Website Leasing News

Website Leasing, Design & SEO Services.

Discussion forums seem a little old fashioned now don’t they, or maybe that’s just me. It could be just me because discussion forums remind me of being at Uni where we were expected to log in, discuss and get credits for our courses by conversing online with our fellow students.

With Uni firmly cemented in the past this could be why I think that discussion forums have had their day and that the age of the blog is here. While there’s no doubt that the blog is an important part of internet culture, would you have a blog on your business website over a discussion forum, where your customers can log on and discuss their experiences with your products and troubleshoot with your support team and other customers?

I think a discussion forum makes way for a lot of unnecessary ‘posts’ as it is very easy for replies with negligible helpfulness such as ‘yes, my sister had this problem too but I think she fixed it…’. Whereas a blog by nature is more structured, you reply directly to a post with a comment, rather than creating a stream of consciousness which can be hard to follow, let alone get any value out of.

While I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, I am interested in how you would answer this one question, but don’t worry there is no right or wrong answer it will be revealing – honestly, how much do you really understand about your business’ website?

Honestly, do you know the names for the programming codes, do you know where the information goes when people fill in online enquiries and do you really know how the online orders are transformed into actual product deliveries, or do you just accept that it happens and leave it be, hoping it will keep happening?

If you are part of the latter group, you’re not alone. However, even more important than you answering which group you fall into is what you do about your categorisation. If you fall into the latter group of business people who don’t know the mechanics of how their website works, hopefully you leave it to the people who do know.

If you don’t understand your website but you try to look after it anyway, then we need to reconsider where you fall on the intelligence scale. Just because you run a business doesn’t mean you have to take care of every single part of the operations. In fact, it’s often better that you don’t.

This is especially true when looking after your website because if you don’t understand what you are doing or how to do what needs to be done, the excess time you spend on the project, could be better spent elsewhere.

Does your company use contact forms on their website? You know the ones – where people fill out their details if they have a question, want more information or want to join your mailing list. You see them on all types of websites from a pet store to wineries, from government departments to, well, website leasing companies, but you have to wonder how effective they are don’t you.

I mean do they work, do companies get useful and informative details from the forms or do they spend all of their time trying to download and merge the information into a readable spreadsheet format? Well I suppose the first issue is having a content management system which works for what you need it to do, but that issue aside, does any of the information get through?

When people are typing into forms, I imagine they have the same mentality they have when writing emails – that close enough is good enough and this goes for spelling, grammar and filling in all the fields. So does your company find that the information you get from online forms is usable and helpful or it is just riddled with spelling mistakes and typos?

Click fraud is a big problem faced by businesses using pay per click advertising to generate traffic for their website. And the worst part is that it is almost impossible to stop. Usually click fraud is perpetrated by your competitors who will click on your ads to run through your pay per click budget, as well as to reduce your click through rate and force you to bid higher for the keywords you want to use.

Secondly click fraud is organised by the traffic affiliate partners of the search engines you are using as they will want to raise the commission they receive when clicks are generated by their visitors. The fraudulent clicks can be carried out by real people or by automated software and your only protection is to get the best possible tools for your PPC program when you sign up, and to keep your eyes open.

But still this can be tricky because I’m not a fraudulent PPCer but I’ve clicked on sponsored ads before and not bought from that company and I’m sure many people do, so how to you account for these people?

So what do you think of using banner ads on your business’ website? Do you find them effective – and when I say effective I mean not only do they direct business your way but do they also do so at a profit? I suppose ‘are they worth it?’ is what I want to know.

Wouldn’t you find pay per click advertising more economical for your website? After all you only pay when someone visits your site and once they are there they are probably quite likely to buy something. So with PPC advertising becoming more utilised and easier to set up, do you still use banner ads too?

I guess it depends on who has designed your banner ads for you, making sure that they’re not just flashy and annoying and that they actually make your customers want to click on the banner and be lead to your site for more information, rather than them just disregarding it as just more ‘junk mail’.

So here is a website leasing company which does everything for you to get your new site off the ground and into the top search engine rankings. With everyone busier and busier and everyone expecting us to do more and more in the same amount of time, surely a one stop shop for website creation is a good thing?

A website leasing company which will create the perfect design for your company and profile, a company which will ensure your site is navigable and adheres to all accessibility guidelines and a company which will take care of all SEO requirements and keyword articles is sure to save you not only time, but money too.

But is a one stop shop what you are looking for in this situation? All aspects of website launching are so closely intertwined that surely a company which does all the hard work and takes care of everything is exactly what you want in this situation, don’t you think?

Heaps of websites have online support now don’t they? They have an FAQ page where you can see if other people have the same problem you’re having and whether there’s a quick way to fix it. Then if there’s not you fill out a form or send an email and a support technician will get back to you to help you out.

So do you use online support systems when you have a problem with a product or service or do you find them impersonal? Personally, I tend to use an online support form when they are available to save myself the trouble of waiting on hold to speak to someone. Often calling a call centre will direct your call out of the country and the time you spend on hold could be spent on other jobs.

But do you think online support is impersonal? Is it giving businesses the right to cut back on their customer service standards and would you rather speak to a person than an email form?

Do you judge a website by where it is based, or where it appears to be based? Some internet studies have shown that many users will seek out sites which have a domain name ending in their local country and I know I’ve done the same thing. Surely you have too?

You start up an internet search because you need a graphic designer or a web hosting company and you disregard the results with a .com ending because you assume they’re American sites, and you want to support a local company, not to mention have a local company close by when things go wrong.

This is why many companies will make sure that their domain name ends in their local suffix, and if it doesn’t they will have more than one domain name, to appeal to international customers with their .com website and local customers with their .co.uk site. So is this just something individuals do, or do businesspeople and companies care where their service providers are based?

Have you ever searched for something on the internet and thought ‘does everything need a website?’ It seems like literally everything and everyone you can think of has their own website and this does not always mean it is useful either, just that it is there.

Doesn’t having a site for everything just clog up search results and servers? Having a site just for the sake of it is not what the internet is about (unfortunately we all know that in some parts of the internet world, that is exactly what it’s about).

But of course, we all know that having fifty fan sites for a celebrity or ten different websites to review a new author’s book is not the height of the internet’s usefulness. However, if you are in business, you should mark out your plot of internet and start making the most of it. While we all know that the internet is full of sites which make us think ‘does that really need a website?’ it just makes it all the more refreshing when we find a site which really is useful.

Are they wrong? Well yes they are because Google says so and Google is one of the major players in the game who can either make or break your business. While the ‘what Google wants Google gets’ motto may grate on you, they are the ones making the rules and if you want to play the game you play by the rules.

It is the same as any situation you encounter in the business world – you want to apply for a tender, follow the guidelines, you want to get a job, fill out the application correctly. But you still think that if you’re paying for the doorway pages to trick Google and direct people to your site when it’s really not what they were looking for, then just remember that good design and quality will outlast the latest trick to get your site ranked well with Google.

But of course, just because Google says that doorway pages are wrong, there is another world out there, do you think doorway pages should be allowed?