Category: Websites

Is it Time for a New Website?

If you ask a car salesperson if it’s time for a new car, they are going to tell you “of course!” without even looking at what you are driving – this will probably be true if you ask the salesperson of a web design agency if it’s time for you to get a new website! But if you ask a designer, a developer, or a marketer at the same agency you will get different answers – so how do you know if it’s really the right time to invest in a new website or refresh your existing site? There are a few benchmarks you can check your website against to see if it’s ready for an update, or if it’s already in peak condition.

  1. Is your site user-friendly?

In 2006, having a user-friendly website meant having one that you could use on any browser. Ten years on it was about having a mobile responsive website that could be used on any device. Now accessibility is the benchmark we are measuring the internet against. If your website isn’t inclusive and meeting basic accessibility criteria, it is showing its age!

  1. Does it match your business branding and messaging?

If the main message of your business has evolved, or the industry you are working in is talking about things differently, then it’s time to at least address the content of your website. Your photos, imagery and branding should also be assessed to make sure they are showing your business in the best possible light.

  1. Do you dread updating your website?

Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Magento, Joomla, Drupal, Shopify and all of their friends are constantly being updated, so if making basic changes to your website is costly, time-consuming or just plain clunky and awkward, it could be time to get an update.

  1. Is your website performing at its best?

Your next checkpoint involves digging into your statistics. If your traffic is less than it used to be, or your conversion rate has started to decline then something is wrong. These symptoms are not necessarily going to be cured by a new website, but they are not to be ignored. It’s time to put your detective hat on and start to investigate what’s going wrong and how you can solve it.

  1. What are your competitors up to?

While your detective hat is on, have a snoop on your competitors’ websites! Have they redesigned their site recently, or given their brand a facelift? If so, what changes have they implemented?  If not, what are they talking about and what types of content are they using? Of course, it’s not a substitute for real market research, but it’s better than none at all!

If you are still on the fence, there is a simple test – do you cringe at the thought of your customers going to your website, or do you beam with pride and encourage people to head there whenever you can? An honest answer to this question will tell you all you need to know.

Are you feeling inspired and thinking of injecting some fresh thinking into your website, or creating a new one from scratch? Get in touch with our team and find out how we can help. Contact us here. 

How to Conduct a Killer End of Year Marketing Audit

How often do you review your marketing?  Ideally you should be looking at your statistics regularly throughout the year, but certainly before you embark on plans for the next 12 months. 

You need to look at what worked this year.  And what did not. 

In marketing, we call this an audit – a systematic review and assessment of what has happened up to this point in the year.

  1. Where are you now?

The first place to start is by looking at where you are at right now.  Get all of the data you can together for your website, your email marketing, your budget and it’s ROI, your social media, your sales and whatever other data you’ve been measuring throughout the year.

  1. Look back to look forward

Step two is to reviewing the marketing plan that you made at the start of the year and seeing where you are relative to what you wanted to achieve.  For each objective and goal that you set yourself, look at the measurements and find the relevant numbers you’ve gathered up in step one to see how you did.  For example, if you wanted to increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter by 25%, go dig out your numbers for January and for now and do the maths. 

The reason we do this before we make our next plan is not just to pat ourselves on the back for the goals we reached, but to help us in setting our goals for the year to come.  Where did we surpass our goals – were the numbers too conservative?  Where did we miss the mark – did we not focus on this area enough or was something else responsible? 

  1. An honest appraisal

Step three requires setting your ego aside, and having an honest look at how your competitors have done in the year. 

How active have they been on email and social media?  If you don’t already follow them on social media, or subscribe to their emails, now is the time to do that! 

How has their website been updated during the year?  Where are they coming up in the search results compared to you – has this improved? 

As well as your own statistics, this information can help you to see where your company’s marketing was lacking and offer inspiration on where to focus attention for the year to come.

  1. Delve deep

Finally, step four is to review all the information you’ve collated.  Dig deep and ask questions on everything you have gathered, like:

  • Why is this number different to last year? 
  • How can we improve on this statistic? 
  • What time of year needs more attention? 
  • Who could we ask for help with this next year?

The answers to these questions will form the basis of your marketing plan for the year to come and create actions that you need to take in order to see improvements and reach your new goals.

If you think your business would benefit from some marketing support this festive season we’d love to hear from you! You can contact us here or pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525.

 

How to Spring Clean Your Website

Do you carry out a ‘spring clean’ ritual in your home?  Taking the time to clear out our items that have not been used, worn or even seen the light of day in months?  The same principle can be applied to your website, and the best bit is – it is usually much quicker and easier than de-cluttering your home!  Here are some easy steps you can take to Spring Clean your website:

CHECK IT IS UP-TO-DATE

Step one is to make sure that all of the information on your website is up-to date.  That includes contact details, members of staff, and that all products and services advertised have not been discontinued. Try to avoid adding dates, if they are not needed e.g., “Popular Activities in 2019”- even in your blog, as this can make your content look outdated even if it is still relevant.

FIX BROKEN LINKS

Working links are vital to a website; they allow people to navigate it and find what they are looking for. Step two in your Spring Clean is to ensure that all links on your website are still relevant and not broken.  There are few things more off-putting to a potential client than clicking a link to find the 404 error message appear on their screen!

As well as reducing your credibility, broken and outdated links can also harm your SEO and online visibility. Checking for broken links can be handled easily with free broken link checkers available online.

