When having a website created or even when you have an existing one, it is vital that you work closely with your web developer in order to get the best out of your site.

A web developer will program all the pages to look and function the way they should and often issues arise when the developer and the customer do not communicate properly. It may be that the customer knows exactly want they want on the site but does not convey this correctly to the developer.

When taking through a new website build or updates it is often a good idea to draw a flow chart or sitemap and diagrams of how it should look and what should happen when elements are clicked on etc. This can pick up any problems before the programming starts. If the customer has not asked for a function and later on wants to add it in then it may be that the programmer has to re do a lot of the work they have already done and therefore will need to charge for this. When working with a developer communicate with them by also listen to their suggestions as after all, they are the experts.

With so many marketing options out there available it can be hard to know which would be most successful. Many companies opt for mail drop advertising where they send out generic advertising material either via post or email. The positive to doing this via email is that it is at no cost to the business and is a fast way of getting information out to the customer. These emails can also be personalised to some extent adding a name into the subject bar and first line of the email.

The downside to this is that sometimes due to mailbox filters these can end up in people’s junk boxes or can be ignored by the recipient if it’s thought to be spam. To avoid this you can add a relevant catchy subject to the email that entices the recipient to open the email and read on, maybe offering money off or a voucher as a promotion.

Some companies do report great results from mail drops so it’s just about taking the time to target your email to the correct audience and have the content relevant enough to lead to further enquires and ultimately a sale.  Promotions and competitions are often the biggest hits with mail drops so that is definitely worth a punt.

Many web marketers and website owners are obsessed with rankings, concentrating all of their efforts on this and worrying when they notice a slight drop in positions. Of course rankings can help to get more traffic to your site, but rankings should only be a part of your web marketing strategy.

There is no point in getting a huge amount of traffic to your site if your site itself is not functioning as it should and is causing people to leave soon after landing on it. If this happens you will struggle to maintain high rankings anyway.

If you notice a dip in your rankings firstly see if it has affected the traffic to your site. It may be that you have dropped for some generic phrases but have increased your positions for the key phrases that people are actually searching with meaning not only may the quantity of the traffic increase but also the quality.

It is understandable that many businesses want to get as much information on their website as possible, but could it be that by doing so you are actually putting people off. Many studies carried out on the general public show that website that have too many adverts or too many moving parts or simply just too much information can be overwhelming and off putting. Many of these visitors will leave the site without even trying to look for what they came on to the site for.

A website should be easy to navigate round with information that is easily accessible when needed. For example, it may be that rather than filling up a page with technical specifications of a product, you add a quick link to download it or a “read more” button.

Take careful consideration to your home page which can have a massive first impact on a visitor. Do you really need the weather app on there? Or a scrolling news banner? All of this can be using up valuable space that may be better filled with something else.

It is one thing to have a website but it is another trying to get up on the search engines above your competitors. Competition depends very much on locations you are targeting and the phrases you wish to rank highly for. The more generic the phrase and the wider the location band in which you wish to target the more competition there will be. This inevitably means that you will need to invest more time and more in to your marketing to try and compete.

Ideally if you only have a small budget, you need to be realistic and initially target keywords and phrases that are less competitive. This will allow you to combat a few phrases and hopefully draw in some business before going for the competitive phrases.

Keyword research is vital before starting marketing as you not only need to know how competitive they are but also the search volume of traffic as there is no point targeting phrases that are easy to win but no one is searching for them.

As a web developer, there will come a time when you come across an issue with a website. It may be on an existing site or a new one in development. Often these bugs relate to the way information or images are displayed or the functionality that should be attached to them. For example it may be that you have a list of images that should be scrolling, but instead of scrolling they are all displaying side by side. With any bug, do not assume anything. It is often better to go back to basics and check that all the basic information is correct. You may also want to replicate the error on a test site so you can work on the bug offline without affecting the usability and look of the live site.

If you are struggling with finding out where an issue is then I would recommend leaving it for a fe hours or a day (if you have the time) and coming back to it. Often when we have been working on something for a long time we are too close to the project and need to take a step back.

Designing a website takes skill and experience. You need to know what works and what should be placed where in order to make it attractive to the viewer as well as functioning correctly.

Call to action banners may look similar to adverts and are a way of guiding your customer through the website. They are designed to make the viewer take immediate action such as “call now” or “click here”. A website or advert without a call to action is not complete and will probably not be effective.

Adding a “buy now” call to action is often done on websites, but if you do not offer a sample or free trial this can increase your bounce rate by up to 85%! Even the shape of the call to action button can have an effect on how successful it is. Rounded corners can be more enticing and make a banner more likely to be clicked on that a rectangle one that has sharp edges. There is a lot of psychology behind call to actions and website design as a whole.

With every website you should always consider what the customer wants. IT may be that your site is purely there to give information, if so you need to make sure that the information given is up to date, easy to read and also easy to find (not hidden within many pages on the site.) If your website is an ecommerce one and allows you to sell products and services, then you should ensure that the check out process is as easy as possible. You may wish to build a login area to allow customers to place an order to an existing address, track the order and possibly even amend the order within a certain time frame. Websites that also allow people to check out without creating a full account work well, as some people just want to place a quick order without creating an account with you at this time.

Social Media Giants, Facebook’s new Save Button for the web businesses can now copy and paste simple code into their articles and allow those articles to be saved to Facebook for the user to read later. Now users can read all their favorite articles in one place in an environment over 1 billion people are already familiar with: Facebook. To add to that, Facebook launched Instant Articles, allowing publishers all over the web to format their articles for users to read right inside Facebook. Users in essence never have to leave Facebook to read your blog. Get them to like your page, perhaps mark it as “See First” or a favorite or add it to a list, and now when they see your articles in their feed they can click on the articles and click the “Save” button to save it for reading later. We guess it’s rest in peace to the RSS feed!

Once you have a website established it is easy to get complacent and let years go by without changing anything on it. The risk with this is not only may you fall down the search engine result listings but also losing customers by not offering the most up to date information.

If your competitors, say for example in a printing company, are allowing their customers to upload PDF or Jpeg images and order a print online and you are not currently offering this service then you may lose business to them.

Often you will need to invest on a monthly or annual basis to allow addition of functionality to the site, but if done correctly and invested in the right way you can easily make the money back and more.

If you are going to be making big chances that will be advantageous to your customers, then don’t forget to market it in as many places as possible.