The Call To Action

A good website needs a good call to action. That’s the piece of text, picture or button that encourages visitors not just to look at your site but to start spending with you.

Web hosting company SingleHop has just released some research on what works as a call to action.

Their findings are interesting. Above-the-fold (a term from printing that still lives on in design, meaning in the top half of the screen) calls to action (CTAs) were found to attract much higher (72%) click rates than below-the-fold CTAs (47%).

Buttons provide a 200% better click through rates than text according to SingleHop. Colour is also important, warm colours in the red spectrum create a sense of urgency, while cool, blue colours suggest thought and reflection rather than action.

The size of your call to action is also important. A good clean design means it will stand out, but if your action button is too large it will dominate and distract, if it’s too small it will just get lost. 

An eye-catching shape will also help give your CTA visual appeal that will lead to customers taking action.

You’ll need some text too, of course. SingleHop’s three rules of thumb are “convey value”, “create urgency” and “be direct”. 

Website magazines took SingleHop’s research and went looking for some good examples online. These companies are doing the right thing and may provide inspiration for you and your designers. 

H.Bloom, an online florists, created a Mother’s Day CTA, which worked well. High contrast design made the page stand out and a “shop now” button was both urgent and direct. 

Skype’s CTA made clever use of shapes to make their “join” button an integral part of the overall message and the logical thing for the browser to click on. 

Netflix made the value of their free trial very apparent in their CTA and weren’t shy of shouting about it. The “start your free month” button in red sits right in the centre waiting to be clicked. 

Volusion, who build online shops, offered a free trial, and they did it twice with two friendly orange buttons.

PagePart specialise in mobile websites (something Toolkit does too), and used the word “instantly” with a “go” button to create urgency with some hard-hitting research from Google – “50% of people will leave a website if It’s not mobile-friendly” – to further reinforce the message. 

Toolkit know that the way your page looks is vital to how successful it will be. That’s why we offer a bespoke page dressing service which will include effective calls to actions with great graphics and buttons that demand to be clicked. We’re happy to make as many changes as you want – with no limits – until you get the site that works for your business. You get the template to use for any new pages you add to your site too.

Just call Toolkit today on 02380 633 644 to start revamping your site.

Find out more about Toolkit Websites, Web Design in Southampton, Hampshire, UK and how they can help your business grow.

Google draws level with God!

Google is as trusted as God makes a very good headline, and it’s been the outstanding result from the recently released findings of the Future of Britain Survey, a piece of research from London marketing agency OMD.

The detail is a little more revealing. Respondents to the questionnaire which organisations had their best interests at heart and were asked to choose their favourites. 

Top of the pile on that basis was the NHS. Bottom were politicians, with just 3% of the vote. Google sits level with religious institutions, with 17% of people saying the church and the search had their best interests at heart. 

Down the age range, Google did even better. Twenty-eight percent of 16 to 24-year-olds found the search engine the most trustworthy thing in their lives. This is the future, and your future customers. 

Yet another piece of evidence that knowing how Google works is vital to every business that operates online.

The company’s share of the UK market in searches is extraordinary. In April 2013 it handled 90.55% of UK searches. That figure represented a small rise on March’s figures after some shock horror stories were triggered in January when the search giant’s market share fell below 90% briefly.  

It’s also starting to make big moves in the social media world. Google+ is now the second biggest social network in the world with 343 million active users in January this year. And, of course it owns YouTube, the third most visited website on the planet, which it is cleverly integrating into an all-encompassing Google experience. 

The only other internet name to feature in the Future of Britain chart was Facebook – way down with 9%, the same level of trust as private healthcare companies and just a point better off than lawyers.

Your company’s position in those search results could be a matter of survival. The top result in searches gets more than 40% of all traffic. The first page gets just shy of 90%. If you’re on page two you’re fighting for a share of just 4.37% of traffic. 

Toolkit can help you work with Google. We’ll look at your site in the way Google does; the company has strict rules about how it ranks pages and we’re on top of them all. 

Search Engine Optimisation is still an important facet of the web world, but it’s not about ‘tricking’ Google to rate your site highly, it’s all about following their rules. You need good quality content, regularly updated, on a site that’s designed to make it easy to find. Increasingly, you need a good social media presence too. Toolkit can help you get started onsocial media, put you in touch with the best writers and, of course, design a site that’s user and Google friendly. 

 

Give us a call on 02380 633 644 or email info@toolkitwebsites.co.uk, to find out how we can help you. 

Talk to Toolkit and we’ll help you talk to Google.

Find out more about Toolkit Websites, Web Design in Southampton, Hampshire, UK and how they can help your business grow.

What’s a 'like' worth?

We’re all rushing around trying to get social media fans, but how much does it cost to get a Facebook like and how much are these fans worth to your business?

Likes can be costed if they are bought through Facebook advertising. Most Facebook advertising works on a ‘cost per thousand impressions’ or ‘cost per click’ basis, paying either when 1,000 people have seen an ad or when the little box is clicked.

Facebook has recognised the limitations of these measures with a new ‘cost per action’ charge. This paid for action can include liking your page or clicking on a link.

So, fans can have a price, but what is there value? It’s a difficult – maybe impossible – calculation to make, but social media agency Syncapse have teamed up with researchers Hotspex to try to find the elusive figure.
And, the answer is $174 on average.

