Hi All,

I hope you’re enjoying the holiday season and taking a bit of a break from work. I just wanted to wish everyone all the best and apologise for the lack of posts recently…and the 5 biggest secrets of web designers series being interrupted! It’ll be finished off shortly, I promise.

Over the break I’ve been focusing on getting the new website up and running. I’ve made some changes to try and make it more valuable for you and it’s ready for some new features I plan to start adding early next year. Mainly…content!

It’ll be up soon so I hope you all find it useful.

So once again, Happy Holidays or Felices Fiestas as we say in Spain. I’ll talk to you all again very soon.

Best Regards,

Craig

Once you’ve started to write your content, you need to put it on your website. No worries, just create a few article links and she’ll be right!

Wrong! This is another way to get visitors to leave your website. You sure are getting good at driving traffic away from your website, eh?

So how do you keep that oh so precious traffic on your website for hours at an end? You structure it properly of course. So what exactly does that mean?

Your website is telling a story. The story starts when the visitor enters your website and ends when they leave. It’s up to you whether the story ends happily for both you and your new customer. Or sadly after the Big Bad Wolf eats Grandma, Little Red Riding Hood, the Wood Cutter, and skips off into the forest with their wallets.

How do you tell the story? By linking the relevant content together in a clear, logical, and easy to follow way. The homepage flows into more useful information, the articles flow into other related articles. And all the time, your website is building a relationship with your visitor.

After all, when you have a relationship with a visitor, it’s much easier to slip a ring on their finger and convert them into a long term customer. To death do you part!

Do a search for any product or service you like. What do the results return? Pages and pages of people trying to sell you something.

If an encyclopaedia salesperson knocks on your door, do you let them in?

If you walk into a clothing store and a salesperson asks if you need any help, do you say “YES PLEASE!”

Usually…No! So why would you behave any different on the internet? It’s even easier to reject a salesperson here as you never even see their face.

Your website needs to build a relationship with its visitors. It needs to give your customers what they want. First thing they want? Information. They want to find out as much as possible before making a purchase. They want to know if they can trust you. They want to build a relationship so they know you’ll be there if things go wrong.

How do you build a relationship with these lovely people? Content, loads and loads of content. Useful, informative, brilliant content. That’s how you build a relationship online.

 

 A pretty website does not equal a money making website: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It takes a lot more to succeed online than a ‘professional’ looking website. In fact, having a ‘professional’ looking website with ‘professional’ looking stock images is one of the quickest ways to lose visitors.

Your website should be simple, authentic, and represent your company. Don’t get me wrong, your website’s look and feel is an important key to success, but it’s not everything.

Oh, and if you even think about having something flashing or moving on your website, it better be a hand waving, as you’ll be waving goodbye to your visitors.

Take a look at some of the most popular websites in the world:

• Google
• YouTube

Simple, yet elegant, succeeds on the internet.

 

 The five biggest secrets your web designer doesn't know about making money on the internet: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The internet is full of websites that fail to live up to their potential. The main reason is small business owners don’t understand the potential for their website. However, most web designers don’t either!

Over the next two weeks, you’ll be light years ahead of other businesses on the internet as we discuss the five most important facts your web designer doesn’t know about making money.

We’ll be covering:

1. Why a pretty website does not make you money
2. Why salespeople are a dying breed, especially on the internet
3. How to structure your website to retain your visitors
4. The problem with marketing online, no one knows how to do it!
5. The real story on search engines

I hope you tune in and put this knowledge to good use in your business. As always, let me know your thoughts and comments below.

 

 A strong website foundation: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today I was asked about some of my marketing strategies for websites. To be honest, at first, I was a little stumped on how to answer it. Not because I don’t have lots of strategies to market a website, but I simply don’t have the results to back myself up right now.

I know I have great ideas, and I know what will work and won’t work for my clients. So what’s the problem? We simply haven’t been able to implement any marketing strategies yet!

