advice Sales & Marketing

Prospective clients visit your website to ‘check you out' so your website must be fresh, current and generate enquiries for you.  

Long gone are the days when companies rushed out, registered their domain name, published an online version of their printed collateral and sat back feeling satisfied that they have ticked the online marketing box.

In the franchise industry especially, your website needs to be fresh and current with up-to-date content, and this of course requires a little more effort!

Your website should evolve with your business and franchise package. In the current economic climate it is important to work with a web company that will work flexibly with you. We always recommend having a Content Management System (CMS) built into your site. This allows you to make changes yourself and be less reliant on your developer.

Return on investment
Utilising Google Analytics is just the first step in establishing what visitors are doing with your website, where those visitors have come from and why they leave. It's free and an advanced tracking tool, which allows you to understand your website visitors' behaviour. You can look at where visitors come from, what pages they view and where they leave the site. This enables you to form objectives, for example, a plan to change the order of most viewed pages from those providing information on your company to those that are more directly profitable!

The companies and individuals who realise that their website is an evolving communication and business transaction tool will be the ones to steal market share and heighten brand awareness - whatever the economic climate.

Get ‘sticky'
The term ‘sticky' is used to describe how long and often a user will visit your site. You want them to return time and time again, and you want them to stay for a while, so you need to factor in reasons for them to do this in the creative and technical design of your website. Downloads, free e-bulletins, newsletters, competitions, anything that will add value - for free - to your customers will keep your name at the forefront of their minds and gives them a reason to come back to your site repeatedly. This is what your competitors will be doing aside from email marketing campaigns. If you're not already using these tactics, perhaps it's time you did? Use your Google Analytics software to benchmark how you are doing now against when you have used various ideas or campaigns. You can then see which worked best and of course then do more of them.

In so many cases, franchisors will simply upload their franchise prospectus to the franchise section of the website. But why should potential franchisees enquire directly if you've already given them all the information? The job of the information on the website is to entice the visitor to enquire, and once they have enquired they progress to the next stage. Think of your website as a drip feed mechanism that leads to an enquiry ­- don't give too much away too soon!

It's in the detail
Ensure you consider how people will get to your website. If you have listings on directory sites or employ Google ad-words you may want specific landing pages so the person lands on a page with information that is directly relevant. This can even save you money as Google rates landing pages for relevance so the more relevant the page from your pay-per-click advert the less money you have to pay per click for a better position.

Ensure you specify a list of specific keywords and search phrases and that whoever maintains the site adds news or other content to the website.

Take them on a journey  
Your website needs to take your audience on a journey that's informed, accurate, promotional, enables interaction, has the answers they need and the functions displayed that allows them to get what they are looking for.

If you are about to embark on the design of a new website, ask yourself: where are you today and where do you want to be; how much involvement with managing your site do you want; and how much time do you have to do this?

These are just some of the things that will affect the cost of your website. Typical costs can vary from £2,000 to £40,000 depending on the complexities, features and bespoke programming purchased. You can even buy off-the-shelf sites for well under the £2,000 mark or have a site where you pay for it monthly.

We always recommend writing a web brief or web specification that lists all the functionality that is important to you and everyone who will be using the website. Ensure you include as much information about your company, competition, key search terms and of course your unique selling points. The website company is creating one of your most powerful marketing tools - they need to understand you, your company, competitive advantages and market position.

So, whether you already have a website or you are embarking on updating your current one, or perhaps you're about to commission one from scratch for a new business venture, the first thing to do is ensure you work with a web partner that understands your needs and what you want your website to achieve.