Video Marketing is enjoying a huge growth in popularity. In the past six months we’ve seen a big increase in demand from our customers looking to exploit the power of online video in their marketing campaigns. There are two simple reasons for this. Firstly, and most importantly, online video is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Secondly, advancements in technology mean that it is now far more cost-effective to create impressive online video campaigns than was previously possible.

Part 6 of the Internet marketing guide focuses on the SEO Copywriting of the VanLeasingQuotes.com website

Writing all the copy (text) for a site the size of VanLeasingQuotes.com can be a daunting task. With so many pages and the fact that vehicle leasing isn’t an industry I’m particularly well versed in, it would be easy to try and push the task back to the client and get them to use their in depth knowledge of the industry to work something up. But actually, that would be the completely wrong thing to do!

Copywriting for SEO is a science – probably more so than it is a creative process. You have an average of 3 seconds to engage someone who has arrived at your site. If you don’t engage them, they’re off (never to be seen again!).

You don’t just have to engage a visitor though, you also have to optimize the content you’re writing for the search engines and that means hitting a very difficult balance between layering each page with the primary and related key terms and writing text that will actually interest the real person reading it.

To make a piece of copy engaging it needs to capture interest very quickly, guide the reader through the rest of the content and make that user take action (whether that be filling in a web form, picking up the phone or buying a product). It is for this reason that asking the client to use their industry knowledge to work up the copy would not have been a good idea. You almost always find that people who work in a particular industry (unintentionally) assume a certain degree of knowledge. They know lots about their industry and forget that others don’t. You see a lot of websites (especially in the B2B sector) where technical industry jargon is used where it shouldn’t be.

The golden rule of good copywriting: everyone should be able to understand it!

So, I knew because of my lack of knowledge of the vehicle leasing sector and because I didn’t involve the client too much in the copywriting process, I would actually come up with copy that is easier to understand for the average website visitor.

Getting down to work

As you have seen in the previous posts of the Internet Marketing Guide, a lot of planning and development has happened in the early stages of the project and this starts to speed up and make things easier at this stage. We have already defined the keywords for each page, mapped out a site structure and have designed the look and structure of each page. So now I have a clearer idea of what and how much to write for each page.

I get everything in front of me first – including the design visual of the page I’m about to work on and the spreadsheet telling me the keywords for each page – and I type the keywords into our related keywords tool.

The related keywords tool is a piece of software that gives me a list of related search terms that are closely linked to the primary keyword. So if a page is to be optimised for ‘van leasing’ then it will give me a list of other related words and terms such as ‘commercial vehicle leasing’, ‘van finance’ and ‘van lease purchase’. By using these related keywords in my copy I will provide the search engines (and visitors) with more relevant content and it will give the site a better chance of performing well, not only for the term ‘van leasing’, but also for a number of related variations of that term.

Now I start to write and I’m constantly keeping the call-to-action in mind – what do I want the user to do on this page? I may want them to complete the form to find out if they’re eligible to lease a van, I may want them to get a quote for a van or I may want them to pick up the phone – each page has a different goal.

When I’m writing copy for a site of this size I will tend to write it initially in one go and then leave it for at least a few hours before coming back to it fresh again and reading it over.

The Final Product

You can see from the website visual, and you will see more when the site goes live, that we have tried to separate the copy into small, engaging snippets of information. We have used words such as ‘discover’, ‘calculate’ and ‘compare’ to communicate to a visitor that they can obtain all the information they need from the site easily on their own. On the main lading pages we use the strap line ‘discover the best van leasing quote in 60 seconds’ – again this shows the visitor how easy and intuitive the process of getting a van leasing quote is.  These are the statements a visitor will scan over or read when they hit the page.

Really for a site like this everything should be intuitive. The big headlines are the most important as these are what people will see and respond to. The larger paragraphs are secondary information and are partly there to increase our content for the search engines. This is not the kind of site where people will be reading lots of content – if they are then we have failed in creating an easy to understand, easy to navigate and intuitive website experience. This is why we have structured the site in the way we have – big headlines at the top, with other small snippets of information and paragraphs boxed off into to easy-to-digest chunks of information.

We’ll be back with another installment of the Internet Marketing Guide next week. In the meantime for more info on copywriting for SEO visit the Search Engine Copywriting page on our site.

