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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.

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How to make a physiotherapy website

How to make a physiotherapy website

As a physiotherapist, your website should not only showcase your services, but it should exude reassurance and professionalism. Here are some aspects to think about when creating your website to evoke the right kind of image.

Colour choices

We associate colours with certain images, feelings or characteristics, so use this to your advantage on your physiotherapy website. Warm, soothing tones such as green and blue are especially ideal for use on a physiotherapy website, while a bold colour such as red is also a good choice to invoke a sense of energy and wellbeing. Think about how you use the different colours in the text, layout and your images to create the right kind of vibe.

Professional fonts

The font that you choose for your text will also speak volumes, so pick one that has a professional feel to it. For instance, many medical-related websites make use of a sans serif type of font, as this looks clean and professional. It’s also easy to read, making it ideal if you need to include a lot of text to explain your physiotherapy services.

Simple design

Keep the design elements of your site simple, so that it emits a clinical feel and is easy to navigate. Including an image of yourself creates a personal touch, while additional photos relating to your services can help to set the tone. This could be as simple as uploading a decent stock photo of a therapist’s hands massaging a client’s back. It’s also important to have an obvious way for people to get in touch, so make sure you have a telephone number or contact form in a clear location on your website.

Content

Think about who your target audience is and adapt your content accordingly. Don’t assume that everyone automatically knows what physiotherapy services are and how they can benefit from them, so keep jargon or complicated terminology to a minimum. If you’re unsure, you’re not alone, creating buyer personas will avoid any confusion! You might have heard of them before, perhaps you know what they are, or maybe you’re scratching your head. Whatever your knowledge, don’t worry – we’ve broken it down within our free beginners guide eBook. Provide a brief introduction to the services you offer and how they work. You might wish to feature an FAQ section for popular questions that clients may have. A testimonial page with reviews from previous satisfied clients can also help to sell your services and provide reassurance.

Your story

Anyone seeking the services of a physiotherapist will want to ensure they’re in safe and capable hands, so detail relevant information about yourself, including your professional qualifications and industry accreditations. Include a phone number, email address or contact form on your site so clients can easily get in touch to make an appointment or find out more about your services.

Local SEO

Your target audience is likely to be based locally, so include information on your website that helps to get you ranked higher in local searches. Incorporate keywords into your text that include the name of your location, such as ‘if you’re looking for physiotherapy services in x location‘, or ‘our x-location physiotherapists’, to boost your local search ranking. In your contacts section, add a Google map so that clients can easily see where you are based.

If you’re new to SEO, check out our beginners guide to SEO – it’s not as difficult as you might think!

We hope this article helps any physiotherapists looking to get their business online or any physiotherapy businesses who are looking for tips to update their existing website. If you’re still looking for the right website builder, check out Go Sitebuilder where you can sign up for a free trial and see just how easy it is to get your physiotherapy website online.

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Why is it important to add alt text to your product images?

Photographer adding to her impressive photography website Go Sitebuilder

Product images are one of the key components for success when selling online. Awesome images of your items will show them off in an accurate, flattering way to entice people to buy. While this is something that you may already have integrated into your routine, you may not be making the most of your product images. This is because optimising product images doesn’t end with the upload. The essential concept to understand here is what developers call ‘alt text’. But what is alt text? And, why is it so crucial?

What exactly is alt text?

‘Alt text’ stands for alternative text; the name hints what it is used for. While most people who visit your site will be able to view the images you upload, not everyone can. Consumers with a visual impairment will often use a screen reader to help them shop online. Many screen readers will block product images, and this leaves some customers with no way of understanding how your products look or even what your product is. This is not solely an issue around visual impairment either – some web browsers, may not show product images properly which makes alt text valuable here too.
Alt text solves this problem by adding a text description to your images which can be used in place of the images themselves. Once you have added an alt text description, anyone who cannot see your product images for any reason can still get a good description of how something looks – before they buy.

Why is alt text so important for your website images?

There are some very good reasons to start adding alt text to your product images. Firstly, it will help you sell more stuff as customers want to understand how things look before they buy. It will also attract more customers to your online store. Alt text is key to what is known as accessible web design; this is the process that ensures that almost anyone, no matter what their ability, can use your online store effectively if they choose to.

