Transcript Making it all work - Growth Business UK

Optimising your web presence
Simon Brock
Wide Area Communications
www.widearea.co.uk
Introduction
Background
 What is your web presence?
 How do you use the web as part of
your business?
 How do you optimise that use
 Conclusions

www.widearea.co.uk
Background
Wide Area was founded in 1995
 Most of the business is serving
publishers:

– Web site creation
– Content management
– E-commerce
– Online strategy
www.widearea.co.uk
On the web…
…everyone is a publisher
 We all have:

– Our own home page
– Our own blog
– Hundreds of people visit our website
every day, and
– Every day I check all my staff’s blogs
www.widearea.co.uk
Which is wrong

There is a difference between:
– Owning content
– Publishing content
There is a discipline to publishing
 We will need to understand a little of
that discipline

www.widearea.co.uk
What is a web presence?
There are two parts:
 The part people see – your web site
 The part you see – how you use web
services

Will concentrate on the first but I will
offer an observation on the other at
the end
www.widearea.co.uk
Your web site

A company’s web site can serve
many purposes:
– Brochure
– Shop front
– Communication channel

Many web site are not built for
purpose
www.widearea.co.uk
The ‘Field of Dreams’ web site

If you build it they
will come
www.widearea.co.uk
If you build it they will come
Very much the mantra of the ‘.com’
bubble sites
 Was never true
 Building a web site is the start of a
process and not the end of a process
 Even now, poor choices mean web
sites cannot be changed

www.widearea.co.uk
What can we learn from this…

Your web presence must be part of
your business:
– If you have a brochure site mention it
everywhere
– Keep your site up to date
– It should not be expensive to keep your
site up to date
www.widearea.co.uk
If you build it,
will come
The rise of the search engine has
affected how web sites are
structured
 Many companies are now completely
dependent on search engines to
generate audience

www.widearea.co.uk
The death of the home page
A site used to be designed from the
home page to listing page to article
 Google takes people to article pages


On some sites, 90% of users never
see the home page
www.widearea.co.uk
Every page is a home page

If you don’t want the first page a user
sees to be the last page then
Every page must be a home page

If not then your user is only two
clicks away from your competitor
www.widearea.co.uk
Every page must…
Have clear calls to action
 Make sure it shows content which is
important to the user
 Show content which is important to
you
 Must not be a dead end

www.widearea.co.uk
If they built it
might come

The mantra of the SEO ‘industry’

Search engine optimisation is
important

SEO is also obvious and simple
www.widearea.co.uk
The SEO rapper

To understand
SEO, seek out
the Poetic
Prophet – the
SEO rapper
www.widearea.co.uk
Your web provision should…
Implement search engine folk lore
 Create meta tags
 Allow you to change titles and
descriptions
 Have pages which are search friendly
www.widearea.co.uk
Ranking
Ranking is a method by which a
search engine decides if your site
‘has value’
 It is dependent on whether other
people value your site and link to it

www.widearea.co.uk
What about PPC
Pay per click is important
 Google is not search engine
 Google is an advertising engine
 Two forms of adverts

– Paid for on the RHS
– Free in the middle

SEO says you pay for both!
www.widearea.co.uk
When Google breaks…
www.widearea.co.uk
How you use the web
Web is bringing applications into
organisations as services
 Google Apps
 Microsoft Exchange, Share Point
 Salesforce.com

www.widearea.co.uk
Simon’s diary
10am: Meet with WorkingMums.co.uk
Using SalesForce to manage clients
 2pm: Meet with national newspaper
Using SalesForce to manage
subscribers
 7pm: Meet friend for drink
Major software house developing
solutions with Salesforce

www.widearea.co.uk
Remember this…

The left and right
will use the web
effectively
because
– They can
– They must

The M business
will be squeezed
www.widearea.co.uk
Conclusions
Always remember the web is part of
your business
 Your web presence should be
adaptable and flexible
 You should understand your
relationship with the web
 The web will continue to change your
business

www.widearea.co.uk