Part 4 of the Internet marketing guide focuses on the second stage of planning for VanLeasingQuotes.com

Last week I talked about the keyword analysis and website planning for VanLeasingQuotes.com. We looked at how to identify the best keywords and then use these to create the site navigation.

This week it’s time for the next stage of the planning process, which is beginning to think about what will be included on each page and sketching out where each piece of content will go.

VanLeasingQuotes.com is a great example of a large e-commerce based website that has many landing pages, many different products and many different bits of functionality. The trick is not in building a site than can do everything we want it to and hold all this information - the trick is in presenting this information in the easiest and most intuitive way for the user when they come onto the site. The more information, products and functionality you have on a site, the more you have to create an intuitive way for it to be organised.

Get this part right, and we save ourselves a lot of time in the next stages of the process and the end result will convert a higher percentage of site visitors into solid enquiries.

So we start by referring to the site navigation, which has now been signed off by the client. We look at the main landing pages and how the site is structured to think about the number of different page templates we will require. Every page on a site is different but defining the different groups of pages and creating a page template to use as a starting point for each will create a consistent feel across the whole website.

For VanLeasingQuotes.com we defined 3 groups of pages:

- Main landing pages

- Multiple product display pages

- Single product display pages

Next we get our pens out! A great little piece of advice I got a couple of years ago from the guys at 37 signals is to never use biro pens for sketching – always use a nice thick marker because it prevents you from going into to much irrelevant detail too early in the project.

Basically we start sketching a few ideas out for the main page groups and get each other’s opinions on things. After a few attempts we have usually defined a layout for each that contains all the required information and functionality in the right places.

What we have in mind all the time is providing a number of different, intuitive ways for users to navigate around the site. For VanLeasingQuotes.com we have 4 main ways of navigating around the site:

- Complete a 3-field search that automatically drills down and takes you to an exact product

- Search by manufacturer

- Search by size of van

- Clicking directly on one of the featured products

The picture at the top of this post shows the initial sketch for the homepage. We have made the search functionality very prominent and just below the main header statement and image. Underneath the search options we have a featured product section. It is extremely important to have products on your homepage if you’re building an e-commerce style website – it shows visitors immediately that you are selling the product they’re looking for without them having to think or investigate whatsoever. Underneath this section we have more text-based information for those who want to know more and also to help SEO.

This is great but the fact of the matter is, because of the way SEO works and the site is designed, most users won’t come in through the homepage. Each user will land on the site having done a specific web search and might land directly on a product or manufacturer page. This fact combined with others means that the site needs to be just as easy to navigate from an individual product page as it is from the homepage. We spend a lot of time making sure each of the templates provides a consistent and easy way to use the site.

Once we have sketched everything out the next job is for the actual design to start but I’ll leave that for Robert to start on next week.

Speak to you all soon!

Part 3 of the Internet marketing guide focuses on the website planning and keyword strategy for VanLeasingQuotes.com

First off let me say this: website planning and keyword strategy are by far the most important parts of building an effective online business… they're also by far the most overlooked.

The simple fact is that, no matter what nature of business you run or what kind of website you’re about to build, you should do one thing: answer the right question. You should answer the specific question or questions that your target customers are asking.

What are their questions? Their questions, quite simply, are their search terms; the terms your target customers type into a search engine when searching for your goods or services.

There are 3 parts to answering these questions correctly:

Make sure you know what the questions are…

Don’t assume that you know what your target customers will be searching for. Do the appropriate research to find out the best keywords to target

Make sure your hand is up when the question’s asked…

In other words, make sure you appear as high up as possible in the search rankings when someone searches one of your identified key search terms

Make sure you answer the question correctly…

This is the final hurdle so many fall at! Once a user has clicked on your link make sure you provide them with the exact content they were searching for in the first place. What so many do is build a website targeted at a huge amount of keywords and build a site solely designed to increase search engine ranking. The problem with this is that you end up providing the user with uninteresting, irrelevant content. The potential customer takes no further action and goes elsewhere.

