I’m going to keep this post short. The piece of advice we’re going to impart on you today is so simple that even a ‘waffler’ like me should be able to keep it short and sweet! It relates to websites and specifically what makes an effective website that actually generates real enquiries and revenue for your organisation.

Now, whilst we’ve always known the different elements you need to get right to make a website successful, actually explaining this is a different kettle of fish altogether. Clearly there are a number of different factors that make a website effective but a recently launched project has made me realise that there’s one common element that all effective websites have.

The website launch was for VanLeasing.com and it marks the culmination of a 12-month project to completely rebrand and relaunch this business and their online presence.

The website (and mobile app) allows users to search from over 1,000 vans from every manufacturer and model available in the UK today. Once they’ve selected their van, they can get a completely customised online quote in less than 60-seconds. Once they have their quote they can print or save it – or if they really like it - apply online to lease the van in less than 5-minutes.

This website was launched last month and, from pretty much a standing start, it has generated results beyond even our own expectations. At the moment the site only gets around 4,000 monthly visitors but from that generates 450 enquiries – that’s an 11% conversion rate (the industry average is around 2-3%)!

So what’s the secret behind such a high traffic-to-enquiries conversion rate? The answer is insanely simple:

This site actually does something!

In other words, it gives users something back in return for making an enquiry. The site has multiple interactive elements but the 2 most popular actions people take on the site are to get a customised van leasing quote or check online if they are approved for finance. These 2 interactive elements of the site don’t do anything special – they just give a user a simple way to answer the 2 questions they came to the site to get answered:

How much will this cost me?
Am I approved for vehicle leasing?

This isn’t rocket science but it’s amazing how often people get it wrong when launching a new website. How often have you been onto a site and there’s absolutely nothing to do on that site but fill in a boring old contact form? Think about this – when was the last time you filled out a ‘contact us’ form on any website? We asked this question in the office and most of us couldn’t remember a time in the past five years!

It’s all very well having a website that tells your customers all about you, how great you are and why they should work with you, but the harsh reality is that no one cares! Customers only care about what’s in it for them and, quite frankly, a boring old brochure-based site with a simple contact form just won’t cut it.

But never fear; the solution doesn’t need to be as complicated or costly as you might think. Even offering something as simple as allowing customers to book appointments or events online is all you need to turn your lacklustre conversion rates around. There are even creative ways to turn a simple contact form into something much more appealing – you just need to think of them!

So if you’re reviewing your current website or wondering why you’re not getting any enquiries then look at your site and answer this simple question: Does it actually do anything?

If not, maybe it’s time for a new approach.

We’ve seen huge demand from our customers over the past 3-4months for the development of mobile applications and mobile-specific versions of their websites. In fact, “do we need to build a mobile website or app?” has been the most popular question we’ve been asked in the early part of this year.

Clearly how to best capitalise on the mobile market is something on the minds of many business owners. Certainly the coverage of mobile marketing and development has been the hot topic of conversation recently in trade publications, blogs and across social media.

I’m always conscious that when something new comes along in the world of technology and marketing it tends to become the ‘buzz’ topic. With that comes added confusion as all of us ‘marketing and tech experts’ flood you with articles and information on the subject. It’s funny that with the access we get today to so much information and insight from so many different sources, it can actually make it more difficult to find a simple answer to the question you’re asking!

So I don’t want to go off on too many tangents today and answer this really simple question:

If you’re a small-to-medium sized business owner is now the time to build a mobile-specific version of your site, create an app or begin to invest in mobile marketing?

To answer that question I want to share with you a small bit of research we completed last week.

How many users are accessing your site on a mobile device?

Firstly, you can find this bit of information out really simply (and for free) if you have an analytics tracker such as Google Analytics on your site. It will tell you (as a percentage of overall users) how many people are accessing your website via a mobile browser. It will even tell you whether they’re an Android, Windows, RIM or iPhone user.

As an experiment, we looked at all of our client websites to see what the average percentage of mobile users on the site was historically, what it is today and how fast the change in percentage, if any, was.

