Brookfield - The Internet Marketing Agency Blog

Using Twitter for Business: Top 7 Twitter Tips

Everywhere you go it seems that the world is catching the Twitter bug, whether for personal, business or promotional purposes. The micro-blogging site, which allows posts of a maximum 140 characters, has grown massively since its launch in 2006 by founder Jack Dorsey. Informative, fun and addictive, it’s no wonder that Twitter has become so popular, but how can it help increase your business revenue?

With the right tactics Twitter can become a great revenue generating tool, as US company, Naked Pizza (@NAKEDpizza) has demonstrated. Twitter visitors make up an average of 20% of the company’s daily income and in some cases this figure has been as high as 69%. There’s no big secret to their success, except that they have actively gathered relevant followers and have regularly offered them something beneficial. For example, ‘Twitter deals’ advertising two pizzas for only $19.95.

By following a few simple rules almost anyone with an interesting product can create a buzz in the Twitter world and also enjoy some extra sales. Five tips to follow:

1. Create an account using your company name, add a profile picture and fill in the side bar details (name, location, web address and bio). This tells people who you are and increases the chance of being followed.

2. Create a personality and brand for your Twitter account. Twitter is a great branding tool, so make sure you define your brand and stick to it when tweeting. For reinforcement, it doesn’t hurt to customise your profile background with your company logo/colours.

3. Gather relevant followers. This can be done using a number of tools such as Twitter directories, where you can search by industry/topic (WeFollow, Twellow) or advance search services that allow you to find people based on location, name and bio (Tweepz, TweepSearch).

4. Make your customers aware of your Twitter account. Link to your Twitter account from your website, put it on your business cards and just get the word out there in general.

5. Probably the most important tip: post tweets that your followers will be interested in. They won’t care about the latest company news, but they will care if you’re offering them a great deal. Also remember not to oversell. Twitter is great for promoting your business, but too much will cause people to lose interest and stop following you.

6. Follow your competitors, keep up to date with what they’re tweeting and then tweet something better.

7. Make sure that your tweets are personal and down to earth. No one likes receiving robotic updates.

Keep your followers interested in your product and it shouldn’t be long until you start benefiting financially from Twitter. Good luck!

The Club & Spa Chester - Website Launch

The new website has launched for The Club & Spa at Hoole Hall Chester. This purpose-built, £8 million pound, lavish 14 treatment room spa and next-generation gym will open it’s doors this Autumn with a range of club membership options, spa days and packages.

Club and Spa facilities include: A lounge and café bar; private couples suite; Teuco bath room; meditation room; manicure and pedicure room; post treatment relaxation space; pool; steam room; thermal rooms; sauna; spa pool; open air Watsu pool; hydrotherapy pool; yoga room; Haman room; high impact studio; gym; hairdressing studio…and much more.

All About Electrics website goes live

The brand new All About Electrics website launched last week and is looking fabulous!

All About Electrics offer affordable Electrical Supplies for both commercial and domestic DIY use. Great for all your electrical needs, you’ll find everything from showers, fans, heating and lighting to wiring, cabling and security products.

Thanks to Wired Media for the website build.

Usability Vs Creativity - Can you have both?

If you’ve ever been involved in the website building process you’ll be familiar with the ongoing battle between usability and creativity. You want your site to look good AND generate a high number of sales or enquiries, but often the two can conflict. As usability specialists, the team here at Brookfield believe in usability before fancy designs, however, we also understand the need for creativity and aesthetically pleasing web pages that represent your brand.

Designers and usability experts/online marketers will always argue that their cause is the most important factor, but it is possible to achieve a balance and have a fully usable site without compromising the creative side too much.

Why you shouldn’t compromise usability

We believe that while it’s great to have a good looking site, if anything is most important it’s the user’s ability to interact with the website and convert easily – creating a pleasing experience for them and a profitable experience for you. Some other arguments for usability are:

• The user is not looking for a beautiful site. They are looking for your product. If you don’t make your site simple to use potential customers will convert elsewhere.
• Web users aren’t always as web savvy as you. While you may find your site easy to navigate, first time or infrequent web users may not. Making your site as easy to use as possible will ensure that inexperienced users can convert without turning to more traditional methods.
• A fantastic looking website serves absolutely no purpose if your potential customers can’t use it.
• Many websites use Flash graphics, which look great, but search engines are unable to crawl them. This can mean that your users may not be able to find you if your website design affects how you rank on Google, Yahoo or other search engines. It also affects the speed and look of your site if a user is unable to view flash images.

Tips for creating a usable and good looking site

Usability is important, but so is connecting with your audience visually. Consumers will appreciate an easy to use website, but they’ll also appreciate a fresh, eye catching design. Always go with the design you love, just add a few alterations to make it more usable.

• Avoid using Flash and just stick to HTML for the important information. If you love the look of Flash, try a banner for a nice touch. If you’re using a good designer they will be able to produce a great design without using fancy graphics.
• Use a font that’s easy and large enough to read. It might sound plain, but you want potential customers to be able to read it.
• Always keep your contact details visible and above the page fold. Some designers may not like the look, but you don’t want your visitors to be searching for too long.
• Don’t include too many questions on online forms. This can cause users to abandon your site.

By implementing just a few small changes you’ll find that you won’t have to sacrifice much at all for a usable site that also looks fabulous!