CHECK MOBILE VIEWS

It is likely that a high volume of page traffic is via mobile devices, like a phone or a tablet, so make sure that your website is viewed easily on them.  You can look yourself, ask others to check the mobile version of your site, or even use Google’s Mobile-friendly Test.

AUDIT YOUR CONTENT

Are you sure that the content of your website is good quality?  Look at your pages and evaluate their performance: how many page views; average time spent on page etc.  High-quality content brings in the most traffic, and anything that is low-quality can be disposed of.  Do not dismiss average quality content as this can provide the opportunity for improvement.

INVESTIGATE YOUR ANALYTICS

Web analytics allows you to understand how well your website performs.  If you have a version installed, then look into abnormalities – like unusual bounce rates,  or keywords that compete with other pages. Are you getting more hits from your desktop website than your mobile? Is your content engaging enough? It is best to keep on top of your analytics regularly, rather than checking once a year, but a Spring Clean is a good time to dig deeper!

RE-DESIGN

Just like a house, websites can benefit from a regular face-lift.  If you feel that your site is starting to look a bit stale in comparison to the competition, then invest in creating a whole new look.  Change colour schemes, the layout or refresh the images; have a look at current trends in websites design and see what can stand the test of time.

If you’d like to speak to one of our team about how we could help give your website a spring clean, you can get in touch here. Alternatively, pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525 – we’d love to hear from you!

How to Construct Effective Customer Journey Maps

We create sitemaps to help us plot user navigation across our websites. Similarly, a customer journey map plans out the anticipated journey a customer will have with your business. While this is somewhat analogous to your sales funnel, it has a more practical feel to it. Funnel phases such as awareness and consideration are about where your lead is at; the customer journey map will tell us what they are doing, and more importantly, what we as a business are doing.

Journey Map Components

Broadly speaking, there are three layers to a customer journey map:

1. Customer actions

2. Front of House

3. Back of House

While some maps get very granular and specific, these three layers define the actions and interactions for your customer.

Customer actions usually align with the interest phase in our sales funnel. It can be something as simple as a social media follow, website visit, or something more traditional sales-based like filling out a form or requesting a quote.

To do this, our company needs some front-of-house assets (FOH). In the above example, these would be things such as our social media accounts and website. They can also be traditional collateral materials such as brochures or flyers; it’s that first point of active contact (rather than passive awareness) that a customer has with your brand or company.

Behind those front-of-house assets (BOH), we have back-of-house systems. These are how we manage our customers and their interactions with them. For example, that form they filled out on our website might generate a new record in Salesforce or other customer data storage platform. This allows us to cross-reference every later action our customer takes so that we have a complete narrative for them. The more we know about our customer’s interactions with us, the better placed we are to provide the product or service they want, now and in the future.

Practical Customer Journey Map

Let’s take a practical example such as a theatre to tie this all together.

Initially, a customer subscribes to a newsletter on the theatre’s website. They then start to receive the newsletter, and they click trackable links. When they buy tickets, this information gets logged against their profile. Any post-show survey responses record what they like about the theatre, their favourite types of shows etc. These all help the theatre understand its customer preferences.

For this example, our three layers contain:

1. Customer actions: Join the mailing list, open newsletter, click links, purchase tickets, complete survey

2. FOH Assets: Website, survey tool

3. BOH Assets: Mailing tool, sales database

In the most basic sense, the customer journey map, with customer actions at the top, interact with the FOH, which adds to the BOH. But there can be more complexity built-in over time.

For example, after two years, if we see that our patron comes only to watch farcical comedy plays, this BOH information can start to influence the FOH. If the theatre has a big summer comedy on, this is a customer they can target with an increased likelihood of making a sale. A newsletter, or special mailout about this play, can be sent to those who the BOH shows might be more interested than the general mailing list.

Customer Journey Map Evolution

While this has been quite a simple example, it does demonstrate one of the more important reasons to create a customer journey map.

Continual adaptation makes a customer journey map essential for any business. At a functional level, it helps you organise all your assets to work together to serve your customer and your business. Over time, it allows you to map interactions between the different levels that ultimately will drive sales and improve customer satisfaction.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you construct an effective customer journey map, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or call us on 01600 891525.

 

 

 

 

Top Graphic Design Tips for Small Businesses

Design is probably not a priority for your business, but it should be. In fact, graphic design should be vital. It is what can make your business stand out from all the others. Without design there would be no logo for your company; your website would look boring; the packaging for your product will be overlooked. All in all, design is rather important.

For small businesses, design can present some challenges that may not be a problem for larger companies – for instance, budget size. Steve Jobs reportedly spent $100,000 for the Apple logo; this is a luxury that not every business has. However smaller bank balances do not mean that you cannot compete with the big boys.

Here are a few tips that you can take away to make sure that you get the most out of your graphic designs:

THE OBJECTIVE

Do not go into any design project without knowing exactly what you want to achieve. A clear objective is key to a successful design. What is it you are aiming for: raising brand awareness? Increase website traffic? Increase profits? Who is your target audience?  If you know what you are trying to achieve, you will be able to assess if the finished product has met your goals.

THE DESIGN

Now that you have your objectives, you can work on the design.  Here are some tips for ensuring it is a success.

Design trends – look at current trends and watch how this can change to keep your brand up to date. For example, popular trends this year include muted colours and clever typography.

Colours – try to keep the number of different ones used to a minimum; and if you have brand colours, make sure that you use them.

Colours can have meanings, e.g., green tends to be associated with health, growth and nature, so depending on your message, you could find a colour to match the theme of your design.