Now lets look at the simple, all be it methodical, process we used when planning the VanLeasingQuotes.com website:

Define the Purpose of the Website

We’ve covered this in previous posts:

"The website will provide an easy, intuitive way for users to browse a catalogue of over 1,000 different models of commercial vehicle. Not only this but it will allow users to generate an online customised quote for their chosen van, print or save it and then apply for a lease agreement online. "

Identify Relevant Keywords

We use software programs including Wordtracker and Google Developer Tools to analyse what people are searching for online. We spend hours researching a huge number of different areas to find keywords relating to the website we’re building – in this case VanLeasingQuotes.com. What we’re looking for is, not only search terms that are highly popular, but also search terms that are the least competitive. If there are less companies optimising for certain terms but they’re still popular then you’re onto a winner! This can be calculated using a formula called KEI and KEI3 scores (I won’t bore you all with the maths bit of it!).

Lump Keywords Together

With VaneasingQuotes.com we had around 20-30 relevant keywords picked out that the client was happy to go with. Now we start lumping into relevant groups of subjects. So in this case there were terms relating to leasing, contract hire, lease purchase, finance advice and individual van manufacturer related searches.  By grouping these together we begin to see how we might organise the website.

Create a List of Pages

This is the great thing about doing keyword analysis before you start thinking about navigation – you are now creating pages that will more closely meet what people are looking for. This invariably leads to much better results when the site goes live. After the keyword analysis for VanLeasingQuotes.com we all had a much clearer vision in our head of how the website would take shape and now we simply name pages based on our groups of keywords.

We create a spreadsheet that contains the name of each page and the primary and secondary keywords we will optimise each page for.

Pull it all Together into the Site Navigation

Now we have a list of pages it’s about pulling together the site navigation. This process isn’t all about SEO - creating a site that’s intuitive and easy to navigate around is also a big consideration. With a big site like VanLeasingQuotes.com there will be a lot of pages. Also, because each page will be optimised for different search terms, a user could come into the site through anyone of these pages, not necessarily the homepage. This means we had make sure it will be easy to navigate from everywhere.

As you can see from the picture at the top of the blog, we sketch out the navigation on a big A3 or A1 sheet of paper and spend a lot of time mixing things about until we get it right.

Hopefully this has given you a good overview of the initial planning stages of a website. Next week it’s me again and I’m going to be looking at the net planning stage, which involves deciding on content for each page and sketching out rough web page layouts. I’ll warn you in advance – my sketching ability is pretty atrocious!

Speak to you next week

Ryan

Corporate brand design and identity is the starting point for everything in business. It is the first thing a company needs to create before... well, anything! Without a brand... without a logo... without an identity you are nothing!

Brand identity is one of the most important parts of a good business – it helps people get to know you, it communicates so much more than just a name, and, if your branding looks disorganised, dull, frantic or indeed anything negative then this will be reflected on your company the second a potential customer sets eyes on your brand.

When you consider that a website has 3 seconds to capture the interest of an average visitor before they go elsewhere, branding can be said to be even more important for an online business! So when it came to creating the brand for VanLeasingQuotes.com we knew we had to get it right.

Where to start?

When creating a brand we start off by doing 4 things – reviewing the initial brief, speaking to the client, reviewing the competition and reviewing the ‘non-competition'.

The initial brief is a document we refer back to throughout the process. In this case it reminded us that VanLeasingQuotes.com want to create some new and different – this will have a bearing on the brand identity concept.

The client is also a great place to start because, not only do we want to create something that they buy into, but they also have good knowledge of their marketplace and any things to definitely avoid. In this case the team at VanLeasingQuotes.com were really keen to let us take the reigns and they were keen we didn’t get tied down by their perception of what might work and what might not (it’s great to get a client like this who really just wants us to flex our creative muscle!)

Reviewing the competition is a key part in the initial process because it lets us see what our brand will be up against. When we reviewed the competition in this case, we found that there wasn’t much out there that was particularly strong.  Most competitor websites made the mistake of trying to draw attention and say too many things at once (the end result looking a bit messy).

Reviewing the non-competition is a great way of finding inspiration from other industry sectors and using it in a new place. In the case of VanLeasingQuotes.com we found that their competition wasn’t strong so we knew we wanted to create a brand that stood out a represented something completely new.  We wanted to create a brand that represented a clean, fresh, approachable and easy-to-use website. One of the major industry sectors we looked at was price comparison websites – these sites are really easy-to-use and the best of these companies have great brand identities – we took inspiration from this.