Pay Per Click: Increase online sales by keeping up-to-date with your industry

If you’re running a pay per click (PPC) campaign, whether personally or through a search marketing agency, there are amazing opportunities to drastically increase your sales by simply paying attention to your industry and the publicity surrounding it. News reports, magazine articles, TV advertisements and a general buzz about something that involves your products, even indirectly, can help your PPC sales soar.

To give an example, let’s say you run a beauty salon offering Botox as a treatment. You then see a TV program promoting Botox and its benefits. It is highly likely that interested viewers will then search online to find somewhere offering this treatment. To have your PPC ads ready and waiting is a huge advantage.

How can you optimise your PPC account in this situation?

• Make sure you have an ad group targeting your product, with related keywords and ads.
• Include any stand out information from the TV program/other form of media in your ad.
• Don’t restrain your budget. If you’re spending an average of £1000 per month, it’s not a good idea to stick to it when opportunities for an increased level of cheap sales come along. A good idea would be to spend double and then under spend over the following three months. Alternatively, just spend a bit extra that month, as you’ll more than make up for it in profit from online sales.
• A buzz about your products may only last for a day, so keep an eye on your budget and rein it back in when the sales start to increase in cost. Also remember that a publicity boost won’t always mean more sales, so again, keep a close watch on your budget.

Benefiting from your competitors

If your competitors have launched a new marketing campaign, use it to your advantage. Stay competitive with your PPC ad positions and pick up sales from the buzz that your competitor has probably paid big money for. People don’t always remember brand names from advertisements, so it’s highly likely that a general increase in broad searches for the product will also occur and hopefully you’ll be at the receiving end.

Communicating with your PPC agency

If you use an agency to manage your PPC account, let them know about any publicity that may increase sales. While many agencies keep on top of big trends, for example, an online flower store during the Valentine’s Day period, it’s impossible to follow everything going on in the industries of multiple clients. Just give them a call and they’ll know what to do.

To conclude, try to get involved with your industry as much as possible. Keep an eye on your competitors, look out for television programs and news reports, sign up to relevant newsletters and even join Twitter! Your research will more than likely pay off in sales.

Creating a Usable Online Checkout Process

How many times have you attempted to make an impulse purchase online only to be presented with an essay length registration form? Or perhaps you've been taken through the whole shopping process only to discover that the item you're after is out of stock. Other times checkout processes can just be plain clunky and difficult to use.

Chances are that you or someone you know has experienced at least one of these situations.

When developing an ecommerce website it's important to get your online shopping process just right to avoid losing impulse buyers or customers who simply can't figure out your system. Even the most savvy web users can become confused by a poorly designed online checkout process.

The following article is a great compilation of tips for designing an informative and easy to use checkout process. By optimising your online checkout process for usability you could definitely start to see more sales rolling in!

Google Analytics and Awstats – the basic differences

Many companies have access to AW Stats or ‘Advanced Website Statistics’ as part of their hosting package, then whilst reviewing stats provided by a platform such as Google Analytics, wonder why there is such a discrepancy in the figures, usually with Awstats reporting a much inflated interpretation.

 

Awstats and Google Analytics have two principal differences....

1. They gather, interpret and report data using different collection methods
2. They are intended to serve two separate business functions

This summary aims to outline some of the key differences between the two packages.

How they collect data

Awstats and Google Analytics collect data differently; therefore the figures reported will invariably vary.

• Advanced Web Statistics (Awstats) – is an open source web analysis solution that collects and interprets data at source - directly your web server log files.

• Google Analytics (GA) – is also a free web analysis program. However it collects data based tracking a piece of code that is embedded (by you) in your web pages. GA collects data from the website itself and stores it on an external server.

What does this mean?

Awstats arguably provide a much more accurate picture of website activity, whilst Google Analytics figures are skewed by factors beyond your control such as your visitor’s browser settings - however this is generally accepted amongst marketers. This leads nicely onto Difference 2.

Their business purpose

Google Analytics and Awstats are designed for different purposes.

• Advanced Web Statistics (Awstats) is most commonly used by Webmasters, Web Developers and sometimes SEO Technicians.  Because the data is collected directly from the web server (rather than relying on independent tracking code) it provides accurate technical information such as; How search engines crawl the website, Browser and Operating System data, HTTP errors etc.

• Google Analytics (GA) is designed for businesses, providing valuable marketing information such as how users are interacting with your website, what content is important to them, what adverts/keyphrases/links are generating you revenue or leads.

So what’s the best way forward?

Both Awstats and GA provide valuable information for their particular purpose.  From a business and marketing perspective, effective use of Google Analytics in combination with platforms such Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo Site Explorer will provide ample support and information to monitor website performance and make marketing decisions.

It’s important to remember that all Web Analysis Tools are best used to track trends and patterns – slight data inaccuracy is an accepted and necessary evil.

For more information:

Google Analytics
Advanced Web Statistics
Google Webmaster Tools
Yahoo Site Explorer

ibooking.com

Brookfield has recently been working with iBooking.com on the Cadbury Hotel project. iBooking are experts in online ticketing and booking solutions for the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. The company develop and manage ticketing and booking systems including iBooking Hotel, iBooking BoxOffice, and iBooking Ticket. Products are delivered on a SaaS [Software as a Service] model and used globally by both small and large businesses. Products are easy to use and easy to buy utilising a pay for performance model.

   

Results so far have been really encouraging; Cadbury bookings are significantly up along with associated revenue streams. Not only that, iBooking’s customer service is excellent and the installation support process was faultless. On that basis if you are looking for any type of booking system, we would strongly recommend that you get in touch with the guys at iBooking.