People keep asking me ‘Illiya, why is WordPress so good?’. The short answer is this;

A:It allows you to produce truly ’Awesome’ looking websites like The Presentation Designer and our very own site runs WordPress.

B: It allows small business owners with limited budgets to save thousands on web design costs.

C: It is flexible an easy to update. Even people who struggle with technology have found WordPress easy to learn.

D: It’s Open Source, FREE to use and mostly importantly it continues to improve and develop as the World’s most popular CMS.

The Presentation Designer

The exciting news is Smartdog digital has expanded and we’ve opened a new business The Presentation Designer. This new website provides businesses and individuals with professional PowerPoint & Keynote design, giving real power to your message.

There are many acts of ‘Death by PowerPoint’ happening everyday and The Presentation Designer aims to prevent that by helping people design effective presentations that prevent them from putting their audience to sleep.

Click to view full site

The website is fully responsive meaning that the layout of text, images and the structure of the site will adapt to meet different browsers sizes, including Smartphones, iPads and other mobile devices. You can see this by re-sizing your browser window when looking at the website.

If this kind of design excites you (let me tell you that the feedback about this site has been simply amazing) then I can help you produce something similar by providing you with a WordPress website that looks just as great.

I’ve been working with WordPress now for 6 years and there isn’t much we cannot do with it. It is simply the best platform for small businesses to create a website or blog on.

First of all, before I begin, this is a personal story to me and I hope that you can appreciate the reasons why I do what I do today in my business.

The Background

Prior to starting Smartdog digital back in 2010, I had previously worked in the past as a freelance web designer in my youth. Having graduated from University, I went on to cut my teeth at various agencies in Yorkshire both involved in digital marketing, traditional marketing and web design. Along the way I got to work with some brilliant people and with a lot of different businesses ranging from the engineering sector to retail and even some charities.

Throughout my time working for other people I learnt many valuable lessons along the way, but the most important lesson I learnt was that many of the businesses and clients I was working for didn’t really understand:

• A: What they were buying and what specifically was the results of that investment?
• B: How much money they were wasting on digital marketing and web design.

In the end having worked for three different agencies in three years, I realised something. In order to actually help people and help businesses with their digital marketing properly, teaching them how to run an effective campaign and most importantly how to measure their results correctly, meant I would have to quit my day job and go it alone.

It hasn’t been an easy ride running my first business at 26, I think I’ve done pretty well considering this is my first time running a business.

Why I am here?

For many years now I have believed that I was put on this planet for one main purpose. My purpose is to ‘teach people about technology’. In school, I was always the techie geek that the teachers turned to for IT advice, I’ve have always been experimenting and learning about technology since I was a young lad.

I get out of bed every morning because I have a real passion, thirst and desire to improve my knowledge about digital marketing and importantly, I’m very keen to pass that learning and knowledge on to my peers, colleagues and clients.

What do you get out of bed for?

Behind the Smoke and Mirrors

Digital Marketing is a vast field and it encompasses many different marketing tactics and areas of expertise. No one person can really hope to master them all, though many will try.

The technology and techniques develop very quickly, it can be hard for even seasoned digital marketers to keep up at times. If I had a penny for every new social media measurement tool I’ve been invited to try over the last two years, I’d be a very rich man.

For years, there has been a rapid growth in the number of businesses that are selling these services to companies. Some have come and gone, others have faded into obscurity.

Yet, there hundreds of new boutique digital agencies, web design houses and digital marketing companies being created every day.

I started Smartdog to provide independent impartial advice in a sector where there can be more smoke and mirrors than any actual real substance.

How does your business know who to appoint? Do you even understand who you need to appoint first? What services do you require?

Does your business even need to invest money into your website or digital marketing?

How is a business owner supposed to learn all this stuff?

Of course, you don’t need to know everything, but you do need people in your business who you can trust and approach for knowledgeable advice about digital marketing.

The other day someone said to me “you’re a poacher turned gamekeeper” and I suppose that they are right.

I used to work for agencies in the past and now I’m working on the client side of the table, fighting in their corner, acting as their advocate and guide. I personally find it a truly rewarding experience.

The truth is that businesses every single day waste thousands of pounds on digital marketing and web design. The main reason is a lack of knowledge between the buyer (you) and the seller (typically an agency). Please don’t think by reading this post that I’m anti-agency, I’m not. Not all the agencies I worked for were bad and there are some really good ones out there doing a great job for their clients.

The point I’m making is that many businesses really need a second opinion, the technology has moved faster than most of us had predicted it would and businesses just can’t keep pace.

We are already shifting to the third screen from the Personal Computer to Smartphone Devices and Tablets. We are already living in a world gone mobile.