Well, the results are really interesting and it’s fair to say that visits to our client websites via mobile device are growing at an ever-increasing rate. Take a look:

If you’ve read our blog before then you’ll know that, at Brinn, we believe that your website should at be the centre of any good marketing strategy. Visiting your website is the first action you want someone to take having responded to one of your marketing messages via social media, email, advertising, PR, search, an event or any other marketing channel you’re using. It should also act as the central place for great content that you can then push out across all of these different marketing channels.

So does the uptake of mobile technology change this approach? Definitely not, but it does mean that to stay relevant, we need to make the experience of visiting your website and taking the desired action just as engaging on a mobile website or app as it is on a traditional desktop device.

If your website is well coded and put together in the first place (and doesn’t contain too much Flash), then it should render the same on a mobile screen as it does on a desktop one. That’s great, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean your site will engage users in the same way. Mobile-specific websites need to be clearer, contain less information and allow the user to undertake a specific task quickly.

To illustrate this point, here are a couple of interesting facts about the difference between mobile users and desktop users:

- According to Microsoft 70% of desktop search tasks are completed in one week, while 70% of mobile search tasks are done in one hour. In other words, mobile searchers are ready to take action right now!

- 40% of mobile search is location based, which presents great opportunities if you run a local business. Many businesses are already making great use of apps and mobile sites that target a local user at the time they’re ready to make a purchase.

Basically, mobile users have a different set of needs and expectations than desktop users and building a mobile-specific site or app is a great way of targeting these users and getting their business. Unfortunately, your current desktop optimised website won’t do that. As more people move away from the desktop format as a means to access information via the web, the more your business will need to engage customers properly on a plethora of different formats including mobile and tablet devices. There may be 12% of users accessing websites via a mobile today but the numbers are going up fast!

What we’ve hopefully shown you is that now is the time to begin thinking about how your business can best utilise the mobile platform. We’re not saying you need to assign your whole marketing budget to ‘going mobile’ but be aware of this trend and get involved sooner rather than later.

So I’ve answered the question I set out to and have hopefully excited you about the new opportunities that mobile marketing can bring. Now it’s up to you to begin reading up on the subject further and deciding what your next step should be… or you can just give us a call and we’ll take care if it for you! We’ll leave that decision up to you!

As always, any feedback, comments or further insight are welcomed. Speak to you all soon.

Discover five quick steps to increase online conversions today (if you’ve not already done them!)

Before I start I want to apologise for the distinct slowdown in blog posts over the past few weeks. No matter how much I preach about the importance of blogging in any good online marketing strategy, it’s always the first thing to fall by the wayside when things get really busy! On the upside we’ve got some really interesting new projects we’re working on, which I’m excited to tell you all about in due course. All of our blog posts are now being featured widely across the web on platforms such as Ezine and Article Base so look out for them there too.

Anyway here goes:

If you run or manage an online business then you’ll be constantly engaged in trying to increase the percentage of your website visitors that make a purchase. Unless you’re converting 100% of visitors into buyers (if you are then call me NOW – we need to talk!) then this is a job that’s never finished – it’s an ongoing mission.

What I want to reveal today is five simple steps that so many ecommerce site owners fail to implement. They’re those annoying, seemingly obvious little things that sometimes are easy to forget about, but are really important fundamentals in building an effective, trusted online business. So check the list and if you’re missing any of these five options then implement them now to see an instantaneous and marked improvement in online conversions.

1. Products, Products, Products

Are your products the first thing a user sees when they hit your site? If not then make sure they are. It’s amazing how often ecommerce websites have products hidden within the navigation. Think of your online store as if it were a physical shop on the high street. Your homepage is your shop window so showing off your best products to entice customers into the shop further is an absolute must. If you’ve got no products in the window then you probably look like one of those shops with white paint and ‘closing down sale’ over the windows… not good!

2. A Picture Paints a Thousand Sales

Good product images add a huge amount of value to ecommerce sites and the big online players are continually improving the way they use imagery to increase online conversions. If you run an online store then it’s difficult to give the customer the same demonstration of the product as you could if they were in a physical store actually looking at it! That’s why it’s so important to give as good a reflection of the product as possible through the use of great images.