The other main benefit of utilising alt text correctly is the boost it will give to your SEO plans. Although search engines are constantly advancing, they still can not see images on websites as humans do. This means that they can sometimes miss a product image on your site that people might be searching for. By adding a text description, it helps the search engines to understand what the images on your site relate to.

If you don’t have an online store to upload product images with alt text to yet, don’t worry – Go Sitebuilder can help. Our online stores include unlimited product listings so you can use alt text to your heart’s content and reach more consumers. Start with a free trial and start building your online store today.


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3 must-haves for your beauty salon website

Beauty Salon Website must-haves

When you operate a beauty salon website, you need to have certain elements, content or sections on your website that helps new customers to find you and convince them to make an appointment. Here are three key elements that you must-have for your beauty salon website:

1. Testimonials

Including testimonials from customers on your website will help you to build trust with your key clientele quickly. Be sure that the length of the testimonials offers value to the reader. The best testimonials to include on your site should include what treatment was offered and how it made the customer feel. The longer the testimonial the better, as it will improve your ranking on social media and help build trust with audiences.

2. Contact forms

You also need to make sure that customers can contact you when they have a specific requirement. Customers like to see that there is a telephone number or a contact form on a website. It helps to build trust. Another option is to have live chat on your website. Live chat can help potential clients to resolve problems quickly and you can sell to customers extra treatments. As much as Live Chat has been known to build trust with customers, you need to ensure you’ve got the resource to manage it effectively.

3. A home-page that performs

The final element, and arguably the most important, is that you have a home-page that performs. It needs to do two things:
1. Help you rank on Google and other search engines.
2. Convert visitors into paying customers.

Therefore, your homepage needs to have a lot of quality copy on the page with the right keywords (including the location of your salon) to rank. Your customers want to feel wonderful, beautiful and youthful again. So language along these lines should be dotted around your home-page. Call to action buttons (or CTAs) also need to be dominant to help drive customers to your contact forms. Take a look at our easy to follow guide on building landing pages that convert if you want to find out more.

If you’re looking to create a website for your beauty room or hair salon check out Go Sitebuilder for free and see how easy it is to get your business online.


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How to make sure your legal business’s website is secure online

How to make sure your legal business's website is secure online

Every website owner will endeavour to have a secure site, but if you operate in a legal capacity, keeping confidential or sensitive client data completely safe online will be a top priority. Here’s how to make sure your legal business’s website is secure:

Keep it simple

When designing your legal website, keep it simple and uncomplicated so that you don’t inadvertently introduce any security flaws into your site. Cut down on the number of third party integrations you include, for instance.

Update your site

A legal website can become vulnerable to attack from a virus or hacker if it isn’t kept up to date. This means ensuring your site has the latest security patches, plug-ins and software updates that help to protect it at any given point of time. Keep on top of your website security, and if you haven’t got time to organise this yourself, make use of expert assistance, or use Go Suitebuilder – where we take care of this for you! It’s also a good idea to know what to look out for if your website’s security is compromised in any way so that you can take immediate action to minimise any negative impacts.

Get an SSL certificate

In order to safeguard any sensitive data that may be communicated online between a lawyer and their client, you need to get an SSL certificate for your website. If you use Go Suitebuilder, you’ll get one for free. Otherwise, you’ll need to purchase this certificate, but this is a small price to pay for the peace of mind you get. An SSL certificate enables your website to be hosted on HTTPS as opposed to HTTP. An HTTPS server is much more secure than an HTTP one, giving you and your clients the reassurance that your site is optimally protected. To find out more about SSL certificates and why your business needs one, head over to our SSL blog.

Secure passwords

If you need to use passwords to access data on your legal website, create ones that are hard to guess, unique and consist of a variety of letters, numbers and symbols to offer maximum levels of security. Be careful about who has access to your data, too. For example, make sure to delete passwords used by ex-colleagues or other people who no longer access your site.

Avoid users uploading files

There’s no doubt that in the legal profession, obtaining relevant paperwork and documentation are key aspects of the job. If you operate a legal website, you might think that allowing clients to upload files to your site could save time and money in gaining the necessary paperwork, but proceed with caution. If you let clients upload files to your site, these files might contain scripts that leave your site vulnerable to security attacks. You can reduce this risk by limiting the forms that allow uploads and ensuring documents only support one type of file extension. Alternatively, get users to email files to your email address instead and save their address in your contacts list.