A Recent Example

Only recently I saw a business owner state:

“I am looking for someone who can help me to drive large amounts of traffic to my website and blog, list build, create fabulous e-shot campaigns, look after all of my social media etc. It has become too onerous a task for me and my team and as we are growing, we need help.”

The problem with this statement is it’s not very realistic.

A common misconception made by many businesses is they put a junior (or young person) in charge who they think ‘gets’ social media or knows the Internet. You should be putting someone senior in-charge with marketing experience. You also need to set some clear business goals and objectives stating why you’re involved in that marketing channel in the first place.

Even some of the best marketers struggle to list build or drive significant amounts of traffic to a website of any sort. Any wage that you had set out to paid this person isn’t going to be an effective spend of your money. Also, building e-shot campaigns takes some knowledge of HTML to design the e-mail (this is a separate learned set of skills).

How are you going to measure your ROI and results overall?

Just because a young person uses the Internet on a daily basis doesn’t mean they instantly understand all the technology. It has taken me five + years of solid hard work; I’ve read thousands of blog posts; I’ve spoken at events; I’ve worked as both a web designer and digital marketer to gain my overall expertise. I’ve even started my own websites and learnt from my own mistakes.

You could save yourself thousands of pounds if only you could speak to right person before making these kind of decisions for your business.

Sure, there is no harm recruiting a graduate, but they ‘will’ need specific training to get them up to a level where they’ll be able to help you accordingly. No student fresh out of University has had all the skills needed to be at the top of their game straight away.

I remember how fresh faced I was, I needed real hands-on experience first before I could have ever dreamed of starting a business like this.

In this digital economy you now need a second opinion on your digital marketing strategy because so much of the advice is conflicting and as I eluded to earlier, many of the companies I’ve come into contact with who are selling these services to my clients offer more smoke and mirrors than actually marketing ROI and measurable results.

It’s been two years of hard work and I’m still here on my mission to help as many businesses as I possibly can.

Thank you for your continued support and thank you to all the people who have helped advise me so far.

Happy 2nd Birthday Smartdog.

Sincerely yours,

I’ve never heard of it before today? Well, Google Analytics a web analytics solution that use a small piece of tracking code that is placed on every page of the website in the HTML code. It will tell you how many people came to your site, how they found you and what pages they looked at.

It lets you answer these crucial questions about your website performance:

• the why, the what, the how 

With this website performance and visitor information, you can improve your website return on investment, increase conversions, and make more money online from your both your website and digital marketing campaigns.

The process of improving your website performance by using this information from Google Analytics, is called Web Analytics.

Every single company in today’s digital age should be measuring and tracking their website goals effectively using web analytics. Most businesses use Google Analytics as the preferred web analytics solution, mainly because the standard version is FREE to use.

If your law firm is at all interested in measuring and improving the performance of your website (and you really should be!) then setting up goals in Google Analytics is the best thing to start with.

Measuring success is about monitoring the leads captured and most importantly which content drives the most sales. This is because law firm websites tend to be very content driven and have lots of areas of information explaining the legal services that they provide.

Below is my list of the to help them measure the performance and effectiveness of their website.

1. Contact Form Leads / Enquiries

Your contact form should be easily accessible throughout your website and it is probably the first place a potential client will go to make a tentative enquiry or ask for more information about your services.

By tracking this goal in Google Analytics, you will be able to determine how many enquiries your website traffic generates and how you can improve the no. of people who convert to make an enquiry.

2. Newsletter or E-mail List Subscriptions

Most law firms who are looking to take advantage of the benefits a website provides, will have an area on their website that allows potential clients to subscribe for more information and updates via e-mail.

The website page that confirms your submission on to this e-mail list, should be the page that is track. i.e. yourdomain.com/thank-you-e-mail-confirmation

3. Downloads of Marketing Material / Reports

A key area of any law firm website is the available downloads of research information, marketing material or industry reports to provide further information to potential clients and interested businesses.

A law firm should measure the downloads of any marketing material and reports in Google Analytics, to ensure the content that has been created is easily accessed and is useful to your visitors.

4. Visitors who viewed 4 pages or more

A website visitor who looks at more than one page on your website is likely interested in your content. With Google Analytics, you can setup a goal that is recorded when a visitor has viewed a set number of website pages.

It is important to understand engagement with your content and how useful it is to end user. You can also measure visitor engagement by looking at the bounce rate of a page.

Bounce rate has been described as the ‘I came, I saw, I puke, I left’ metric. It represents the percentage of visitors who entered your site and “bounce” (leave the site) rather than continue viewing any other pages within your website.

A high bounce rate can suggest your website page is not usable, badly designed, not relevant, interesting or laid out properly for the end user.