That average comes from a large range of values. At the top of the tree is fashion store Zara, whose fans are said to be worth an impressive $405.54 each, Levis come second. At the bottom are Coca Cola, whose $70.16 value per fan is still pretty impressive, Xbox are next up.

It’s easy to see that Zara and Levis are relatively highly priced brands in a business where influence is everything. Coca Cola is cheap and many Xbox fans are probably too young to be spending their own money – it might be an interesting exercise to see where your business fits. Syncapse says the main determining factor is purchase price, but still finds MacDonald’s’ fans are more valuable than both Nike and Adidas.

Max Kalehoff, vice president of product marketing at Syncapse, says businesses need to measure what their fans do. Do fans spend more, or more often than non-fans? Do they promote your business?
Only when you know what a fan is worth can you know what it’s worth spending trying to get new ones, says Kalehoff.

Facebook ad buyer, Marc Grabowski, says you need to go even further because some fans are worth more than others. How many people will like Manchester United’s Facebook page without ever handing any money over to the Old Trafford club?

And it also costs to keep fans. They need to be entertained, which means producing content.

Of course, there is a value to every Facebook fan – if they’ve given their click any thought they’ve shown at the very least an interest in your business.

The research required to measure all this may be too expensive, too technical or too time-consuming for a small business to consider.

However, there is a lesson you can learn here however small your business:
Blindly chasing fans without any idea how you are going to interact with them is probably going to be wasted effort.

Do take a look at who are your most valuable fans and design your marketing around them.

The research also found that, three-quarters of fans share good experiences and promotions and discounts with Facebook friends. And, be warned, two-thirds will tell their friends when they’re unhappy.

Toolkit can help you find your feet in social media by setting up your presence on all the most important sites – from YouTube to Twitter – with some great discounts on bundles of services. Check out our websites Social Media page via:

http://www.toolkitwebsites.co.uk/Social_Media_Services

For more information call our team on 02380 633 644 or email info@toolkitwebsites.co.uk.

Find out more about Toolkit Websites, Web Design in Southampton, Hampshire, UK and how they can help your business grow.

What do your customers see when they walk in the door

Social marketing, email marketing in fact marketing of all sorts can only ever be as good as the shop window they send people to – on the web that means your website. That’s why at Toolkit we recommend our customers give their site a complete revamp every two to three years and offer a special redesign package to make it cost effective.

Your marketing needs to be good, of course, but the centre of all your on line trading, where the browser becomes the customer, is your website

Fashions in design move very quickly – at the moment a very graphical and image heavy look is in – and it’s easy to look out of date. Customers don’t want to spend money with someone who isn’t keeping up with the world. The web has made shopping around so easy that if you don’t grab attention with a good looking site your buyers will have clicked away.

It’s always good practice to look at what your competitors are up to. Take a look at their sites and see if there’s anything you can pick up on. Always be open minded.

And behind a good looking site, there must be a site that works well. Is it easy to find the way to your shop? Are your contact details easy to find on every page? Do all the links work? Encourage friends and family to have a click around your site and give you some honest feedback. Remember what the prime purpose of your site is – selling – and ask yourself how effectively it fills that brief.

You have to move with the hardware too. As more browsers look at the web on small, mobile screens, it’s vital that your site is accessible to them. Toolkit can optimise your site for phones and tablets.

Once you have a site that your business can be proud of, then it’s time to work on getting as many people as possible to see it. Don’t put the social marketing horse before the website cart.

To find out about our redesign service and a host of other online services, including marketing, call our friendly, local team on 02380 633 644.

Find out more about Toolkit Websites, Web Design in Southampton, Hampshire, UK and how they can help your business grow.

A personal plus from Google

The two giants of the social media world would appear to be Facebook and Twitter. But slowly growing in the background is Google+ and it could be the one that’s really worth investing your time in.

It’s quite a clever innovation, combining the power of the web’s biggest and best search engine with your personal interests.

Google+ takes that a stage further and also integrates with YouTube and Gmail as well as the hugely important Google maps. With none of the fanfare that has accompanied the media-friendly rise of Tweets and status updates, Google+ is now the second biggest social network on the planet.

In fact, so powerful is Google+ becoming, that if you take look at the way Facebook has been redesigned you’ll see it bears more than a passing resemblance to Google’s social look.

Google+ and your business.

If you have a business, you should really have a Google+ page for it. Straight away you’ll see the effect on your search results. You’ll get even more traction when other Google+ users search for you.

This being Google - owners of the most valuable data in the world - there are a lot of tools available to users to see who’s looking for you, who’s talking about you and so on.

With the system of circles, you can maintain and separate your personal and business life and target the right people to talk to.

A Google+ page in your name and signed blog posts will further boost your search juice - if you’re an expert in your field you’ll start to get recognised as such and your writing will be recommended to searchers. Google’s prime directive is to provide the best search results and you need to be a part of that process and play their game.

Don’t take our word for it. Take a look at the big names that have signed up and follow their lead - this is a ship you need to be on.

As web experts, we at Toolkit know the importance of Google and we can help you understand how it views your website and change it to make it work for you. We’re also experts in social media and offer a number of setup services that will get you up and running with a great looking and effective presence. And we can help you make search engine optimisation of your site an everyday thing.

Just give us a call on 02380 633 644 or email info@toolkitwebsites.co.uk and we’ll start talking you through your options.


Find out more about Toolkit Websites, Web Design in Southampton, Hampshire, UK and how they can help your business grow.