Go Sitebuilder is a simple and easy to use website builder, giving you the ability to create one of the best online businesses in your field of work. Our 14-day free trial gives you all the freedom to craft your own professional website without the upfront financial commitment.

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How to archive and reuse social media posts

Archiving and reusing social media posts

The organisation of your social media accounts is imperative. New updates, posts, and tweets are going to be happening all of the time, and often across numerous users and departments. This is why you need to make sure you keep an accurate record of all this activity and start considering how you can archive and reuse your social media posts. Not only is this pivotal in ensuring your social media marketing strategy is effective but it is also essential in terms of protecting your business should you be subject to legal or audit proceedings. So, read on to discover how to go about this.

Archiving your posts

To archive your social media posts, you need to find a good tool. Look for software that will capture daily activity with timestamps. The best solutions also migrate archived data from competitors, so that you can compare this with your own. You should look for a solution with keyword tagging and search capabilities as well. Historical posts and easy report generation are both also important.

Reusing your posts

You may also want to make the most of archived social media posts so that you can reuse them. This does not mean that you should simply repost the same thing again. After all, if you do this, you will be duplicating content, and this can work against you in terms of optimising your social media and website presence. Instead, you need to consider different ways to re-purpose your old content from your social media archives.

So, how can you repurpose your archived social media posts? Luckily, there are many different options here. You could build upon a past post, for example, or you could simply re-write evergreen content. In addition to this, you can turn older photos into backgrounds for visual quotes and graphics.

Other suggestions include creating an ebook or similar resource, creating summary posts, and turning survey results or stats into graphics or posts. Furthermore, you can re-share content that has performed well with different images and messaging, as well as creating a recap of a previous event. Finally, one of the easiest ways to re-purpose an old piece of content is simply to do a Throwback Thursday post.

Get started today

So there you have it: everything that you need to know about archiving and reusing your social media content. This is something that all businesses should be making the most of today in order to make their social media marketing campaign as effective as possible. To become successful, your business needs a website as well as social media. Sign up to a free trial of Go Sitebuilder to get your business online today.

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Why you must have a menu on your restaurant website

Building a Restaurant Website using Go Sitebuilder

Many people consult a restaurant website first before deciding to book a table. It encourages people to book a table at your restaurant over others and attracts people to your website and establishment. For this reason, getting your site spot-on is crucial to winning potential customers over to visit your eatery. While there are plenty of elements that go a long way to ensure your restaurant website hits the right mark, including menus on your site is especially important.

Showcase what you’ve got to offer

Including menus on your website, whether as downloadable pages or within their own sections showcases what your restaurant has to offer. Your menus are your number one selling point, so without them, new customers won’t know what to expect. Many people also choose a restaurant based on price, so having your menus easily visible lets would-be customers know if the food you offer is within their intended price range. Your menus will also give a clue as to the kind of ambience or experience diners might expect, from casual meals to more formal, a la carte dining. This might be reflected in the type of food being served as well as the offers available. It’s also worthwhile including a gallery section on your site with images of some of the dishes off your menu, to whet customers’ appetites.

Catering for every taste

Lots of people have special dietary requirements, so providing your menus online lets people see what you offer to cater to different needs and tastes. It’s a good idea to include any relevant symbols next to dishes to denote any dietary options, such as gluten-free or vegetarian. If you cater to youngsters, don’t forget to include a children’s menu.

Easy to view

Since restaurant menus play such a big role in customer decision-making, when including yours on your site, ensure that they’re easy to find and access. If you add downloadable PDF menus, they should be fast to open, as well as properly configured for easy viewing on mobile devices.

Keep menus current

Having menus included on your site makes for a worthwhile opportunity to keep customers updated on any offers you have on or any new dishes. Keep your menus current, so that customers who visit your premises know what to expect. You’re unlikely to get the thumbs up from diners if you increase your prices or drastically change your dishes without reflecting these alterations on your advertised website menus. It’s also not good business to still be promoting your Christmas menu online when it’s almost Easter. Bear in mind that search engines rank sites higher that keep their content fresh and up to date.