5. Time on Site > Greater than 5 Minutes

Website visitors who are looking at your website for a long time, specifically staff contact details are obviously interested enough in your services, copy and marketing material that they have a genuine need to get in touch with you. This might be for some advice, or to become your client.

Someone who views a number of pages and spends a while on your site is likely to be an engaged visitors who is reading your content with intent or looking for a specific service.

It is important to understand engaged vistiors and to make sure people are not just spending a long time on your website because they can’t find what they are looking for.

Google Analytics lets you measure time on site as a goal, you can measure a set amount of time on the website tracked e.g 5 minutes.

How to Setup a Goal in Google Analytics?

This video below from Google, will show you how to setup a basic goal in Google Analytics. It is best to speak to your IT Manager or Website Manager first, they will be able to apply the Google Analytics tracking code across all your website pages.

I hope this post helps you with your Google Analytics tracking and if your law firm is measuring this kind of information, then you’ll be way ahead of competition!

If you need any help setting up Google Analytics or would like an audit of your website performance, why don’t you get in touch with me. I’d love to help you.

Original Post Credit: A quick shout to Mike Bean of at Isaac Parker for inspiring this post, who wrote a similar post here.

So what’s all the big excitement around this particular email example?

Each day companies across the global send out promotional, sales and remarketing emails to their existing and new customer databases. This specific example email is a classic customer retention email designed to encourage customers who haven’t purchased over a set number of months to buy once again. It is a rare sight, that few businesses rarely implement on a consistent basis.

I had previously been regularly buying products from ebuyer.com last year, however I haven’t purchased anything in the last 6 months from their website. I was sent this.

Specific Langauge Used

Note the language in the copy which shows that ebuyer.com care, they really want my business more than the other hundreds of online retailers, where I could be buying my technology and computing products from. In the copy, they also encourage me about the benefits of the improvements to their website, that they’ve added more product lines and reduced prices too.

The final line is a gem ‘we’d love to see you again soon, and your friends are more than welcome too!’ Ebuyer.com understand the value of a customer who has a good experience with them, who will probably go on to tell 10 of their close friends about the website (I know I have!)

Emotive Imagery

The imagery used in this email design is subtle, just enough to evoke the sentiment that they miss my repeat business. Note the don’t try to sell to me, there are no product images in this email and for good reason.

Most Companies Fail with Retention Strategies

A lot of business have got complacent (even lazy!) with email over the last 10 years. It has become such a widely accepted channel we use to communicate on a daily basis with each other, it has almost been taken for granted. The rapid rise of social media has also contributed to some companies switching their attention too keenly without considering the power email still has as a marketing channel.

In the BIA/Kelsey Local Commerce Monitor study for the U.K, it revealed that email marketing delivered a robust ROI. From the 308 small and medium-sized businesses that were surveyed, 16 percent reported an ROI of 10 to 19 times the money spent on the campaign, with 12 percent reporting an ROI of 20 times or more the initial spend.

Email outperforms social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, for those businesses that understand the ROI they receive from these channels.

Read the full report from Omar Kattan.

Remarketing and Retention

If you have ever bought something online it’s safe to say that you will have probably received an email from the company you bought from. These emails will be selling you more products or encouraging you to come back and purchase again via the use of discounts, sales or offers. Those types of email are called remarketing emails, designed to encourage repeat purchases. A customer retention email however, is designed to retain existing customers.

An example of a remarketing email might be;

• A purchase confirmation email
• Post-purchase remarketing emails – for example; to sell you new items similar to your last purchases. Amazon do this very well.
• Reactivation email campaign – for example; customers who haven’t completed registration or haven’t purchased anything yet.
• abandoned shopping basket emails or uncompleted order e-mails

An example of a specific customer retention email might be;

• a sincere thank you email appreciating their custom
• days since last purchase email
• customer loyalty email – a specific unique offer to reward loyal (high value) customers

You might also want to take a look at these 3 Awesome Emails to Increase Customer Retention.

Both are important tactics of email marketing, a lot of companies should re-evaluate their email marketing strategy to ensure they are maximising the revenue available from this channel. You can learn a lot from the companies that get email marketing right, like Zappos.

In Dave Chaffey’s blog post Email Remarketing – why aren’t more people using it? you can see that the percentage of companies employing the more advanced strategies of email marketing is relatively low, even though this technique has been available for 10+ years, it’s still surprisingly uncommon with only just over a third of companies using it in the UK, according to the research from the Email Marketing Census report by Econsultancy.

Tips to Remember about E-mail Marketing

Here are my key tips to remember about the benefits of using e-mail marketing.