Fonts – like colours, do not use too many different fonts. By sticking with a couple, making sure they are the same as your brand usually uses, and ensuring that they are easy to read, your design is more likely to be successful.

Keep it simple – this does not mean plain. As the saying goes: less is more. Stick with clean lines and try not to add any unnecessary words or images; remember that every element must have a purpose in great design.

White space – do not think of this as empty space, use it to your advantage. Pick an image for the background; a colour or pattern; or even incorporate white space into your logo. By ensuring there is plenty of space around your message, you will make it easier to read.

BE INSPIRED

Looking at the designs of larger businesses can be beneficial.  Companies like Apple, Nike, McDonalds, have millions to spend on their design work and keeping up with the latest trends, so take a look at what they are doing and see if it inspires your work.

USE TOOLS

Hiring a Graphic Designer would be ideal, however, some budgets may not be able to stretch to that, so take a look at the online tools that are available to help you do it yourself. From photos to software, there are plenty of resources that can help small businesses produce high-quality designs and graphics.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for something bespoke and original, get in touch with our team and discuss your requirements. Contact us here or pick up the phone and talk to us on 01600 891525.

Your Website is Your Shop Window

Can you remember a time when you were drawn into a shop by a clever window display? Or perhaps put off from entering somewhere new by a confusing store front?  This power of first impressions applies to the online world as much as it does to the high street, and it doesn’t just concern ecommerce stores.  Service businesses should be equally aware of the impression that their website gives to potential clients, in particular your home page which is where the majority of visitors will likely enter your site.

You wouldn’t expect customers to visit a dated shop, and you wouldn’t invite clients into an unkempt office.  So if you present your potential customers with a tired, difficult to navigate  website, don’t be surprised if they don’t stick around.

Anyone who is undecided about your business can be drawn in or put off by your website, gleaning all that they feel they should know from a simple glance.  So does your website communicate your brand values, current offers, or popular services? If you are unsure, let’s dive into how to create the ‘shop window’ experience for your website.

Think about your customers

Firstly, before you get carried away with any big changes, make sure your website appeals to your target market.  Just as the window display of a baby clothing store is made to make new parents go ‘aww!’ so your website should draw in your target audience. Think of it as your business values meeting the values of the customers you want to attract.

Move with the times

For ecommerce stores, ensure that your home page reflects the current events and seasons, whether it’s a Valentine’s Day banner, or a badge supporting an awareness month.  Just as you would change a physical shop window display to keep up with the seasons, make sure your website stays relevant.

While you may not have a Valentine’s Day special for your service based businesses, keep up with the changing times, and make sure the first image your visitors see isn’t a dated award nomination!

Update your website regularly

That doesn’t mean that you have to wait for a special occasion like Christmas to change things on your website.  Instead you should make sure to refresh your offers, banners, products and news articles regularly.

As well as enticing new customers to explore further, repeat customers will learn that visiting your website frequently will be of value.  If the home page looks the same every time they stop by, there is little chance of them becoming regular visitors.

Updating your imagery and text regularly will not only encourage visitors to come back again, it will also assist your SEO efforts as search engines prioritise fresh content.

Stand out from the crowd

Finally, don’t look like everyone else.  Imagine your website as a store front on a packed high street – how will you make it stand out from the shops around you?

It may seem like a lot of effort, but the more work you put into your website ‘shop window’ on a regular basis, the greater rewards you will reap.

Are you feeling inspired and thinking of injecting some fresh thinking into your website? Get in touch with our team and find out how we can help. Email info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk or call us on 01600 891525.

 

A Step By Step Guide to Outsourcing to a Marketing Agency

Like hiring staff, outsourcing is never an easy decision for a business owner to make – there are lots of things to weigh up and consider.  So when you do finally decide to take the plunge and outsource to a marketing agency, it’s worth making sure you are doing everything you can to make the partnership a success.

STEP 1. Decide what you will be outsourcing

As well as defining your budget you need to decide what marketing you can (and should) keep inhouse.  It’s important to be realistic about your resources and your talents.  If you aren’t sure what you can handle, then you should be honest about this when you start to engage with agencies.

STEP 2. Choose your stakeholders

The easiest way to get the best out of your relationship with an agency is to make it clear who will interact with them and who will be required to approve budgets, outputs and anything else.  Clearly defined roles are key to success so nail it down before you do anything else.

STEP 3. Choose the best agency for YOUR business

Just because an agency is the biggest in your city, or has won the most awards, does not mean that they are the right agency for your business.  When you are hiring staff you have criteria that an interviewee must meet, so set similar pointers before you interview an agency.  Engage with a few companies and choose one that you feel a connection with, that you trust with your brand, and that offers the services that you need.

STEP 4. Set Expectations

If you’ve told your agency that you want to increase your social media presence and then you end the contract with them because your sales are the same…you are at fault.  You need to set expectations for what you would like to see done, and what results you would like to see from that work (these may not marry up, but a good agency will advise you on strategy…we’ll get to that in Step 5!).

STEP 5: Make the contract strategy driven instead of task driven

Tasks checked off a to do list is not going to generate business.  If your agency knows why they are doing something, what the goals are, then it will be much more effective.  A good agency will help you create a strategy and plan the actions to achieve it rather than taking a list of actions with no reason.

STEP 6: Keep on top of the results

Reviewing the results of marketing efforts is crucial to the success of any team – inhouse or outsourced.  An agency will be able to report on everything in detail that they were involved in to show what worked, and what didn’t so your next marketing decisions can be evidence based.