If you’re looking for a new website for your restaurant check out Go Sitebuilder today! Get started for free and join over 9 million people already growing their business with Go Sitebuilder.


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Four tips to help you turn your side job into your career

Side hustle tips

With the advent of the internet has come a whole universe of possibilities when it comes to business. In fact, more people than ever now have internet-based businesses, or “side hustles”, to boost their monthly income. If you’re one of these people, you probably want to turn your side job into your career at some point – but how do you do that? Here are some quick tips on turning your side-hustle into your full-time career.

Tip 1: Don’t make the change until you can afford to

One of the biggest mistakes people make when transitioning from full-time employment to self-employment is moving too fast, and there’s no need to rush. At the minimum, you want to be able to bring in the same amount, after-tax, as you do per month with your main hustle. Once you reach this figure, you’ll be in a great position to make the move.

Tip 2: Find the time for your side hustle

Another vital step when trying to make the jump to full-time self-employment is to dedicate some time aside to work on it. Putting time aside to manage your project is very important. Although, most of the time it won’t even feel like work when it’s something you love! 

Tip 3: Leverage the power of digital marketing

Another key to hitting the ground running with a new full-time gig is to be as established as possible when you go solo. The more clients you have, the more content you have on your website, and the more online visibility you have will be key factors in ensuring your new main gig can survive in the long term. Having a rock-solid website for your new business is the cornerstone to success in today’s digital world.

Tip 4: Don’t spread yourself too thin too soon

When you’re making this transition, you’ll essentially be working two jobs, meaning your time will be at a premium. This means that the time you spend on your side gig needs to be focused on quality. Your first few projects will be the starting ground for your business. This means you’ll need to be creating great material and maintaining healthy relationships with your client – in return getting amazing recommendations and excellent examples of the work you can do. Maintain focus, and keep it directed toward the best quality client you can find – and most importantly, don’t take on too much! It’s important you focus on maintaining your work/life balance.

If you’re ready to take your side-business to the next level with a beautiful website, try out Go Sitebuilder for free today – and see how far you could go.

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Three must-have features for any beauty salon website

Three must-have features for any beauty salon website

Beauty is big business, but in this competitive field, standing out from your rivals is vital if you want your beauty salon to succeed. Having an eye-catching website that is informative, useful and easy to navigate are essential starting points for any beauty business owner. But, as a beauty salon business, you should also include these three must-have features if you want your site to enjoy a high search engine ranking.

1. Quality images

Beauty is inherently visual, so if you want to attract clients to your site, you need to include images of your products or the services that you provide. Never include stock photos on your site, but instead take real shots of work you’ve undertaken on clients’ nails, hair, make-up, eyebrows, or whatever is relevant to your line of work.

Pictures certainly say more than words in the beauty industry, so make sure the images you include are of high quality and aren’t grainy or fuzzy. If you specialise in nails, take close up shots and think about including images from different angles. Update your images regularly to keep your content fresh and to stay on top of the latest beauty trends. Search engines also favour those websites that keep their site current.

2. Testimonials

Add reviews from satisfied clients to your website to give your brand a credibility boost. This is also a positive way to encourage people to try your services if they may have been reluctant before or don’t know what to expect. If you offer a range of services at your salon, include reviews covering this variety of offerings, from a wide sector of customers. Again, it’s worth keeping this section current, so update your reviews frequently so that your site doesn’t become stale.

3. Online booking

Unless you can afford to hire a dedicated receptionist to take bookings, many beauty salon staff find they need to juggle working on clients and answering the phone at the same time. Alternatively, if therapists are busy, they might leave the answering machine to catch any incoming calls. This isn’t ideal, and many beauty salons might end up losing business if clients can’t book an appointment there and then.

This is where your website can come in handy. If you include an online appointment booking section on your site, this will make life so much easier for you and your clients. It means appointments can be made even when the salon is closed or you’re busy with another client.

Apps can be easily embedded into your site to include a calendar and booking system, and while clients are visiting your site, you can use this opportunity to promote other services or offers you might have at the time.

If you’re looking to create a website for your beauty room or hair salon check out Go Sitebuilder for free and see just how easy it is to get your business online.