• Email is not dead, it still outperforms social media to those companies who understand it as a marketing channel
• It offers a robust ROI
• It is relatively cheap and cost effective to implement compared to other digital channels
• Timely remarketing can increase customer long term value or repeat purchases
• Retention emails can increase customers loyalty and affinity with the brand
• Segment your email lists to allow for more advanced targeting, remarketing and personalised content

What networking events are there going on in Yorkshire, well..luckily for us Yorkshire business folk there are plenty of events and networking groups to attend.

Harrogate Networking Events

Harrogate has a few good networking groups, I’ve attended most of them now. It is up to you what cost and budget you’ve set a side for networking. As most of the organisations or groups will tell you regarding membership benefits, you will tend to build up trust and referrals once you start attending the groups or events more regularly.

Personally, you need to find out what works best for you. Try out a few different networking groups before you choose to commit to one.

Each group has different members and a different way of doing it. Find out what fits your business best.  I would also love to see MORE regular networking events starting up Harrogate without membership costs required.

Network North Harrogate

Frequency: Every Tuesday 7.30am

Place:
The Yorkshire Hotel
Prospect Place
Harrogate
HG1 1LA

Cost = £10.00 inc VAT.

You can attend twice before membership.

Organiser Contact Details
Alex Gordon
07949 402966

4Networking Harrogate Business Breakfast

Frequency: Two Wednesdays, each month. Next one is on Wednesday 11th of January.

Place:
The White Hart Hotel
Cold Bath Road
Harrogate
HG2 0NF

Cost = £10.00

Basic membership allows you to attend three events before deciding on membership.

Link to the group: http://www.4networking.biz/Events/Group/Harrogate

Harrogate Met Club

Frequency: Usually a Networking event once or twice a month. See www.themetclub.co.uk for details.

Place:
Hotel du Vin
Prospect Place
Harrogate
HG1 1LB

Cost = Varying costs for non members.

Organiser Contact Details
Lorraine
01423 525622

BforB Harrogate

Frequency: Every other Thursday morning

Place:
Grants Hotel
Swan Road
Harrogate
HG1 2SS

Cost = £10

Again you can attend 2-3 times as a non-member before deciding on membership.

Organiser Contact Details

Linda Stevenson
0796 663345

http://www.bforb.com

Harrogate Blah (Women Only)

Frequency: Regular meetings each month.

Cost = £20.00 per meeting

For the women of the business world in Yorkshire, there is also the Harrogate BLaH run by Rachel Auty & Ella Gascoigne.

Check their website for more details of membership. http://www.harrogateblah.co.uk/

Leeds Networking Events

Leeds is probably the best place for networking in Yorkshire. There are plenty of events to attend all over the place, I’ve not listed every single event here but the mains one I’ve heard about or have been recommended have been listed.

LSxCafé

A monthly meetup for those working in the tech, media, startup, creative & digital arena, attracting designers, developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, technologists and VCs.

http://lsx.co/lsxcafe/

Cost = Free

Frequency: Every First Tuesday of the month.

Place:
Old Broadcasting House
148 Woodhouse Lane
LS2 9EN Leeds
United Kingdom

The Magnet Club

When: Every First Tuesday of the month.

Place:
Shine Business Centre
Harehills Road
LS8 5HS Leeds
United Kingdom

Cost = £18.00

Wednesday 18^th

Check their Twitter for more.

Simply Networking

http://www.networking4business.com/leeds-events.htm

Frequency: Monthly events

Place:
Weetwood Hall
Otley Road
LS16 5PS, Leeds
United Kingdom

Cost = £10.00

Organised by Mark Greenwood

4Networking Leeds

Frequency: Multiple dates each month

Place:
Leeds City Centre
Crown Plaza Hotel
Wellington Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire

Cost = £10.00

Basic membership allows you to attend three events before deciding on membership.

Link to the group: http://www.4networking.biz/Events/Group/Leeds

Bettakultcha

Not quite business networking, but a great place to meet new people and contacts. Bettakultcha, is a night of presentations held in Leeds. A great place to improve your fear of public speaking!

http://bettakultcha.com/category/videos/leeds/

Co-organised by, Richard Michie and Ivor Tymchak.

York Networking Events

Techtogetha

A networking event specifically for technology specialists.

Frequency: Bi-Monthly event

Place:
The Catalyst
York Science Park
Innovation Way
Heslington
York
YO10 5DG

Cost = FREE

http://techtogetha.co.uk/

BforB York

Frequency: Fortnightly Fridays at 6.45am

Place:
The Bar Convent
Blossom Street
York
YO24 1AQ

Cost = £10

Again you can attend 2-3 times as a non-member before deciding on membership.

