If you have a website that sells goods or services that are particularly popular around Christmas time then you may of noticed an even bigger increase than normal in traffic to your site. This is because more and more people have decided to shop online more this year due to COVID and so a large percentage that may of come in to your store or bought in persons from a different shop, had now come to you. Although this is great, it does mean you need to be ready for the extra traffic and also extra orders. As the deadline for the last post before Christmas gets closer, it is important to ensure that you get all the orders out in a a timely manner. It is a good idea to have a banner of your website and make it clear at checkout if the parcel will or will not arrive before Christmas. Allowing the customer to pay extra shipping to upgrade their deliver timescale is a good way to make a little extra money whilst also getting more orders in. To cope with the demand for extra bandwidth you need to ensure your hosting is good enough and ideally that you have cloud hosting which will allow for the changes in demand.

Some people may think that in these days of instant messaging and social media posts emailing is a thing of the past but for a small business it can be a valuable marketing tool when used to target clients and promote a business.

Obtaining email addresses of potential clients is key to reaching the target audience and it is commonplace for businesses to ask for email addresses as part of the ordering process. Requesting that customers sign up for a business newsletter or giving away products and services for free are valuable ways to persuade customers to provide their email addresses and hopefully give permission for marketing information from your business.

It is vitally important to respond to email enquires promptly and positively as this can make a good initial impression however bombarding the recipient with countless email marketing correspondence is counterproductive and may result in the client unsubscribing to the email list completely. Emails once a week is ideal but certainly once a month is essential for effective marketing. Autoresponders can be set up to ensure regular emails are sent out as it might be difficult to keep up as the business grows. Always make the emails worth reading by providing useful information, special deal news and repeat customer offers worth having.

When you are deciding on the colour scheme for your website it is important to think about the main colour theme you are going to use and even the colour of action buttons and banners as research has indicated that the effect it has on people’s perceptions of a brand and their behaviour is significant. Although not everyone agrees there are some general principles to stick to.

Should your website advertise products for children, usually bright vibrant colours are used as these convey a sense of fun and enthusiasm but be careful as too many colours on all pages can make your website look unprofessional. Three main colours should be the maximum number used in general with black, white and grey neutral colours used to tone down and refocus the eye.

Website colour schemes that are often used when targeting female customers use blue, purple and green as their main colours whereas those aimed at the male sector use black, blue and green. Blue is used quite often when you want your website to convey trust and reliability which is why many banks use blue in their logos and on their websites and many social media platforms also use blue for this reason.

Marketing is vast and many business owners struggle to know how and where to invest their marketing budget. If they only have a very small budget then it is even more important that they receive a greater return on their investment to allow them to continue to invest in marketing in the future.

Marketing your business correctly can be the difference between being successful and failing. There are many ways in which you can market a business such as online through social media sites or through your own, door to door sales or cold calling, email marketing or advertising on the TV or in local newspapers and magazines. If you decide to only market your business using one avenue you may be missing out on opportunities to get more business. If for example you decide to only do offline marketing then you will never reach the people that only search online for a product or service and this is a growing population. Many people are using the internet to find services or products they need and therefore if you have no presence online, you will not be able to compete with those that do.

Online marketing is so vast that it is easy to get carried away with just one element and neglect the other parts that are equally as important. All too often website owners and even web companies forget that there are more than just one or two online marketing platforms and ideally you want to be doing a bit of everything to give your site the best chance.

Think carefully about who your target customer is. This will help you decide which marketing avenues may work best. IF for example you are reaching out to younger people age between 16-30 then you may chose social media marketing as most young people now have access to these sorts of sites. Social media also offers a paid for advertising opportunity which will allow you to only show your ads to specific groups of people. So if you have a barbers, you can select to only show your advert to men in a specific area.  You should also make sure you include SEO (Search engine optimisation) on your website. This will improve the organic listings on your site, so if someone searches on Google for example, your site will rank higher if you have a good level of SEO.