ASOS film a catwalk video for every new product they add to the site and you can imagine how much time and money is involved in doing this for an online store the size of ASOS. Hopefully this highlights how important a factor this is in generating online sales!

If your images are lacking then begin investing the time now in capturing better ones. Depending on your budget there are specialised companies out there that charge a fixed cost to take professional studio shots of each of your products. If that’s not possible then you should take new images in-house making sure you have a good quality camera, tripod and a consistent background to shoot your images. Make sure you have shot each product at a number of different angles.

3. The Humble Search Box

Such a simple piece of functionality but something I’m beginning to notice more and more ecommerce sites are failing to include (even some of the large online players). It doesn’t matter how great your navigation is, it’s difficult to categorise every product you have in a way that customers can easily find and some people just prefer to search first before exploring categories (especially if they’re searching for something specific). The search box is a pretty simple piece of functionality to include – you can even use Google site search if you’re looking to quickly implement search functionality.

4. Shout About Returns

This is a quick change we implemented for a client about a year ago and we saw conversion rates increase instantly and quite dramatically. All we did was create a content holder on each page template that advertised the efficient and simple returns policy. We highlighted the returns policy even more at the checkout stage and the decrease in the cart abandon rate was quite astonishing. I don’t for a second think that potential customers were leaving because they didn’t think the shop had a returns policy, but by simply highlighting it just added the extra little bit of, almost subconscious, trust and credibility to get the user to take the desired action.

5. Clear Customer Service

This is similar to highlighting the returns policy but is another highly effective method to increase online conversions. Does your online shop have a clear customer service area? If a user were to purchase a product then have an issue then would they be able to easily resolve it? Can a user ask a question about a product before purchasing it and get an instant answer?

Whether you include a section in your main navigation, have a live chat facility available from each page or predominantly display a customer service phone number on your site, all of these actions build trust and credibility and remove barriers to a user making a purchase. Again, it’s on an almost sub-conscious level, but if a user gets the impression when on your online shop that you are a ‘real’ company that they could contact directly and resolve any issue with, then they are much more likely to make a purchase.

What else can you be doing to increase online conversions? A huge amount if truth be told but implement these steps first and you’ll be on the right track. Let us know how you get on.

The chances are both of these options will represent good value. The freelancer or student offering you a website for a bottle of vodka will almost certainly give you more than £20 (price depending on the brand of vodka I suppose!) worth of value. Your new website will by no means be an all-singing, all-dancing online business but it will certainly represent good value.

At the same time, you can be pretty much assured the company charging £250,000 will also represent good value too. A company charging this much for a new website will deliver a whole lot more than just a new design to fit around your text and images. Extensive user research, keyword analysis, search engine optimisation, professional copywriting, a dedicated group of designers, developers and marketers, usability testing, technical support and much more will all be included in the scope.

Which website will achieve better results? The £250,000 option – no question. But that does not in anyway detract from the bottle of vodka option – the student or freelancer will no doubt deliver great value in relation to the price you’re paying. The more expensive option didn’t just offer website design though – it offered a huge amount more additional scope that wasn’t included in the bottle of vodka option such as professional copywriting, design, development, SEO and user testing. So this website will be built in a way that generates traffic, engages the target user, makes them take action and makes them continue to come back and engage with the site. Therefore it will achieve better results without a doubt.

Hopefully what this extreme example illustrates is that a new website is not a commoditised product. In almost every case what you are being offered is different and therefore the price will be different. The problem is that websites are often viewed as a commodity:

‘I need a new website, how much will that cost me?’

‘How come you’re charging £25,000 when Company X are only charging me £17,000’

‘How come you’re only charging £25,000 when Company Y are charging me £32,000’

This problem isn’t the fault of the potential client; it’s actually an industry problem. I’m generalising here of course but web development and online marketing companies often don’t make it clear enough what a client actually gets for their money. Unfortunately, this industry is still one cloaked in technical buzzwords and terms that we haven’t explained well enough to customers.  At the same time, customers and providers alike still use this general term of ‘website design’, which unfortunately confuses things even further. In my example, the bottle of vodka option was most likely offering the design of a new website – probably creating a website based around your content and putting it live. However website design is only a tiny fraction of the scope included in the £250,000 option - think about all the other functionality and scope included in that project. So actually these two options have completely different product offerings and it is almost impossible to compare them.