4Networking York & Pocklington

York also has a 4Networking  Group in York & Pocklington.

Other Larger Networking Organisations:

There is of course the BNI who have a various different groups active in Leeds, York & Harrogate. Leeds & North Yorkshire Chamber also run a number of networking events regularly and Harrogate has it’s own separate Chamber who also have regular networking events.

Finally, the Yorkshire Mafia also put on a number of networking events around the Yorkshire area.

I hope this helps you as it did me with your search for some great networking events and I hope you meet some new contacts and get some new leads.

If you know of any other events that I’ve not listed here, why not add them in the comments below. Or you can drop me a line and I’ll add your event to the list.

For those who do read, share or comment regularly on my posts thank you very much indeed! I invite you to leave a comment below and tell me what kind of posts and information you’d like to hear discussed in 2012.

A big thank you to everyone who I have personally worked with or alongside over the last year and to my current set of clients have a fantastic Christmas break! Enjoy the time spent with your family and friends.

Special Christmas Thanks to the following People:

Chris Fairey, Digipest – For being one of the best mates a guy could have and a top developer to boot!

Joanna Butler, Search Engine Chocolate - For being a great friend when you need her most and for keeping me sane.

Simon Barker, Zath - For sharing his Google pain alongside me and for being a top notch bloke, blogger and friend.

Jackie Hole & Dan McGuire, Carnival Creative – For keeping my sane and for being good friends who I can rely on.

Stuart Bamforth, Digital Mercenary – For being a great designer, friend and introducing me to a great client this year.

Gavin Llewellyn, One to Many Mornings – For his great blog posts, feedback on my re-design and being a pretty cool person to talk too.

Julie Cheung, Carloan4u - For being a great SEO to know and for sharing her experiences and thoughts with me.

Dom Hodgson, Hodgetastic  – For putting on so many great SEO conferences, letting me speaking when no-one else would and for making me laugh when we meet up.

Tim Nash, Coding Futurers – For being a great person to talk too, helping me rally people for geek meet ups in York.

Paddy Moogan, Distilled – For interviewing me on his blog, being a great SEO to know and generally top dude.

Julie Bikerdyke (My bookkeeper) – For keeping my accounts from not being a mess and putting up with me.

Stuart Ramsay, Accountancy Extra – For all the great feedback and words of encouragement.

Karyn Fleeting & Joel Turner, Tinderbox Media - For being superb people to work with and good friends

Gary Hartley, FrogsThemes - For giving me honest (no bullshit) feedback and advice without pulling any punches.

Toby Drysdale, SEO Consultant – For all the great football banter and words of encouragement.

Also a very Happy Christmas to all of Smartdog digital’s,  partners, freelancers and the Awesome Games team. 

To all my other friends, contacts, followers on Twitter & Facebook, here’s to a wonderful Christmas and well deserved break for all of you and best wishes for 2012. Thank you for continued support.

Most of all thanks to my Dad for putting up with me, loving me as only a Father could and support me along this journey where ever it takes me.

Following on from Avinash Kaushik’s exceptional blog post Online Marketing Still A Faith Based Initiative where he talks about the following:

For all the data that is available online to businesses, we still rely mainly on faith based decisions. The problem he says, lies not with how we measure, the problem lies with you (company executives).

Avinash states three important reasons to answer why in a world so full of data, so empowering when it comes to relevance and creativity…why is it we suck so much at online measurement:

Based on his experience they are:

1. The web has been around forever and yet it is not in the blood of the executives who staff the top echelons of companies.
2. We still believe in and live in the world of “shout marketing”, the thing we have practiced on TV, radio and magazines all our lives.
3. Our lousy standards for accountability.

Why Aren’t you Measuring your Website Marketing Correctly?

What do I mean? Frankly, you as a company are quite happy to rely on assumptions and guesswork about your own website and online performance.

Customers are getting tortured every single day by ineffective websites, poor user interfaces and usability, and generally unappealing content.

You heard me! You measure your finance and billing, you track your company time using project management tools, you probably even note all your working hours in the office per employee.

WHY THEN… is your website the most neglected part of your business measurement strategy. Far too many companies in the UK alone are quite happy to throw money down the drain when it comes to their online marketing efforts, even in these tough economic times.

People assume that just because it’s a website and the fact it’s online means that it cannot be measured easily or it’s far too easy to ignore all the data that is collected.

The problem is not with the measurement tools or how we measure. The problem lies with you. There is a distinct lack of in-house knowledge and understanding about online marketing practices within some companies and how to measure online business intelligence effectively, especially in higher paid executive positions.