Your website is a particularly important selling tool and therefore it needs to be looked after in order to bring in enquiries or sales. You need to make sure that your website stands out from your competitors but for all the right reasons. Market research is vital as it will allow you the time to explore what others are offering and what you like / dislike about other sites. This is the time when you can also explore prices and see if you are competitive.

When having your website designed, be sure to show the designer examples of sites you like. This will then give them an idea of how you want the website to look. Once they understand the ethos of your company, they can then use this to create visuals. IF you are not happy with something, this is the time to speak up and say as at this stage it can be easily changed, whereas after the programming has commenced its much harder and may mean you incur additional costs.

Be very careful not to copy anyone else’s website as there may be copyright laws protecting parts of it.

With the current situation, many businesses are still not up and running or if they are – they are having to run at a reduced capacity. This may mean that their overheads are high but their income has dropped down. For this reason, lots of businesses have started to cut back on their online marketing but this is often not the best idea.

Some forms of online marketing are pretty instant such as Google Adwords or Facebook marketing but others need to be built up over time and if you stop them you may lose at lot of the hard work that you have built up over the last few months or years. If for example you are allowing a web marketer to undertake SEO (search engine optimisation) for you then this may take at least 6 months to start to see any real benefit.

Before cutting down on your web marketing, think if there are any other ways in which you can reduce your costs which does not affect your marketing as when you are ready to start trading again you want to ensure you still have good positions on the search engines such as Google.

It is essential for any successful business to have a web presence in order to successfully market their business and if possible should be a website and a social media business page but with the cost of paying a professional website designer beyond the reach of small business owners starting up it is a sensible idea to try designing and setting up your own electrical contractor’s website.

Online there are a vast array of tutorials which help the novice designer and so it is a good idea to find other electrical contractor sites and evaluate these before you start. Make a note of the common features and anything that is particularly inspiring in terms of content, layout and colour schemes and collate your ideas.

Many sites offer templates to get you started which can be customised to your electrical company with your business name and logo. Your content which may include the services you offer, examples of work completed, and reviews can be uploaded easily and should include a mixture of images, photographs and text. SEO tools are built in to enable your website to rank higher when potential clients search online for your business.

It is essential that your website is up to date and links that are set up to other businesses work correctly as visitors will click elsewhere if this is not maintained.

An effective and well-made website is much more than just the content it shows, it is the whole experience that a visitor to the site has and whether good or bad depends on you and your design.

Different web design elements can affect the attitude of the viewer and so should be carefully thought about at the outset. Research has been carried out on the effects of colours, font and spacing on the website reviews and it makes interesting reading.

So, what are the key elements that make for a successful website design?

Firstly, the content of your site should be clear, organised and easily navigated. Visitors do not want to be bombarded with irrelevant content and wordy text. Links should work properly to avoid frustration.

Secondly, the way that the pages are set out needs to be uncluttered with little text and only a few images. Too many flashing, scrolling images and banners can make the visitor feel uneasy and will result in them leaving the site.

Lastly, colour and typefaces should be researched to see which best fits your website and ultimately your business. Blue is traditionally used to convey trust that is why many banks and financial institutions use blue in their logos. Fonts need to be easily readable without appearing childish and unprofessional.

If you are interested in finding out how your website is performing, then you should ensure that it is linked to Google’s Web Master Tools. Webmaster Tools is free online sofftware that allows you to add any sites that you own / manage. Once added to your secure control panel you can submit sitemaps, track visitors and searches, have an overview of rankings. You can also find out any there are any issues with the website that Google may have found when it crawled your site. These may be issues such as broken links or elements that are not mobile friendly.

This tool is a must for every website owner or its marketing company as not only is it useful from an analysis point of view but also to make sure you are sorting out any compatibility or pages that may not be loading when visited.

If you add a lot of new content  to the website or make a few changes to the site that you want Google to pick up then you can submit a request through the Google Web Master Tools control panel asking them to revisit the site and re-index it.

Be sure to look at the search phrases that are showing up as what people typed in to find you as you may be surprised to find out what people are searching for to get to your website.