How do I promote my new website launch?

Website Launch Plans

The launch of a new website is an exciting proposition for any business, but in order to ensure it goes off with a bang, you will need to plan and execute the pre-launch process carefully. We’ve put together a list of tried and tested expert tips to follow to help you promote your new website.

Build anticipation

Now is the perfect time to start building buzz around your brand! You’ll want to begin by growing your customer base – especially if you’re a new business. You can choose a traditional route such as printing newspaper ads, or a more current direction by using social media. Just make sure, whatever method you choose, it’s a direct line to your target audience so you’re communicating effectively.

Another great way to build up some hype before your launch is to reach out to an email list. Emails can be beautiful works of art that let you relay your message to a group of people all at once. You can use emails to tease or share more information about your launch, products and services. Using beautiful images or including gifs will ensure your emails captivate your audience.

Utilise social media

Every business should make the most of social media to build brand awareness and increase audience numbers, whether they already have a website or not. However, if you’re launching a new site, using social media is a highly effective strategy to promote this event and stoke up excitement for the launch.
Create pages on social media platforms most frequented by your target audiences and regularly drip-feed information about your new website launch to create relationships with your customers and build up the anticipation. As well as detailing when the site will be launched, include information about what you’ll offer, what the site will contain and what visitors can expect.

Tease audiences with snippets from your new website, such as a sneak preview of some images, videos or blogs. Include offers or promotions for the first number of people who visit or purchase from your site once it’s launched.

As well as promoting your launch on popular sites such as Facebook or Instagram, the power of video cannot be ignored, so consider making short videos on YouTube talking about key aspects of your new website and the launch.

Start blogging

You might not be able to blog on your new site yet, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t post on another related site. Create a guest blog post about your new website launch to feature on a site that your target audience is likely to follow. Include a link to your website and the dates of the launch so that visitors can click on it on the big day. As well as guest blogging, you might also wish to pay an influencer to promote details of your new website launch or consider creating some press release copy.

Timing is crucial, however. If you release a guest blog post or PR copy about your launch, make sure that it hits audiences close to the launch date. If you post too early, audiences may forget about it, but if you post too late, the momentum may be lost.

Now that you know everything that you need to when it comes to promoting your new site all that’s left to do, is to start (and finish) building it! Try Go Sitebuilder FREE for 14-days – no credit card required!

The importance of digital marketing for small business

The importance of digital marketing for small business

It’s a fact: there’s never been a better time to start a small business. The internet has made it possible to launch a company in a matter of minutes, but this is really just the start – it’s what comes next that’s most rewarding. If you’ve already taken the leap into small business ownership, you may be struggling with getting your name out there and bagging clients, and that’s where digital marketing comes in.

Here are the main reasons why digital marketing is so important for small businesses today.

Reason #1: Most of your customers are online

Did you know that, according to the Office of National Statistics, 19% of all retail purchases are now made online? And this number is rising rapidly. No matter what industry your small business is part of, being online is now an absolute necessity. Of course, this means that competition will be increasing all the time – which is why there’s never a better time than now to launch a digital marketing strategy.

Reason #2: It can cost as little (or as much) as you like

Unlike advertising via traditional media like TV, radio, or even billboards, you don’t always have to pay to get your message out there. When your small business is brand new, it makes sense to use pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic, but over time you can build your own organic traffic strategy. This aspect of digital marketing is known as content marketing, and it’s a slow-and-steady way to create “free” advertising to your website, as users arrive on your site naturally via search engines.

Reason #3: You can track your success every step of the way

Another reason that traditional advertising channels are hard to recommend is that they’re just not very trackable. It’s very hard to judge the return-on-investment created by a magazine advertisement, but with digital marketing, you can track a user for the length of their journey. This allows you to dig into the different ways a user has found your business, what they did on your website, and track the exact route they took to purchasing. This data will be invaluable as part of your digital marketing strategy because it instantly tells you what works – and what doesn’t.

Of course, at the heart of every successful digital marketing campaign is a great website. If your business is ready to go, but you don’t yet have a website just yet, Go Sitebuilder can help. Explore the site today and start building your digital presence with a 14-day free trial.