OK, but you still haven’t answered the question – how much should I pay for my new website?

Unfortunately I can’t answer that because I don’t know enough about your project to be able to give you an amount. What I can tell you is the best way to find providers suited for your budget. Here’s what to do:

Set a Budget

In my examples I’ve already shown that a website can cost pretty much anything from £0 to £250,000 (and more) so don’t go out into the marketplace without an idea of budget. Work out how much you can afford to spend on your online presence and remember that, in broad terms, the more you spend the more you will get. You can’t pay £200 and get a website that’s going to place you first in Google and make you millions in profits.

Set a Brief

Don’t just think ‘I need a new website’ and go out and get quotes from companies. Sit down and write out a detailed brief of exactly what features and functionality you would like on the website. Think about the different areas you need help with from an expert and the areas you can deal with in-house. If you need a specialist to help with copywriting then make that clear. This rule goes for other features and services such as SEO, design, technical development, market research, usability testing, software integration and much, much more. If you’re not clear about what you need and what you don’t then companies will assume what you need and provide a quote accordingly. Each company will assume a different set of requirements, which is often one the reason for the price differential between quotes.

Identify Reputable Companies

Do your research and find companies that you can be confident are professional outfits. Speak to contacts and find out if they have anyone they could recommend and have used before. Pay particular attention to their websites. If a web design or online marketing company has a robust, well designed and easy-to-use site then you can be pretty sure they’re building the same for their clients. Identify two or three companies you’d like to find out more about and make contact.

Don’t be Scared to Mention a Budget

If you’ve identified good potential providers don’t be in anyway scared to mention your budget. In the case of online marketing and web development playing your cards close to your chest in terms of budget probably isn’t as good an idea as you might think. Any good marketing company should, and will, deliver the most for the budget you have available. For instance, if a company came to us and told us they had £10,000 to spend on an e-commerce website we would be very clear about what they could get for that budget. If they also came to us with £30,000 we would tell we could offer a whole more for that kind of money and would be clear about what functionality, features and support that budget could get them.

So by approaching two or three companies with the same budget you will actually be able to compare potential providers better because their prices will be the same and you can compare the offering on features and not price. Remember, value in marketing terms isn’t about price alone; it’s about the value you can get for that price. Coca-Cola doesn’t only advertise on cable television channels because they’re cheaper than advertising on the major channels. They advertise on the major channels because they have the budget and they know that it will generate more customers for them therefore making it better value. The same rule applies when looking to develop your online presence – work with a reputable company who can help you squeeze every last penny out of that budget whether it be £5,000 or £50,000.

Still want a price?

We’re completely upfront about our pricing. The pricing page on our site will tell you how much our typical marketing plans cost on a monthly basis and we’re soon going to be updating this to include web project costs. In the meantime, give us a call we’ll be happy to provide you with good idea of what we can provide for your budget. If you don’t have a budget in mind then we’ll know you haven’t read this!

Lets face it, some of the big retailers were a bit slow off the mark when it came to developing online stores in the early years of ecommerce.

It’s a different story now though and the over the past 12-18 months some of the UK’s largest offline retailers have begun to develop really impressive online offerings. Of course some of these companies have been there since the start and they’re the ones now reaping the benefits of nearly 10 years of online experience.

So what are the top 5 ecommerce websites developed by Britain’s high street retailers?

1. John Lewis

With online sales for John Lewis up a staggering 45% since this time last year, it’s no surprise many retailers are in awe of the groups online operations. As a company built on their reputation for quality and customer service John Lewis have taken everything they’re good at offline and put it online – which is much harder than it sounds!

2. Apple

No one is better than Apple at creating incredibly simple, intuitive machines and applications and they’ve taken everything they’ve learned on usability and applied it to their website. The Apple ecommerce experience is clean, simple and extremely intuitive. It’s no wonder we’re beginning to see a lot of ecommerce sites looking extremely similar!