The UK internet economy is forecast to grow at 10% per annum between 2009 and 2015 to £174bn or possibly to as much as £228bn. - Boston Consulting Group, October 2010

Are you going to let your company miss out on available growth through online channels just because your happy to base decisions on faith and guesswork. I didn’t think so.

How Many Times Have you said any of these Statements:

• I think my pay per click spend of £1,000 a month is generating sales and leads
• I think my pay per click campaign generates ROI
• I think my search engine traffic is producing sales and enquiries
• I think the £10,000 we’ve just invested into SEO has resulted in more search traffic and authority
• I think my re-design of my website has resulted in more traffic and conversions
• I think my digital agency are doing a good job
• I think my visitors read our content
• I think our website has a good conversion rate
• I think my time on social media is well invested
• I think our customers find our website easy to use

Why should you be unsure of your answer?

Yet,  you are probably a person who has said at least one of these statements over the past year. In 2012, let’s put a stop to relying on assumptions and guesswork.

Most businesses have Google Analytics installed as standard, the main web analytics solution to track and measure your website performance. Stop ignoring it, don’t leave it your web designer or agency to interpret it for you, take control of your data and start discussing it within your company.

You will always need the support of a good web analyst to help you ask the right business questions of the data, such as ; ‘What is my best source of converting traffic?

But that doesn’t mean you can’t start discussing your website performance in your boardrooms and make it a focal part of your measurement strategy in your business already.

Start Measuring for Real

Hire a online marketing consultant to educate your marketing teams or hire someone in-house with the knowledge. Why are you prepared to listen to the guesswork and assumptions of others.

I’ve seen it with my own two eyes, companies who have ‘bought into’ what the marketing agency was selling, only to have no idea what they were paying for, how it should be measured or what results it generated.

It is criminal to think that this happens on a daily basis online! Shocking really, especially when we can measure our online channels with a 90%+ accuracy.

Yet, the education and knowledge gap grows wider every day, there are too few companies willing to educate and teach their clients about the results and how to measure their online marketing campaigns effectively.

What you Should try Measure and Improve in 2012:

• Setup basic goals tracking in Analytics to measure your website objectives e.g. conversions for; sales, leads, marketing material downloads.
• Try to increase your organic search traffic for 2012, look at your % share of search terms.
• Stop relying on ‘shout marketing’ metrics, visits, clicks, impressions, page views. They don’t mean much at face value.
• Segment different traffic performance individually to find what is best and what drives the best ROI.
• Focus on increasing your website conversion rate.
• Measure Visitor Loyalty & Visitor Recency. See who comes back and consumes your content regularly.
• For E-Commerce / Online Retail, measure and focus on increasing Average Order Value and decreasing your Days/ Time to Purchase.

Ask yourself this final question: Why does your website exist?

You should focus primarily on what your answer is.

This overall business objective will help you drive your website goals and key performance indicators in 2012. For example; my website exists to sell X product, then you might focus on improving your average order value, website conversion rate and organic search traffic to increase % of product X sales online and overall sales revenue of product X.

Make sense. I hope so.

Good luck and let’s try change 2012 to focus less on faith based decisions, instead focusing more on educated, results driven, data based facts.

Thank you for reading, if your business needs help educating your marketing teams to measure your online performance effectively or you want to hire a consultant to help you improve your website performance please give me a call on +44 (0)113 815 3328 or alternatively you can get in touch here.

We were approached by the Plan Shop Architects in Bedale to help them gain a new web presence that would reflect their status as a quality, local, architecture firm who specialise in Landscape and Interior Design, being an enthusiastic team of design professionals.

For a reasonable budget (nearly 70% cheaper than the average cost of a website), we helped introduce Plan Shop Architects to the benefits of using WordPress to build their new website. For smaller business we recommend buying a pre-designed professional WordPress Theme and then building upon it.

Though sometimes, you might not be able to find a professional theme that suits your business’s individual requirements. See my post on ‘The Quest for the Holy WordPress Theme‘

In this project we purchased a pre-designed professional premium theme on behalf of the client which Smartdog then did the following with:

• Professional WordPress Setup and Installation
• Customised the design to the clients liking and brand
• Populated the theme with the content and optimised it for search engine visibility.
• Installed recommend plugins for SEO and social media sharing

Novak has been a true inspiration to me over the last year since starting my own business. He had one dream to play and win Wimbledon and he did it!  If you stay focused on what you want to achieve and put in the effort and hard work, then anything is possible.

Here are my 10 business lessons that I’ve learnt from Novak Djokovic:

1. Know Yourself Better than your Competitors

It is better to focus on your own game than follow what your competitors are doing all the time. It can be really frustrating if you’ve had a bad or tough week and someone else who is competing directly with you has won a new client or has just landed that big contract win. So what? It doesn’t make a difference to you.