How do you create an online store from scratch

Creating an online store from scratch

Selling online has never been easier. There are numerous routes to market that will allow you to have a successful and profitable career as an eCommerce business owner. To be successful, you need to start a store from scratch and for this, you need to think carefully. The more planning you do, the better it is for your business. So, here are a few quick steps for you to consider when starting your online store.

Choose a niche

The first thing you need to do is to select a niche market that you would like to sell into. This will have to align with the product you’re creating as well. It has to be something that you’re passionate about. Something that you could talk about all day. The more passion you have for your product, the easier it will be for you to sell it.

Choose the products

Some niches will have a wider selection than others. Or you might have developed your own products. It is important to aim for a profit margin of between 40-70% with the higher amount being better. Be sure to benchmark your pricing against your competitors to ensure you’re not overcharging. For instance, if you’re selling a product for £20 but everyone else is selling it for £10, then you might struggle to find customers.

Buy your domain

Next, you need to buy a domain name. This should be something that resembles the branding for your store, allowing you to build long-term relationships with customers. Having a domain name that represents your brand efficiently will help you with your marketing and in most cases is very cost-effective. Connect your domain/brand name to something that is meaningful. For instance, if you sell teddy bears, having this in the name or something to do with cuddles could be important. Go Sitebuilder offers a free domain name with every subscription.

Build your website

The next step is to build your website. You want to create several pages including pages for home, about, contact, terms and conditions, delivery and more. Building a website is very easy and you can get started for free with Go Sitebuilder.
Your website should be optimised for search engines and conversions to help you generate more revenue. However, you shouldn’t expect success straight away. While search engines may have some restrictions for new businesses within the first 6 months, this will allow you to put some time into other important areas such as perfecting your storefront and building out your launch plan.

Add your products

Now you need to add products. Products should have a great description and lots of high-quality images and videos to help them sell. You should also concentrate on writing descriptions that sell the benefits and not the features of your products.
Finally, always include a call-to-action in your product descriptions, encouraging visitors to buy your items.

Building a new eCommerce store is easy, especially with Go Sitebuilder. Discover how you can create an online store today for as little as the cost of a coffee a week.

How to take great product photos

Product photography tips

Following on from our blog on how to write great product descriptions, we’ve rounded up our top tips for taking great images to match. When you’re selling products online, it’s absolutely vital to show them off with professional-looking, accurate images. A well-taken set of photos will immediately instil trust in your customers and make them more likely to purchase. While descriptions are great for explaining the ins and outs of a product and winning over customers, 90% of the information we absorb is visual. More than that, 93% of consumers consider appearance to be the most important thing when making a decision!

Choose your camera

The good news is that you don’t need to splash out on a big, swanky camera to take great product photos! Most modern smartphones have great cameras these days – and if yours doesn’t, you probably know someone whose does, who’d be willing to let you use it for an afternoon in exchange for a cup of coffee/chat/evening of babysitting. For more tips, Hubspot have a great guide to taking good photos on your phone.

Name your images

Give your product twice as much chance of showing up in search results by giving it a relevant title. It’s unlikely that many people will search for ‘image123456.jpg’ – and if they do, they probably aren’t looking for your image! Use concise, clear terminology to help people to find you. This will also help search engines to index your image, as well as providing a backup description if your image doesn’t load for some reason.

Consistency is key

The key thing to consider is uniformity; always try and shoot your images in the same style. This will ensure that the customer has a clear idea of what the products look like, and make your online store front look really professional.

Pick your light

Avoid fluorescent overhead lighting – nobody looks good under this, and that goes for inanimate objects too! Natural light is normally a safe bet, so try to shoot in this wherever possible. The light changes dramatically throughout the day, so pick a time when you like the light and try to always shoot at around the same time.

Use multiple images

Just as you need to make sure your written descriptions help customers to really get an idea of your products, you should also include enough of the right images to help people get a feel for them. You’ve probably noticed that most online stores include product shots from multiple angles and this is why – the majority of customers need to know that they aren’t missing any details by not being in a physical store and seeing a product for themselves. This also applies to product variations: if you have a product in multiple colours or sizes, always show them all!

Give an idea of scale

Hopefully you’ve provided the technical specifications of your products, but unless your customers have a tape measure to hand, they might want a more tangible idea of how big something is. You can help by providing a point of comparison: if your product can be held in your hand, think about including a photo of this; if it’s designed to be worn, show it on a person; if it’s something you put in your home or garden, include a photo of it in situ. This will help your customers to make an informed decision and help you to avoid having to deal with complaints when a product arrives and is a different size from the one they were expecting!