Finally – Have respect for the agency

The team members within a good marketing agency live and breathe their profession, so if they advise you that your ideas for a campaign will not bring good results, don’t dismiss them before hearing their reasons.  Respect that you have brought in experts who know more than you and listen to their suggestions.

After all to quote Steve Jobs…

Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you step up your marketing in the second half of 2021 we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

 

Websites We Love

While our team are all pretty used to working remotely, we know that some of you will be making the most of your lockdown days at home spring cleaning, cooking, reading or perhaps wrapping up warm in a blanket and binge-watching your favourite shows on Netflix. Another option could be wasting time on the internet.

It’s rare that any of us get the chance to just sit and surf at our leisure these days. So, we thought we’d share with you a few of our favourite websites. Each has been selected for a different reason and is wonderful in its own right.

 

Lush

www.lush.co.uk

Lush specialise in fresh handmade cosmetics. You may have seen – or rather smelt – one of their stores on the UK high street. Founded by Mark Constantine and Liz Weir in Poole, England, the company sells natural hair and beauty products which are all handmade in their factory in Poole, Dorset. Lush pride themselves on their brand values, which include being 100% vegetarian, not testing on animals, ethical sourcing of their ingredients and naked products (minimising packaging where possible) to name just a few. Here’s why we love their website.

 

  • The homepage of the website is always updated with seasonally relevant products and campaigns including beautiful videos of products in action!
  • The design of the website is simple and clean which really maintains the focus on the products and makes the product imagery stand out.
  • Brand values and messages are clearly communicated throughout the site helping instil brand identity and customer confidence.
  • Information is shared but not in an overbearing way with snippets being shared throughout the site as you shop.
  • Customers can shop by ingredient while learning about the natural benefits and qualities of each one!
  • They have online exclusives to keep in-store shoppers engaged with their website too.

 

 

BuzzFeed

www.buzzfeed.com

It’s highly unlikely that you haven’t stumbled across a BuzzFeed article in some way, shape or form by now. BuzzFeed is an independent digital media company delivering news and entertainment to people around the world via its website, apps and social media channels. The organisation claim, “We strive to connect deeply with our audience, and give them news and entertainment worth sharing with their friends, family, and the people who matter in their lives.” And that’s just why we like them! The perfect website for killing time on your mid-morning coffee break or learning things that you probably don’t really need to know, BuzzFeed is packed full of news, videos, quizzes, recipes and much more. Here’s what they do well.

 

 

  • Light-hearted content. While you’ll find serious stuff on here too, if it’s a break from the doom and gloom of the world that you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.
  • Cross channel integration. For BuzzFeed social media is an equally important way to reach people and they’ve got this down to a fine art.
  • It reads like a newspaper. The simple journalistic design of the website makes headlines pop and encourages click-throughs to articles.
  • They have a quiz called “Do You Actually Prefer Chocolate or Cheese?”!

 

Not on The High Street

www.notonthehighstreet.com

If you’ve ever been looking for a one-of-a-kind gift for that friend or family member who is just so tricky to buy for the chances are that you’ve visited ‘Not on The High Street’. Founded ten years ago, the brand aims to bring together “unique, stylish and never-before-seen products that are hard to find anywhere else”. They are home to more than 5000 of the UK’s best creative business and have a fantastically functional website to showcase them.

 

 

  • This website is particularly easy to shop with users being able to search by occasion, gift recipient, category or a specific key word search.
  • An extensive range of filters allow users to narrow down their options easily by price, personalisation, colour, size and special features.
  • The design is simple and doesn’t detract from the products.
  • Product imagery is of the highest standard and stylistically consistent.
  • Seasonal features on the homepage help plant new ideas for shoppers to consider, creating the opportunity for additional sales.

 

 

 

Magic Seaweed

www.magicseaweed.com

Magic Seaweed has a very specific following. With surf reports, surf forecasts, web cams and surfing photos for spots around the globe, it’s the go-to place on the internet for the surfing community. While it’s a niche website tailored to a very specific interest, here’s why we think it works so well.

 

 

  • The website design itself is simple and while it contains lots of different types of content it doesn’t feel cluttered.
  • The menu is clear, always visible and easy to navigate, enabling users to find what they’re looking for quickly.
  • Magic Seaweed have found a way to include informative content like weather charts and articles, alongside visual media like videos and photography, which somehow all work in harmony to create a great overview of the community and the sport.
  • They have successfully included an eCommerce facility on their website which somehow feels like an extension of the website rather than a standard online shop.

 

 

The British Fashion Council

www.britishfashioncouncil.co.uk

The British Fashion Council (BFC) is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to further the interests of the British fashion industry and its designer businesses by harnessing and sharing collective knowledge, experience and resources of the sector. It focuses on business, reputation, education, digital and investment so it’s website needs to strike the right balance between visual content and information, as it serves as a resource for industry professionals as well as representing what’s currently happening creatively.

 

 

  • The homepage of the site is instantly interesting and engages the user with a full screen video without compromising the navigation menu.
  • The design is fit for purpose. Fashion was designed to be showcased on moving models and this has been captured in the website.
  • Information is easy to find and resources are well organised.

 

Are you feeling inspired and thinking of setting up your own website? Perhaps you need to inject some fresh thinking into an existing one? Get in touch with our team and find out how we can help. Email info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk or call us on 01600 891525.