With the rise of social media such as Twitter, it is easy to get caught up in following your competitors or nearest rivals, trust me just don’t do it. It is not productive and you will end up making yourself feel worst. Focus on improving and knowing yourself better. It will prove a better use of your time in the long run, you might even learn something new about your own abilities or character.

Focus on yourself.

2. Refine and Improve your Techniques

Don’t stop when you think you have mastered something. Keep looking out for new techniques and always look to better yourself, the best footballers in the world like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi don’t get good over night, they are always on the training ground practicing free kicks and learning to hit and control the football in new ways.

Novak is testament to this, he worked hard on his techniques and improved the areas that were weaknesses in his game. Even though he is now No.1 in the world, he is still trying to improve every day. You should too!

3. Keep Focused on Your Goals

Don’t stop until you get there, no one said it was going to be an easy ride. Along the way you will face much resistance (that little voice in your head), ignore the voices and cut out the noise, concentrate on your journey and don’t let the pit falls along the way prevent you reaching it.

Sometimes, it will take you longer to reach your objectives than you thought, but you’ll get there in the end as long as YOU believe you can. Forget about putting it off until tomorrow, take action now.

4. Have Fun Outside Work

http://youtu.be/8y2ORlHxIL8

Novak Djokovic has been know as the ‘Joker’ of the APT Tour, he is continually making fun of himself and that of others around him to lighten the mood. Yes, things can get far too serious at times especially when even the tinniest things can get blown way out of proportion.

Make sure you plan some downtime off the grid, it can help you refocus you attention on the things that really matter and help you take stock of what is important.

Have fun whilst you work, if you’re not doing something you love, look at whether or not you’re doing the right thing at all. A positive mental attitude can have wonders on your productivity. Go smash it!

Keeping yourself active, exercising and fitness are a great way to boost your energy levels and reduce stress. Medical fact!

5. You can crack a Competitive Niche

Nobody would of thought that anyone would of broken into the top 2 in the world and overthrown the complete Tennis dominance of Roger Feeder and Rafa Nadal. Most people in the media wouldn’t give anyone else a second look, people said that these two players would dominate the Men’s game for years to come but Djokovic managed to break in on their rein at the top.

Djokovic was able to do this because he believed in his abilities and didn’t listen to the critics or the Sports media, that there wasn’t much hope for anyone else. He kept trying and working hard until he had an opportunity to beat his rivals.

This is pure determination to push forward even when it doesn’t seem realistically possible to achieve, just as the Adidas strap line says ‘Impossible is Nothing‘

6. Practice Makes Perfect

As a business owner, entrepreneur, or even as an employee you’re not going to get things right every time. No one is perfect, everyone is human. I’ve learnt as I have gone along, heck, this is the first time I’ve ever ran my own business, I am expected to know the right answer to every problem? Of course not.

Every single successful business person will tell you that they have made many big mistakes along the way, the crucial thing is to learn from you’re mistakes.

Each time you learn, you’ll get better and better at what you do. Keep refining your business processes and try to smooth out the areas that don’t work so well to make them more effective.

7. Adopt a Winning Mindset

How would Novak Djokovic have won anything if he only aimed to compete. He wanted to win, not just win once, he wants to win every match. You should approach your business with the same mindset. Try not just to compete each day, but turn up to win.

A strong winning mindset will help you accomplish more, even if it’s just winning at your day to day to do list, you will still achieve much more than just competing.

8. Keep Calm Under Pressure

Stress and pressure is part of life, it’s a fact. Pressure is a form of resistance (it’s that little voice or voices telling us but what happens if we fail or lose). You have to deal with it, put it out of your mind. Focus on what is in front of you.

Life is too short to worry all the time, believe me! You put pressure on yourself, manage your deadlines and workload more effectively to reduce pressure. Set yourself and your clients sensible deadlines that everyone can adhere to.

9. Support from Friends & Family is Important

Novak couldn’t have won all those titles on his own, he had the strong support of a great coach, his family and his close friends. Business is never easy, it is especially important you keep tight-nit support lines around you.

Ask your friends, family and peers for advice. You’ll be amazed at how many people are in exactly the same position as you and  they can share many of the same experiences and advice with you. I know I’ve reached out to people who I respect greatly to get calm words of advice when I’ve needed them most.

Don’t forget who you’re friends are.

10. Stay Humble and True to Your Roots

Novak Djokovic has always been a humble champion, thanking his supporters, fans and competitors in his success. Novak Djokovic didn’t just win titles for himself, he did it for Serbia. Never has a nation been so proud of its sporting hero.