Create professional backgrounds

You can create a sleek, uniform background for your products by taping a large sheet of white paper between the wall and the surface your products are on, to form a curve or sweep. This creates a really professional look, and gets rid of any annoying unwanted background marks or shadows!

If you keep these tips in mind and get into the habit of following them, you’ll be on your way to having an online store to rival the best of them! A little effort and consistency goes a long way, and will ensure that you’re never selling your products short. 

If you don’t have an online store yet, you’re in luck: a Go Sitebuilder subscription includes an online store (with unlimited product listings!) and much more – for less than the price of a coffee a week. Sign up for a free trial today and put your newfound product photography skills to use!

How to write effective product descriptions

When shopping online, your customers are relying on you to give them a clear, informative and persuasive picture of your products, as they can’t get a feel for them in the same way as they might in a bricks-and-mortar store. We’ve rounded up some top tips for creating effective product descriptions to help your products sell and make your store a success.

Define your target audience

Who are you trying to win over? In an ideal world, you would have customers from all demographics and all walks of life, but chances are there’s one group of people who are more likely to buy your product. Think about what kind of language they would and wouldn’t engage with, and keep this in mind when you’re writing. For example, if your target audience is people over the age of 50, they probably aren’t going to be overly receptive to slang words or excessive familiarity; however, if you’re targeting millennials, they’ll be more receptive to this style of language.

Tell a story

Did you decide to create a product because you needed it and realised it didn’t exist yet? Did you already make it, and decide to start selling it because it was your grandma’s favourite? Many products have a story behind them, and this is a great way to gain customers’ trust and engage them. It doesn’t have to be long, but a personal touch in a product description can go a long way. 

Explain the results and benefits

Rather than just explaining what’s good about a product, explain why it’s good. If you’re selling a travel mug with a rubber sleeve, for example, what does this sleeve do? Chances are, it makes it easy to carry the mug on the go! Wherever possible, include this kind of justification so that your customers know exactly how they can benefit from the features you’ve put time and effort into!

Create evocative descriptions

Sensory words (e.g. ‘feels’,’ sounds’, ‘looks like’) are really effective when it comes to making sales. Always use these where you can – although don’t fall into the trap of using them where they’re really not relevant!

Don’t forget the product specifications

It’s easy to get bogged down in the stylistic elements of creating a product description, but don’t forget to include the basics! Make sure you supply product dimensions, care instructions and other details as applicable for each product.

Use relevant keywords

It goes without saying that people need to be able to find your store for you to make sales. Using relevant, SEO-boosting keywords will help your website to show up on Google, so that people searching for products like yours will end up in the right place (on your website!).

Include reviews

Nothing breeds trust like trust. Wherever possible, include positive reviews on your product listing pages – either with the tried-and-tested star rating system or just as quotes from satisfied customers. If you don’t have any reviews to hand yet, try asking customers for feedback – although make sure you’re complying with GDPR and only contacting them if it’s okay to do so. This article has some great tips on how to get reviews, so you can start building that trust straight away.

Keep these guidelines in mind and you’ll have a simple format to follow for all your product descriptions. As with all creative business activities, you’ll find your own style, but these are things you should always try to include. A little effort will go a long way, and you’ll soon find your products flying off the virtual shelves!

If you don’t have an online store yet, you’re in luck: a Go Sitebuilder subscription includes an online store (with unlimited product listings!) and much more – for less than the price of a coffee a week. Sign up for a free trial today and put your newfound product listing expertise to use!

A guide to digital marketing for small businesses

Research has found that almost half of all small business owners handle all marketing efforts single-handedly, but what does ‘marketing’ really mean? And how can you make it easier? In this digital marketing guide, we’ll be breaking down the most important aspects of digital marketing (marketing your company online) and providing some tips on how best to manage them – so you can start to benefit in no time at all! 

#1 Website

First of all, do you have a website? If you were searching for a company or service, would you be more likely to pick one with a website, which shows up on search results, or one that relies on social media or word of mouth? Probably the former!