2020, What a Rollercoaster of a Year! But We Enjoyed the Ride and Have Plenty to Look Forward To

What a rollercoaster year 2020 has been! Normal working practices have been turned on their heads as we’ve had to navigate lockdowns, working from home, travel restrictions and what seems like a different tier for every month. With events cancelled and face-to-face networking banned we’ve all moved online, finding refuge in Zoom, Google Meet, WhatsApp and Teams. We’ve cursed poor internet connections and interruptions from children and animals while craving the company of our friends and family. 

At LimeGreen we’ve been fortunate when so many haven’t. As a virtual agency we’re ideally set up for remote working and so have been able to seamlessly support our clients, helping ensure their brand profiles and marketing messages continue to reach and engage with their audiences.

It’s not been without its challenges but, when we look back on the year, we realise that despite Covid chaos, we’ve helped our clients stay agile and adapt quickly. In fact, together with our clients, we think we’ve achieved some great things.

Pinnacle

Pinnacle helps law firms implement and optimise their critical business applications. At a time when their services have never been in more demand and they’ve been busier than ever, lockdown provided some real challenges. Global annual partner networking events were cancelled, IT implementations had to go live remotely, and their clients had to move swiftly to remote working – not a natural environment for a lawyer. Pinnacle rose to this challenge, for example, partnering with Briefing magazine to create Tiger Teams.  

A Tiger Team is a group of people, each an expert in their field, who come together to solve difficult problems and identify others before they happen. The concept was made famous by NASA when their teams worked as one to bring Apollo 13 safely back to earth after a module malfunctioned during the mission. Briefing and Pinnacle took this to heart, creating a series of webinars and discussions addressing the biggest challenges law firms have faced during 2020. Pinnacle then extended this with their in-house Tiger Teams creating agile new products to improve law firms’ workflows and business development.

We’ve made use of Loom videos to create short demo videos for LinkedIn and Twitter. We’ve created virtual booths, animated PowerPoints and videos for online conferences. And we’ve created a password-protected resource centre so Pinnacle’s clients can remote-access firm-wide vital resources to support their application implementations. 

Orchard House Partners

Orchard House Partners is a specialist leadership and team coaching practice that uses natural spaces, wildwood ecosystems and horses to accelerate leadership development. We designed, wrote and launched their stunning new website at the beginning of the year. And when lockdown kicked in soon afterwards, we worked with them to make sure their brand profile continued to grow online, despite them not being able to hold courses in person. 

During lockdown, the Orchard House team ran online conversations with leaders from across the globe. Their latest programme, Leadership Labs, is an exciting and enlightening series of virtual, small-group experiments that help shared learning, rapid experimentations and fresh insights.

Talk Education

TalkEducation launched this Autumn. This brilliant new concept aims to demystify the British public school system and provide parents from around the globe with the tools they need to find the perfect school for their child. We were delighted to work with the Talk Education team to develop their brand identity and launch strategy. And we’ve been thrilled to see the impact they’ve already created in the marketplace.

Kate Humble

Courses at Humble by Nature, Kate Humble’s working farm in Monmouthshire, may have been put on hold during lockdown but nobody told the animals! Kate was kept busy and her latest series for Channel 5, Escape to the Farm, was filmed at Kate’s farm during the summer. You can find out all about the series on the websites we created for Kate, Humble by Nature and Kate Humble.

Firepits UK

Lockdown and summer sunshine (remember that?) meant we all wanted to make the most of our gardens for outdoor entertaining. Firepits UK was ready, with their range of Firepits and outdoor ovens. In February, we were delighted to project manage their rebrand, and write and launch their sparkling new website. We also helped get them going on email marketing and social media. 

European Principal Group

Relevant to our turbulent times, European Principal Group (EPG) is a group of principals who each lead their own independent consultancy advising on geopolitical, government and public policy issues across the wider Europe area. Their insight, analysis and advice helps chief officers understand the complex political, legislative and economic issues that matter to their business. Our work for EPG is a perfect example of the power of Zoom as we worked with eight Principals across six countries and two time zones to create their brand and deliver what we’re proud to say is one of our favourite websites this year.

We also:

  • Recorded a series of branded Zoom conversations examining Moot Hill’s approach to dispute resolution
  • Designed, wrote and launched an AIM compliant website for Braveheart Investment Group
  • Carried out social media training for the Exate Dental Group three practices
  • Refreshed Optimum Vision Clinic’s website in advance of their practice refurbishment
  • Created a showcase video for Veterinary Research Management to use at virtual conferences
  • Helped SEBDA improve their digital presence
  • Built online table reservation for the Hen and Chicken, Bristol

Looking forward to 2021, January’s going to be just as busy! We have several websites due to go live, an exciting webinar series to launch and a couple of marketing campaigns ready to go.

None of the above would have been possible without the amazing team that supports LimeGreen Marketing.  Sarah R, Sarah L, Graham, Richard, Gareth, Ashley, Sam, Pete, Sophie, Lisa, Ben, Julia and Jo –  to all of you, thank you.   

Which just leaves me to say we wish you a very merry and peaceful Christmas and let’s hope 2021 brings not only vaccinations but the chance to meet in person again soon.

If you think your business would benefit from some marketing support in the new year we’d love to hear from you! You can contact us here or pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525.

 

Repurposing content

Constantly coming up with new content ideas for marketing can be tough, especially if your brand is in a niche market without huge scope for diversity of topics. However, if the content you are promoting is useful, popular and insightful, it would be a shame to let it fade to the back!

