser" name="ResponsibleUser" value="1250783"/><input type="hidden" id="insightly_LeadSource" name="LeadSource" value="1455128"/><input type="submit" value="Submit"></form>
Case Study – Enhanced Power Virtual Office Assistance

Case Study – Enhanced Power Virtual Office Assistance

by | 13 Jul 2018 | Case Study, Website Building, Website Design

A change in your business offerings is always going to be a catalyst for a review of how you market and publicise your business. At Enhanced Power Virtual Office Assistance, the principal Roneta had worked hard to gain certification as a Registered BAS Agent. This gave her a whole new arm to her business - in addition to the paperwork, book-keeping, editing and administration services she could now prepare and submit the Business Activity Statement (BAS) on behalf of her small-business clients.

Roneta wanted to make this major extension to her business front and centre. Her website was about 5 years old, and while perfectly acceptable the technology it was built with was behind the times - as was its design and layout.

Enhanced Power website after the revamp

So a revamp was on the cards. The core business service features prominently as the first thing visitors see. But it's not a dry "We do BAS". The site focusses on the visitor and how s/he can benefit from Enhanced Power Virtual Office Assistance. Time. We all want more time, and if your business isn't administration, papework, and BAS, odds are those things are what you'd rather NOT do. This theme carries on through the site. Roneta is about taking off you what you don't want to do anyway - doing it for you professionally and economically.

Client testimonials add social proof of Roneta's capabilities and ethos. Contact details include a quick online query form. And a video adds extra visual appeal. A separate page breaks out more detail on what Enhanced Power Virtual Office Assistance can do.

Roneta didn't want to go much further online because each client has unique needs and aspects, so it's important to discuss with each lead what she can do and therefore what sort of pricing will apply. This is a small 2-page website that is all about lead generation. Let visitors know what Roneta does (and why that's of interest), and encourage them to get in touch.

How about your own website? Do you know what you want from it? Does it actively work to achieve that? Our "Project Enquiry" form will help you work that out if you aren't too sure - you don't need to submit it, of course, unless you would like Winch Websites to put together a proposal customised to your needs. That form will get you thinking though.

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Domain Names – what you need to know (Part 3 of 3)

Domain Names – what you need to know (Part 3 of 3)

by | 10 Mar 2018 | Webhosting, Website Building

In the first of this series of 3, we saw just what a 'domain name' is, and making sure that it's registered in YOUR name.
In the second of this series of 3, we saw how a domain name by itself is useless, it needs to be linked to associated services like a website or email accounts.

In this the last of the series, we consider what else you can do with your domain name. Because it's more than just having an email and/or business email addresses.

Your domain name can be used to customise a huge range of online services. There are all sorts of clever online tools that help you grow your business, manage your business, improve your business. Say for example you want to create laser-focussed marketing campaigns for one particular service or product. Well - "there's an app for that"!

For my business (websites and everything that go with them) for example, I could build and maintain my own service for clients to check availability of new domain names, and then let them register them through Winch Websites. Or I could tap into a service already provided by my wholesaler to provide a customised domain registration portal. See domains.winchwebsites.com.au for what I mean. I didn't build it, but I can offer customers a quick and easy way to register a domain name at my own pricing, using a webpage with my own branding on it.

Do you send formal proposals to your potential customers? Or would it improve how your business is seen if you did? There are a number of proposal-management online services you can use to make it quicker, easier, more professional and more convenient to generate and handle proposals. Proposify is the service I use. I login to their site, create a Winch Websites-branded proposal from a pre-prepared template, customise and price it to the recipients requirements, and send it away. They get to see that proposal online at proposals.winchwebsites.com.au, again with my branding around it.

There are 1,001 similar services that you can take advantage of, yet keep your branding and domain name in front of your clients and/or potential customers. Often, it's simply a matter of making a small change or addition to your domain name's records. Clear instructions are usually given, and so long as you have your domain name login details (which you should!) it is easy enough to do.

I hope you found these 3 domain name articles useful!

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