Brand Concepting

This is where I start to get down some ideas. I’ll work with Ryan initially to think about the kind of look we want to create and we’ll sketch down some shapes and general sketches. After that I go away and spend a lot of time trying lots of different things (some I quickly abandon!) before coming back with 3 or 4 solid concepts for discussion. We all review this internally and there’s usually a couple of days of reviewing and tweaking each concept before we present 2 or 3 to the client. In this case we went back to the client with 2 concepts – both we felt were really strong.

It’s not just the logo we create at this stage, we also think about use of colour, font and language and how this would be used across the whole site.  

Client Approval

Presenting a new brand identity concept to a client is always a bit nerve racking – after spending a lot of time and energy going down a certain route with a brand that you really like, you just hope to god that they like it too! In this case they quickly chose one of our concepts and the process was fairly painless from here – just a couple of minor tweaks.

The Final Brand Concept:

It’s Ryan next week on keyword analysis and website planning.

Speak to you soon!

We're about to embark on one of the biggest web projects we've ever undertaken...

and we want you to come along for the ride!

Over the next few weeks we will talk you through all the major elements involved in developing an online business from the initial brief, planning stages, brand creation, online marketing development, concept design, web design and the more technical web development challenges.

Every member of the team will blog about their part in the process as it happens – giving you a true insight into what’s involved in developing a successful online business.

We want you to learn:

- What’s actually involved in developing a large-scale successful website

- Techniques that you can put into practice on your current site to improve results

- How you can use web marketing from the outset to make sure the right people find your site

Welcome to The Guide to Internet Marketing!

The Client

Our client is one of the largest vehicle leasing businesses in the UK and they have approached us to develop their new concept in the van leasing sector – VanLeasingQuotes.com

This website will provide an easy, intuitive way for users to browse their catalogue of over 1,000 different models of commercial vehicle. Not only this but it will allow users to generate an online customised quote for their chosen van, print or save it and then apply for a lease agreement online.

The objectives

- Create a brand that becomes the online market leader for vehicle leasing

- Create a website that generates significant natural search, paid search and direct traffic

- Convert a high percentage of visitors to sales leads by creating a website that engages visitor attention and compels them to take action

- Provide a solution that can be easily managed and updated by the client's staff (who have minimal IT/Web experience)

The Brief/Our Scope

Put simply we’ll be delivering every aspect of this new online business! As it is a new concept we’ll start with creating a brand around the VanLeasingQuotes.com name. After that we’ll start developing the website, which will include everything from planning, design, technical development, copywriting, web marketing and much more.  This kind of project, where we’re responsible for every aspect of the brief, gives us a great opportunity to show you the full process of building a successful online business.

The First Thing?

The first part of this blog series will be the creation of the VanLeasingQuotes brand, which will follow next week. In the meantime let’s meet the Brinn team that will be sharing their experiences of this project over the next few weeks:

Meet The Team

Ryan (Me!)

Marketing

I’m the marketing man and also the person that manages the whole project from start-to-finish. I’m heavily involved in the planning and initial stages of any web project; coming up with the initial concept for the site, thinking about how we will attract visitors and engage them on the site as well as working closely with Robert to create the brand for any new online business.  

Stuart

Sales and Marketing

As well as working closely with myself on the marketing side of things, Stuart has vast experience in the field of sales. We work together on the planning and initial stages of any new online business but he thinks past just the job of the website and provides us all with insight on engaging visitors attention, making them take action, and then putting a process in place to turn new online sales leads into paying customers. 

Robert

Design

Robert is a designer with extensive knowledge and experience in both brand and web design. He is responsible for two key stages in this project – the creation of the brand (where he works very closely with myself) and then the concept design of the website. Concept design means that Robert creates the look and feel for the website and then provides visuals and templates for Ally to bring to life on the web.

Ally

Front-end Web Development and SEO

As front-end developer it Ally’s job to build the actual pages of the website from Robert’s design work. He takes the design visuals and uses his knowledge of coding to turn it into something real on the screen. A big part of good web development is building websites in a way that are accessible, compatible and SEO friendly. Ally also works closely with Stuart and I right at the start of any project to complete the initial Keyword analysis and SEO planning

Ibrahim

Back-end Web Development

Put simply, Ibrahim is the technical whizz-kid behind our operation. He will develop all of the technical elements of the website including building the database for the 1000 vehicle types, making all the websites search functionality work and creating an admin system for the website to be updated in future. Anything technical he can help with!

We look forward to getting this new Internet Marketing Guide going next week. See you then!