One way to get the most out of ideas is through repurposing content. The idea of repurposing is to target different segments of your target market by presenting your valuable information in ways in which they will engage with and respond to.

Why should you repurpose content?

 

Reach new audiences

Some people will respond better to visual infographics, while others might engage with the same content written in blog form. Some people prefer to listen to a podcast, others a video. Repurposing your content to adhere to these different preferences will give you a better chance of widening your reach and enhancing engagement.

Refresh old content

Bringing previously successful content back to the forefront of your marketing could be a way of reigniting popular content, ensuring that those golden nuggets aren’t forgotten!

Get the most out of every idea

Rather than racking your brain for new concepts and running dry, utilise every idea and create a number of content pieces from it. One topic could be turned into a podcast, whitepaper, infographic and blog article!

Boost your SEO

Having various types of content around a certain subject can give you more opportunities to target a particular keyword or phrase. This will increase the chances of ranking highly when it comes to search engine results.

Ways to repurpose content?

-Take an old blog article and create a podcast around the topic

-Split an infographic up into individual Twitter posts

-Transform your popular content into an email series

-Convert testimonials into content

-Simply re-share and re-post popular content on social media

Here at LimeGreen Marketing, we can develop strategies that not only come up with new content, but utilise it to reach your target market in ways that make them respond. Get in touch today to get started.

Google’s BERT Update: Explained

You may or may not have heard, but Google has recently rolled out its biggest update in five years, and with 10% of search queries being affected, there’s a good chance your SEO efforts may need to be tweaked.

This update is called BERT. It stands for Bidrectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

Without going deep into the technical jargon of algorithms and neural networks, we’re going to explain what this means and what can be done to keep your website ranking highly in light of this update.

What the update comes down to is Google building a better understanding of natural language processing. Natural language processing is the artificial intelligence that aims to understand human communication better.

Before the update, Google primarily assessed search queries by looking at single words. It will now look at the entire phrase. Sometimes words like for, to, in etc, can give a sentence a different meaning. This means that Google now emphasizes understanding the context of your search.

Here is an example:

Google's BERT Update example

Source: https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert

 

In the search 2019 brazil traveller to usa need visa, the word “to” makes all the difference to the search. Before BERT, the search results would target travellers from the USA to Brazil. If you look carefully, the search is actually the other way around. This is the kind of thing that BERT improves upon.

When people make searches on Google, they will generally come under one of three query types:

Informational
Navigational
Transactional

 

An informational search is when a user is simply searching for information. Perhaps they want to start cooking healthier meals, they might search what are the best healthy chefs. The correct answer may take them to a blog or website provides a list and information of the top healthy chefs.

The next step in this process could be a search for Tom Kerridge recipes. This is a Navigational search. The user knows what they’re looking for here and the search has more focus.

A further search here could be Tom Kerridge healthy book. This is a Transactional search where the user has a clear intent to make a purchase.

The BERT update focusses mainly on the informational keywords and phrases so that people get answers to their questions quicker and more efficiently.

How can I keep my website ranking up? 

 

Well, the short answer to this is to get specific with your content. Answer people’s questions.

In your SEO research, start focussing more on long-tail phrases as well as just words, and start developing very specific content around a topic, rather than one huge page that covers a range of topics and has an endless word count.

It’s about quality over quantity. 

Don’t worry too much

 

Although the BERT update is a big one, it won’t start penalising you for any new reasons, it’s purpose is purely to better understand what people are searching for and why. It wants content that answers questions.

If you have noticed a drop in your traffic recently or would like to get a more in-depth look at your domain and keyword ranking, then LimeGreen Marketing can develop a report that looks into this and can offer up and carry out required tweaks. Get in touch with us today to find out more.

 

Secret Agent?

We’ll be settling down in front of the TV tonight to watch Secret Agent Selection WW2 on BBC2 .  Not because we’ve a strong desire to be the next James Bond or Emma Peel (although that would admittedly be quite cool!) but because the series is filmed on Alvie Estate in the stunning Cairngorms National Park. 

It’s not hard to see why the BBC chose Alvie Estate as the location for their series.  Set in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, in the Cairngorms National Park, Alvie House, is an Edwardian shooting lodge with traditional charm and a spectacular setting of the surrounding mountains.  The Estate, family owned, is a traditional working estate with native pinewoods and heather moors. It’s not the first time is been the setting for films and TV. Rumour has it that it was also considered for James Bond’s family home in Skyfall.  

We’ve been helping Alvie Estate to co-ordinate their online presence. They wanted to give their holiday cottages better online visibility and improve occupancy.  In addition to the cottages, Alvie Estate offers a range of field sports and outdoor activities as well as running events in the house.  And, neighbouring Alvie Estate is Dalraddy Holiday Park, a campsite for tents and tourers as well as statics and chalets for rent or purchase . 

Previously Alvie had just one website featuring all the different offerings which made it difficult for visitors to the site to find the information they wanted. So, given the different messages, we decided that the best option was to create three separate but linked websites for the cottages, the holiday park and an overarching website for the Estate itself . 

Working with their incumbent web developer we designed and developed the three sites each featuring the  same design and colour palette.  We wrote the copy for each website to ensure a consistency of tone and voice across the sites whilst promoting the different businesses. And we also refreshed the Alvie and Dalraddy Estates logo.  