A website is a great way to share your news (and increase your SEO ranking by updating your site regularly), give customers a way to reach you and build credibility. It’s also the best way to ensure that you have control over the way people perceive your business. It can help them to understand what you do, so you can grow your brand into something amazing. Here are a few of the main ways you can use your website for digital marketing:

Blogging

A blog is a brilliant way to get your personality across, which will keep your customers engaged. Use your blog to share exciting company news, new product announcements, ‘get to know us’ posts and more. For extra impact, you can also try to find guest blogging opportunities. These can help you to grow your audience and create valuable connections. If this isn’t for you, or you don’t have the time to post on other people’s blogs as well as your own, that’s okay! Just keeping yours updated regularly can make a huge difference.

Product and company information

If your customers have come to your website, they probably want to know more about what you do. ‘About us’ pages are a great way to show people a little more about who you are and what you do. If people frequently want to see your products in action, you might want to consider creating a demo video to engage them and encourage conversion. This gives your customers a better idea of how great your products and saves you having to spend too much of your valuable time explaining the same things. Everyone’s a winner!

eCommerce

If you’ve got great products, you obviously need a way to sell them! There are loads of easy and effective ways to promote your products with an online store. Try setting up discount codes to promote new products, organising your products by tag or category to ensure that the right people can find them, and adding new variations as soon as they come in. Make sure you share this on social media as well!

Contact forms

Encourage your customers to contact you and give them an easy way to do it with contact forms on your website. If someone has a query which might be a deciding factor for them, ensuring they have a way to ask it will ensure that you’re not losing business unnecessarily.

#2 Social media

Social media has become increasingly important in recent years, with more and more people using it to promote, sell and buy products. Having a presence on all the main platforms your customers are using ensures that you’ll show up wherever they search for you. This means they will also be able to contact you easily. In addition to the blog, it’s a fantastic way to keep your customers engaged, and to gain lifelong support for your business. Here are a few ways you can use social media:

Giveaways

Everyone loves a freebie, right? Depending on your product, giveaways are a relatively inexpensive way to engage your customers. You can give a wide audience the excitement of getting a new product, but you only have to give away one thing for free, so it shouldn’t be beyond your means. This is also a good way of widening your net on social media. See our social media blog for more information on how this works.

Making connections

Connect with similar accounts and meet potential prospects on social media. This will give you a good insight into what others are doing to market themselves, as well as opening up a large audience when you do start advertising. You can even promote other accounts in exchange for a promotion of your account – theoretically doubling your audience!

Showing off new products

This is especially effective on visual platforms like Instagram. In just a few seconds, you can upload a photo of a new product, tell people what it’s about, and use relevant hashtags to ensure the right people are seeing it. Simple! You can also share others’ photos of your products or services in action – or take some of your own. Keep it visually engaging and you’ll be sure to make an impression on potential customers.

An insight into who you are

Don’t be afraid to share a few non-product posts too! If you have a canine helper, a delicious working lunch or are simply taking a well-earned break somewhere beautiful, taking a few seconds to pop a post up will add to your online persona – boosting your brand at the same time.

#3 Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is one of the best ways to ensure that you’re reaching your target audience. It’s becoming increasingly important to use it these days, as more and more companies are using it. This has made it essential, if only to keep up with the competition on search engines. Fortunately, as the name implies, PPC doesn’t cost anything unless people click on your adverts. At least some of the people who do click on them should convert, which will ideally outweigh the cost of the advertising itself. In theory, it’s a win-win option! Available on search engines and on social media, it can be a brilliant tool.

There are some great guides to getting started with PPC available online, but here are a few of the key things to consider:

Keywords

To ensure you’re reaching your target audience, you need to make sure you’re using the right keywords. You can bid on certain keywords to make sure your ad shows up when potential customers type them into search engines. There are loads of great ways of making sure you’re using the right keywords and finding out how much they’ll cost, such as Google’s Keyword Planner. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s not always better to use the most obvious terms. You may find that to outbid the competition, you’d end up having to bid much more than you could afford. Instead, use planners to find the best balance between affordability and relevance.

Engaging content

Reaching an audience is only the first step; you need to make sure that you can engage them too. The best way to do this is to create engaging, relevant copy for your ads – so they’ll click through – and the page they end up on – so they’ll convert, and you’ll get a good return on investment from your ads. Think about what your customers want, what you can offer them, and why you’re better than your competitors. When you’ve defined this, try and state it clearly and concisely.

