That’s right, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau 70% of the UK population will be regularly accessing the internet by 2012.

“So what” you say? Well if your not online your missing a great opportunity. With petrol prices and public transport costs on the rise your customers are turning to the internet to pre-shop.

They are looking online, assessing their purchase options BEFORE they leave the house. They are deciding who to do business with before they get into the car or pick up the phone. If your not online you don’t get to influence their decisions and you don’t get that new customer.

But its not enough to just be online. You need a website that is visually appealing and professionally done. You need compelling content and you need solid SEO and online marketing.

Its time to stop treating your website as an afterthought and start treating it as a critical part of your marketing efforts.

Here are some inexpensive things you can do to take your online presence to the next level.

• Add client testimonials to your website: People prefer to buy from someone
  when they know other people have had good experiences with that merchant already.

• Add a blog to your website: If you don’t know what a blog is you had better find out. It is probably the single most powerful thing you can do to boost your rank in the search engines and drive more traffic to your website. Do a quick search on google for the term “blog”. Blogs have nominal costs to set up and no costs to maintain. They are a great way to communicate with new and old customers alike and put a human face on your business.

• Have your website redesigned: If your site is more than 2 years old, give it a facelift. The internet is a fast moving target. Changes in technology can make a 2 year old site feel decades old. A new design is not just about looks, its about improved customer experience, accessibility and professionalism.

• Start advertising online: Pay per click is a great way to advertise when its done right. You have complete control over daily, weekly and monthly ad spend budgets and you only pay when someone actually visits your website. Compare that to your current advertising: can you say for sure how many people saw your ads last month? If not its very possible you are wasting your ad budget on ineffective ad channels.

Contact us today to see how we can help you take your website to the next level and start driving new potential clients to your website.

Many of our clients ask us for search engine optimisation for their websites.  We do include a basic search engine optimisation strategy free of charge with every site we construct but many of our clients want more.

Search engine optimisation can be an expensive process and usually comes with no guarantee of results. Depending on the amount of competition there is for your chosen keywords a SEO campaign can take months to begin delivering bankable results. What then can a business just starting out do to compete? How can you get your site found faster and ranking higher in as short a time as possible and with the minimum cost?

The answer lies in blogging. A blog, when used properly, can be a great shortcut to the ranking process. When updated properly with relevant content a blog can drive additional traffic to you site; reduce the time it takes to show up in search results and give your potential customers a valiuable resource to help them choose you over your competitors.

Blogs have this impact due to the way they are structured and the way search engines see them. Unlike a static website a blog pushes itself out into the internet via a multitude of websites that track blogs. Called pinging a blog sends a message to the blog tracking websites letting them know the blog has just been updated.

The search engines index the blog tracking sites as its an easy way for them to find a lot of valuable content for their search results. Usually blogs are topic specific and updated frequently. To a search engine determined to deliver the freshest, most relevant results on any given topic blogs make an ideal resource.

NetroDesign can integrate a blog into your website for just £100.00 added on to the cost of your website. The blog will be fully integrated into your site and we will provide you with a list of topics and ideas relevant to your business to help you get started. Click here to find out how you can get started with a blog of your own.