Even if you become mega successful, remember to stay humble for what you have achieved. Nobody likes a showoff, too many times I’ve seen bloggers and other business owners rise to stardom and they have completely forgotten about the people who put them there in the first place.

No one likes an ego, respond to the people who reach out to you. No matter how big you get.

Thank your customers, subscribers and fans for staying loyal to you and think about those humble beginnings.

Finally, thank you Novak Djokovic, you make me proud, you make all of Serbia proud! Most of all, you have taught me some pretty inspirational lessons that I’ve shared here on my blog for everyone to read! You are the best! You are my sporting hero!

Flickr Photo Credit: By Frédéric de Villamil

Flickr Photo Credit: By toga (John Togasaki)

Flickr Photo Credit: By y.caradec (Yann Caradec)

Ok so I have tell you honestly about this cheap link building tactic, I’m sure that many people in the industry will agree for my reasons in taking this viewpoint. These views are my own, agree or disagree, I wanted to make people aware that this is happening.

Post Update: To highlight the fact that it’s not just web design agencies who use this sneaky cheating link building tactic but also big reputable brands. I recommend strongly reading Joost De Valk’s revelations on GoDaddy’s spammy link building techniques.

Throughout this post, I’m strictly referring to website design agencies and digital agencies NOT freelance designers, developers or independent design studios. Also, it is worth noting that not every agency uses this technique, but unfortunately there are lots that do!

I have always taken the view that most links should be built organically by hard work, networking, social media, interacting with authority blogs and websites, article writing, guest posting and establishing a true brand reputation online.

SEO takes time, it’s a long term investment, not a quick fix. Your content should really speak for itself.

It is logical that you should work at establishing yourself as an authority on a particular area or topic, I can’t think of anything better as a blogger or company to raise your profile and reputation.

Here are some reason why I’m particularly against this technique that some web design and digital agencies employ to quickly and cheaply improve their own SEO authority and rankings in Google.

Offers No End Value to the Client

I’m venting my concerns with this technique as it has long been the practice of some website design and digital agencies to place a small link or in some case the logo of their company at the footer of the page to let visitors know who designed that particular website.

I have no problem with a logo e.g. designed by example or website by example.

What isn’t right, is putting a small text link, usually contains the anchor text of a particular keyword e.g website design agency e.g. Web Design Leeds or Digital Marketing Agency on there.

Also, because it is placed in the footer of the website, it is usually replicated site wide meaning it is counted more than once and on multiple pages

You might be surprised to find out that some website design and digital agencies cheat to win at building their authority quickly in Google. I’ve summarised arguments for and against this, I’m personally taking the latter view.

Piggy backing on Search Engine Authority

The client has spent their own money, time and effort over the years building up their authority in the search engines. Perhaps, an SEO agency did a fantastic job on their content, optimisation and link building recently and have helped propel the website’s authority higher and higher.

Why then, should a web design company or digital agency (who also might be selling SEO as a competitor) be allowed to place a link on the client’s authoritative website and piggy back off the hard work of the client’s or the SEO agency’s investment.

Reasons why you COULD argue doing this:

• They built the website, they should be credited for their hard work and for the long term maintenance of the website.
• A link is possibly worth more to them, than any referrals through word of mouth.
• People who like the website design will see the link and might click through to enquire

Really, that is the only three possible justifications that I could think off. Now, lets hear the reasons why not.

Reasons why you SHOULD NOT be doing this:

• The link offers no end value to the clients website or its visitors
• It’s not just one link on the homepage, it’s a link on the footer of every single page across the entire website.
• The client rightfully paid for the work, that should be thanks enough
• If your work is good enough, your client would spread referrals through word of mouth anyway.
• If you are so proud of your work, showcase it in your portfolio instead
• It is a completely free link for them. No effort required.
• They are using the clients own authority in Google to build their own reputation and authority

Here’s food for thought…

Google should be de-value Footer links worldwide on the basis that they offer no value to anyone but the people who exploit them unfairly.

Eric Ward, made some really good couple of points on Joost’s earlier blog post that I’ve included here:

• These links should not impact search rank.
• These links would be fine if they did not impact search rank.
• These links are positively impacting search rank for some, but not all, sites that try them.
• This encourages others to try it.
• Search Engine’s need to ignore all footer links for rankings purposes. Not some, not most. All.
• Nobody puts high importance content links at the very end of a web page, and then does it over and over on other pages. If all footer links were removed from rankings calculations, the results would be better and the collateral damage would be minimal.

If you are giving a website design or digital agency free reign to put a link on your website consider how much authority and page rank your website has in Google and think again before you give them the right to stick a link containing their keywords on your authoritative website that you have worked so hard to build.

If you agree or disagree I would love to hear you views in the comments below.