Content and PPC can feed into each other: if you have good PPC ads, people are much more likely to click on your content; and if you have good content to promote through PPC ads, people are much more likely to click on these ads. Check out these tips on creating great content to ensure you’re on the right track

Budget

Because you can edit PPC ads, change bids and more, it’s easy to stick to a budget. Ensure you never bid more than you can afford, however, and check in regularly. If you’re spending a lot, it probably means your ad has been successful, but you should still set an overall budget. On most platforms, this will stop the ad running once you hit your budget. You can then restart it if you decide the investment is working out!

Trial and error

As with most things, there’s a degree of trial and error needed with PPC marketing. Don’t be afraid to test two ads at the same time to see which performs better, or to take down an ad you’re finding doesn’t convert. If an ad really isn’t working, you won’t have to pay for it (as you won’t get clicks), and if an ad is working but not ultimately converting, you can make changes before going over your budget.

#4 Emails

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your customers. You can use it to keep them updated on new products, let them know about promotions, invite them to events and more. Here are a few of our top tips:

Newsletter

This is the best way to give your customers all the exciting facts in one go. By following a monthly or quarterly newsletter format, you can make your own life easier by giving yourself structure, and you can make your customers’ lives easier by saving them from having to search for new information on your company elsewhere. There are heaps of great tools to help you establish a system and format and execute newsletter campaigns; it can be really simple.

Don’t spam

Another great reason to have a newsletter is that it gives structure to your email marketing. The last thing you should do is spam your customers, or they’ll be hitting the ‘unsubscribe’ button before you can say ‘email’! Make sure you follow GDPR guidelines and check your customers actually want to be signed up to your mailing list. Once you’ve done this, create an emailing schedule to ensure you’re only contacting them from time to time, and not overwhelming them.

Branding

Wherever possible, match the colours of your email templates to your website. This will make your emails look more legitimate, while also ensuring that your brand will stick in your customers’ minds. Once you’ve created a template, you can use it again and again, so making the effort now will go a long way!

Personalised email addresses

If you’re going to email your customers, make sure you’re using a professional email address. This will make your emails look much more legitimate, and increase trust among your customers. Instead of using youremail@emailprovider.com, invest in an @yourbusinessname.com email address. There are several ways to get one of these, but the simplest way is to ensure that it’s included with your website and/or domain name.

#5 Customer service

Yes – customer service can be digital marketing! Responding to emails, social media queries and reviews…these are all digital marketing practices, and they’re all important! Ensure that you respond to customers promptly (when possible), and courteously. Give them a reason to want to buy from you! When you’re running a small business, it can feel like your personality and your business are intertwined, and in this instance that can be a very good thing! If you can consistently offer great customer service, you’ll make customers for life, not just for one terrible email exchange!

Be there for your customers

Replying to customers (across all platforms) can make a huge difference. More often than not, queries will be quick and easy to respond to. Taking a few minutes once or twice a day will help to build customer loyalty and trust. It might even be the difference between you making and losing a sale!

Respond to reviews and comments (even the bad ones)

Nobody likes a negative review, but responding to complaints and bad reviews can turn a customer’s negative experience around. It may be that you made a mistake, the customer misunderstood something or just that the product wasn’t for them. Whatever the case, this doesn’t have to damage your reputation or your customers’ perception of you! Stay calm and follow handy online tips like these to ensure you can come out of a tricky situation with your head held high – and even learn something from it!

Be human

Many people choose to support small businesses because they’re run by individuals, and that shows in their customer service. Don’t be afraid to show your human side with personalised emails, behind-the-scenes blogs and more. These small insights and personal touches are what set you apart from huge corporations in the best possible way, by reminding your customers that they’re buying from a human, rather than a faceless entity.

 

You might be surprised to see that all these activities count as digital marketing, but they do! Chances are, you’re already doing quite a few of them. If you’re not, some of them are really quick and easy to institute, so you can be an expert digital marketer in no time!

While these are all different areas of digital marketing, one thing most of them have in common is the need for a website. For most businesses, this is the glue that holds things together! If you’re looking for a way to tick several things off the list at once, why not start a free trial of Go Sitebuilder today? It includes up to 5 professional email addresses, social media functionality, a beautiful website builder and a blog, so you can really start to get ahead when it comes to growing your business online.