Alvie Estate – view website

Alvie Holiday Cottages – HighlandsSelfCatering.co.uk

Dalraddy Holiday Park – CampinginAviemore.co.uk

Since the launch of the websites this year Alvie Estate Office has noticed a signifiant increase in enquiries. So, if you feel you could make the grade as a secret agent why not book a stay on Alvie and test your spy skills! 

You can catch a sneak preview of Secret Agent Selection WW2 on the BBC

7 Things to Consider When You Need a New Website

The prospect of a new website can seem both exciting and incredibly daunting at the same time. Every company will have different requirements and limitations according to the size of their organisation, resources available, budget, professional know-how and much more.

 

At LimeGreen, we understand that sometimes it’s useful to have a helping hand and a few pointers to help you make the first step in the right direction. That’s why we’ve put together these seven steps to take the worry out of your new website!

 

1. Why do you need a new website?

 

This might seem like a stupid question but it really is the first thing to consider. Is the new website a design-led decision in line with a company rebrand or are your requirements more practical? Often businesses can outgrow their original website but before dreaming up a new one, it’s important to ensure that this time it can grow with your business. This could save money in the future.

 

2. Choosing a domain and hosting

 

In order for any website to work, you’ll need a domain and hosting. Think of your website domain as the address for your website. This is what people will type into their web browser to reach it, e.g. www.limegreenmarketing.co.uk.  

Hosting is where on the internet your website physically is or, the plot of land where it lives if you will! It’s important that you choose the right domain and hosting to suit your requirements. For more information, take a look at our article ‘What is Hosting?’.

 

 

3. Design

 

An all singing, all dancing website sounds like it could be pretty impressive. If you have a concept that you want to use that reflects your brands ethos digitally then go for it! Online branding should always be consistent with offline branding. However, your design should never compromise your product or service or your ability to communicate clearly what it does.

 

 

4. Functionality

 

Think about who uses your website and why? Are they looking for information? Are they looking to purchase a product or service? Is your website user-friendly? There is no point in having a website where people can’t find what they’re looking for.

Be sure to think long and hard about menus and site navigation. Equally a straightforward search feature and cataloguing or tag system for organising products could make life much easier for you and your customers. Remember, if someone can’t use your website, they’re more likely to go to a competitor.

 

5. SEO and Analytics

 

So, you’ve got your new website up and running with a domain, hosting and functional, on-brand design. That’s it right? Wrong! It’s important to make sure that your website is Search Engine Optimised. Doing this makes it easier for popular search engines to read your site and determine its content and where it should appear in individual search results. There are lots of handy plugins that you or your web developer can use to help with the process. We work with WordPress sites a lot and recommend Yoast (read more here).

In addition to SEO optimisation tools, updating your websites content regularly can help improve its rankings with popular search engines. Including a blog and regularly posting new articles is one way to do this. Including social media streams from Twitter and Facebook on your website can also help.

Equally it’s important not to neglect your analytics. These will tell you who is viewing your website, how long they are spending on your website and where this traffic is coming from. Valuable information that shouldn’t be wasted!

 

6. CMS and CTAs?!?

 

There’s a lot more to your website than meets the eye. You’ll need a functional program taking care of the backend – a Content Management System – CMS. This is what organises your content and makes sure everything is where it should be. Your website visitor can’t see it but, trust us, they’d soon know about it if it wasn’t doing its job!

Call to Actions – CTAs – also play an integral part in your website. These are prompts on pages strategically placed to encourage the website visitor to complete an action, e.g. call us, book online, get in touch, buy now. These are designed to entice the website user to behave in a way that will benefit your business. Don’t forget to consider them in your design.

 

7. Maintenance

 

It’s a great feeling once you’ve got your brand spanking new website up and running but what happens going forward? It’s likely that you’ll need to make changes to pages over time or update products, company information and events, and it’s important that you can do this quickly and easily so that your clients or customers have the most up to date and relevant information. While some larger organisations may have the luxury of a dedicated in-house web team to do this, smaller organisations may need to outsource this work. So, it’s worth factoring this into your budget.

 

If you’d like to speak to one of our team about your own website, you can get in touch by emailing info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk. Alternatively, pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525 – we’d love to hear from you!

What is hosting?

What is hosting?

 

When you create a website you obviously want people to see it so you will need to publish (or upload) it onto the world wide web with a web hosting service.

Web hosting works by storing your website files in high-powered computers called servers. When someone types in your web address the Internet connects to the web server holding your website files and then transfers your website information back to their computer. From there they can surf and view the pages of your website, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Basically, web hosting provides the technology and services to manage these servers and their software, security, support, bandwidth, speed etc.!

 

Domain Names

 

Before you can present your brand new website to the world you need a domain name like www.limegreenmarketing.co.uk. To have your own domain, you will need to register it with a domain registrar.  There are a large number of domain registrar providers on the internet such as 123 Reg and 1 & 1. If possible it is best to choose a domain register provider from your own country, not least because you will be billed in the right currency!

It’s quite common to get confused between a domain name and web hosting. Put simply: a domain name, is the address of your home or office; web hosting is the space in your house or office into which you place your belongings. It is often made more confusing because many domain name companies also offer services like hosting, email etc.

 

Different types of hosting

 

There are 4 main types of web hosting; shared, dedicated, VPS and Cloud. 

While all types of hosting servers will act as a storage centre for your website, they differ in the amount of storage capacity, control, technical knowledge requirement, server speed, and reliability.  Let’s take a look…

1) Shared Web hosting is where a large number of web sites are typically housed on the same server.  This includes sharing the physical server and the software applications within the server. Shared hosting services are affordable because the cost to operate the server is shared between you and these other owners.