Everyone potential client I talk to generally has a bad website. I know you think you’re different and your website is great…but let me review it and I’ll let you see what you’re missing. In order to get a website functioning correctly, we first need to build a strong foundation. There’s no point driving traffic to a website that will have visitors leaving after a few minutes. And trust me, that’s what your website is doing now unless you’re one of the very lucky ones.

So I always build a strong foundation. I’m still not happy with my own website and will be rewriting it again in the next week or so. I’m also still waiting on my graphic designer to finish it off. Not because she’s lazy, she’s just had to focus on our clients first.

That is frustratingly apparent in our own marketing too. I’m actually not marketing myself at all in the old fashioned sense and still have a steady stream of customers. Part of that is the social marketing approach I’m using, the other part is the impression we make on all our current clients. Trust me, when I get some new people trained, you’ll be seeing some great marketing (and free information for you) coming out of this website!

The moral of the story is, if you’re looking for a way to market your website, how about first looking at your current websites performance. You’re a lot better off to be impressing every single visitor than having millions and only capturing a few. Increase your conversion rates through better website design and content first. That’s the way to build a great website that grows your business.

 

 The future of marketing: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What is the future of marketing? I’ve posted before about my beliefs that internet advertising is dead and marketing as we know it will soon be going the same way.

The problem is what people think of when they think of marketing. Marketing is usually linked directly to advertising, to newspaper, tv, or radio ads, and these methods are definitely in trouble. The concept of marketing as pushing product information at your customer is dead. With the internet, the entire paradigm is shifting, and many businesses will be left behind.

If you look at marketing courses in university, or the huge majority of marketing books out there, you’ll see all the traditional forms of marketing and how to put them into practice. The problem is, they don’t work anymore!

These days, advertising is everywhere, and every corner we turn, someone is trying to sell us something. We’re being marketed to constantly and have taught ourselves just to switch off.

As business owners, what do we do about this? Marketing is one of the key aspects of a successful business and if the traditional methods aren’t working, aren’t we all in a lot of trouble?

No. People like us aren’t in trouble, we’re in a position to benefit the most from these changes! The people that aren’t prepared to change, to seek out new ideas, to constantly improve…they are the ones in trouble.

So get excited, we’re going to start talking about the new form of marketing, that has been named ‘Social Marketing’ by the experts. I have faith that you’re probably doing some of this marketing already. You just may not be aware of it, or just not taking full advantage of it yet.

It’s time to start creating the future of marketing ourselves, and take our businesses to the next level.

If you’ve been checking in you may have been wondering why there hasn’t been a post in a week or so. Well, I humbly apologise, but I’ve been a busy boy.

The major reason I’ve been AWOL has been the design and launch of a new website, www.madridmas.com. I’ve been working hard with my designer for the past two months to create a new website for these guys that provide services like trips and parties for students and young people in Madrid. It’s been both a lot of fun, and a lot of stress, and marks the first full website we’ve completed.

Most of my clients come to me with substandard, but bearable websites, and I can work with what they’ve got on hand. But these poor guys got duped by a shoddy website designer that basically just ripped them off. Shitty frontend, shitty backend, and then he became very hard to get a hold of. Like most website designers, he promised the works, but under delivered in a big way!

So now Mark and Arturo are the proud and happy owners of a sparkling new website, so happy with our work they link to the second piece of news.

Connexted now has it’s own official offices! Madridmas found some a great location but needed to share the costs, so they called me. We moved in today, and then moved out again since the internet wasn’t connected like promised. But we’ll be back soon with some lovely sunny views out the window. The advantages of Spain, it’s December yet you can still see the sun and occasionally even feel it’s warmth!

So that’s where I’ve been, including some other projects, but I’ll be back into full posting and podcasting swing again on Wednesday, delivering those valuable website tips to put money in your bank account. I’m also working on some website review videos that I’m quite proud of. I’m sure you’re going to find them very useful when I get the finishing touches done.

This is Craig from connexted, finally getting his Action Plan down to a measly 10 pages…talk soon.