3. House of Fraser

Just like John Lewis, House of Fraser have succeeded in taking the experience of shopping in one of their stores online. House of Fraser is a premium brand built on a reputation of quality, steeped in tradition but at the same time being at the cutting edge of the latest fashions. Building an online presence that stays true to all of these factors is extremely difficult but House of Fraser have managed it whilst creating a dynamic and simple-to-use site.

4. Schuh

Schuh have an online presence the envy of many big retailers, not just other footwear retailers. An early adopter of ecommerce in the early 2000’s, they now have a multi-platform online presence selling not only on their own site but also on eBay, where they are one of the UK’s largest eBay sellers. 

What’s even better is the reason Schuh Chief Executive Colin Temple first took the company online: "I am ashamed to say the reason Schuh started selling its shoes online was so I could prove to the business that you couldn't sell shoes online because I didn't think they would.” (Insider Magazine)

5. TK Maxx

In some ways TK Maxx didn’t take what they had offline and put it online - they couldn’t . Raking through racks of clothes to find what you’re looking for just wouldn’t translate online so in some ways they actually improved the customer experience. The TK Maxx website is intuitive and easy-to-navigate that still maintains their core principle of big brands at incredible value.

Link Building is an extremely important factor in SEO but is Google wrong to give it such weight?

Link Building for SEO is a big buzz area and has been for at least the past two years. To explain link building simply; Google puts huge importance on the number of external links you have pointing to your website. The higher quantity of ‘good quality’ links you have pointing to your website then the higher up the rankings you go.

The very essence of the idea I get. Google believes that if you have a high number of reputable websites linking to you then by virtue you must have relevant content that people want to visit. You then gain more credibility in Google’s view and increase your search engine ranking as a result.

What’s the Problem Then?

There are two major problems with this approach:

1. Without doubt, it punishes the small-to-medium sized business owner

Imagine you run a huge news website such as the BBC or the Times Online. Clearly you are providing news content to a large number of people and you already have a reputation for being amongst the premier news outlets in the UK. Therefore people are always linking to you – sharing news stories on social media, publishing links on forum threads, even referencing your stories on their websites and blogs.  As a result your large news website is given a lot of ‘authority’ on the search engines.

Now imagine you run a huge corporation such as Coca-Cola. You are always featured in the online and offline press - people are talking online about your latest adverts, large news websites are producing stories on your latest financial results and you’re a huge talking point on all social media platforms. So, because of all this you have a huge number of reputable websites linking to you and therefore you gain a massive search engine advantage.

Now imagine you run a smaller online business – maybe you’re selling a niche product online that isn’t particularly exciting – let’s say you’re selling packaging solutions for businesses (cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, etc). You can build the best site in the world, optimise the hell out of it, stick to all the best web standards – even regularly update a blog with the latest industry news and insight. Let’s face it though, the BBC, Times Online, people on forums, the social networking community and blog owners aren’t going to link to you are they? Why would they? Your product isn’t that exciting, albeit that your site is well optimised and you are providing a valuable product and service to those searching for it.

Ok, I know you’ve got to be creative and think of innovative ways to encourage linking but it’s going to be an uphill struggle.

2. It’s a magnet for scams and ‘get rich quick’ schemes

Bear in mind the struggle for the small business owner as described above. So what can a smaller business do to easily build links to their website? They can add their link to the huge number of web directories that appear to be popping up here, there and everywhere. These web directories are supposed to provide a valuable directory service for people using the web but all they actually provide is a completely useless website that is solely designed to add links to. Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of reputable directories such as Yell, Dmoz and Yahoo but there is also a huge amount of non reputable directories that charge to put your link on and actually provide no benefit from an SEO point of view. The problem is, for the non-SEO savvy it’s actually very difficult to tell the difference between a reputable and non-reputable directory.

In addition to this, there are a growing number of companies (many based overseas) that sell business owners a ‘link building service’ that actually does more harm than good. By gaining links from a huge number of non-reputable directory sites these companies are actually jeopardising the SEO results of their customers!

As more and more of these directories and ‘get rich quick’ link building services appear they actually detract from the overall internet experience.

I understand why link building is important and I’m not suggesting Google dumps it completely, but isn’t it time to reconsider how important it is in the overall picture? Don’t we need to give smaller, more niche and new online businesses more of a chance against the big players?

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