There are, however, some down sides, such as limits on storage and bandwidth, and the performance of your website is largely affected by the needs of the other websites, as you will be sharing the same server resources. The type of content on other sites on the same server can also have a negative affect on your website. For example, if you’re sharing a server with websites relating to religion, sex, or politics, these type of sites could be more prone to an attack due to their content, which – if you’re on a shared server – may in turn impact your website.

2) Dedicated Web hosting is where you have the entire server to yourself! This allows for faster performance as you are not sharing with other website owners. The only limit is the size of the server. However, this also means that you will be responsible for the entire cost of server operation.

This is a good choice for websites that are:

 

Very popular

Require a lot of system resources

Need a high level of security 

 

Typically, these servers start at around £200 per month and usually require a 2-year contract and setup fees.

3) Virtual Private Server hosting is a sort of fusion of the first two options. Your web site is hosted on its own virtual server so that it won’t be affected by the web sites of other customers.  However, the server shares computer resources with other virtual servers.  This means it is not a dedicated server i.e. the entire computer is not dedicated to running just one server software. 

Virtual Web servers are a very popular way of providing low-cost web hosting services. Instead of requiring a separate computer for each server, dozens of virtual servers can co-reside on the same computer. In most cases, performance is not affected and each web site behaves as if it is being served by a dedicated server. However, if too many virtual servers reside on the same computer, or if one virtual server starts hogging resources, web pages will be delivered more slowly.

Done properly VPS can be the best option for medium sized websites as the head server is often of a very high standard. VPS is great if you are running WordPress or small Magento websites as all patching and upgrades are performed by the company managing the head server.

4) Cloud hosting is a server system that provides web hosting via multiple connected resources that comprise of a cloud. Whereas standalone servers and virtual servers can have limited scalability options and the potential for service disruption, a cloud host can provide you with:

seamless capacity

increased accessibility

superior reliability

more expense for added flexibility

good for site with periodic times of high use

 

Things to consider when choosing your hosting

 

Support

How much support do you need to keep your website running smoothly?  If you are an IT whizz, then perhaps not a lot, but for most of us we don’t have the time or knowledge.  Choosing a web host provider that offers easily accessible, on-going support should be a consideration.  And if it all goes wrong, what emergency systems do they have in place to get your website back up and running?

The web hosting company will own support of certain things; they’ll make sure that your physical webs server is online (which is a different thing from your website). However, if your website is hacked, they’ll probably not be able to help. And if you need additional functionality added, they’ll certainly be unable to help.

This being the case, you can imagine there are two tiers of support. The underlying hosting provider is offering technology and network level support; they may even offer some support on your website (to varying degrees). Your site developer may offer ongoing support on top of this; as these people are best place to update the website etc.

Reliability

Your customers expect to gain to access your website 24/7 and quickly.  And whilst nothing in life is 100% guaranteed, you need to make sure that your web hosting provider can supply an uninterrupted network connection and manage your server space, to ensure quick upload speeds. You get what you pay for here! There is a world of difference in reliability between a cheap hosting account and a premium plan from a tier 3 hosting company.

Security

The last thing you want is your web site going down or being hacked.  You need to ensure that your web hosting provider can give you peace of mind with:

 

offsite backups,

storage of your data

higher security (if you need it)

 

This is one area where the initially cheap services create their additional bolt-on’s, these come at a cost. Different hosting companies will put different levels of security in place; your cheap and cheerful outfits will hardly do anything.

Again, be wary of the fine line here. The hosting company are traditionally less concerned about getting your website back online in comparison to the web server itself. There is an important and subtle difference and having someone to support the actual website itself is of benefit here.

Scalability

We all hope our businesses will grow. So it makes sense to ensure that your server can match your expansion by providing additional space and services as and when they are required.

Location

Using a server based in the UK will help your SEO.  You will have preferences on local searches compared to websites outside of the UK.  And when you target UK customers you will benefit from a faster web loading speed, based on the fact that the server is located far closer to the customer. It has been noted that Google prefers faster servers, so the shared hosting is only really recommended where Google placement is not so important, maybe a local club website or nursery in the local area.

CDN (Content Delivery Networks) also assist with this. This is a system of distributed servers (network) that delivers webpage images and other web content to a user based on the geographic location of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.

Performance

Fast hosting is crucial to SEO. Google are hot on measuring how fast your website is as they know, statistically, how many people drop off websites as load times increase. Performance on cheaper companies like 123-REG and Go DADDY can be sluggish. Having a relationship with a company who actually cares about this side of things is beneficial, someone who will benchmark the performance profile of the website and make adjustments where needed. 

 

What happens once you have chosen your web hosting provider?

 

In order to transfer the website to the hosting company they will ask for temporary access to your domain name provider.

If you have email addresses with your domain name provider, then these will stay there unless you ask them to be transferred over to the hosting company to manage.

When your site is ready to go live it needs to have its “A” record changed to point to the new Hosting web space. This is a relatively simple task that informs all the DNS servers (those servers that translate numbers to sensible name’s) that your website name now resides at this new address. It can take anything between 12 to 72 hours for this process – known as DNS propagation – to take effect. 

So, at the end of the day, hosting generally comes down to ‘you get what you pay for’.  The more you invest in your website hosting, the better your website will perform.  Hopefully now you have the information you need to make an informed decision when choosing your website’s hosting.