Free Web Design - Tempted?

In recent months we’ve seen an increase in a worrying trend – website developers offering giveaway websites.   When something looks too good to be true, it usually is.  

We live in a time when marketing budgets are generally tight and the concept of investing money in a new website comes low on the list of company priorities.   This means that something for free can appear tempting on the surface.  While there’s nothing wrong with website developers offering gimmicks that pull in potential clients, if you’re seriously considering taking advantage of such an offer there are a few factors to consider.  Not least of which is the damage it could do to your business.

In some situations, the offer of ‘cheap’ websites can be a good marketing ploy.  The company offering the cheap websites will provide a cheap website for the price quoted but what they really want to do is get the best result for the potential client, which usually means highlighting why it’s worth the potential client spending a bit more than they had originally intended.   This is fine if that’s what their intention is right from the start.  On the other hand, there are web developers who will produce websites for just a few £hundred and have no intention of upselling.  And then there are those who offer a free website giveaway at periods (e.g. once a month), who are basically trying to get contact details of people who want a new website …

Ask yourself this question: “If a web development company is in the position where it has the time to design and develop a website totally free, then what does that tell you about the success of that web development company?”.   Could it tell you that they’re not busy enough because they’re not gaining ongoing new business through referrals?   Could you also think that they’re new in the business, or doing it part-time and are looking for guinea pigs to hone their skills?   Or are they just generally nice people who want to ‘give something back to the business world’?   The chances of it being the latter are fairly remote.

So where’s the real harm if you DO get a free website? 

The Custwin view is that if you lined the resulting website up against those of your direct competitors and asked people you know for their honest opinions, you’d soon find out that it wasn’t worth the time you invested in briefing the web developer.   Worse than this, if your new website launched and several months down the line you realised that it had generated you next to no business, how would you feel?   Taking that another step, suppose a competitor launched a new website on the same day as your ‘free’ one but had spent more on their website so that it looked good and flowed nicely and was effectively promoted  – within no time at all you’d be wondering why business is so hard to gain, when your competitor is doing well.

In the end, it’s tempting to go for a ‘free’ offer (or to be enticed by one and although you don’t get the freebie, still be talked into a cheap website).   If this could become you in the coming months then these tips could help you to change your mind …

1. Look out for tell-tale signs that they’re part-time businesses.  Is there just a mobile number on the website?   Are they hard to get hold of?   Do you get a ‘feeling’ that they don’t do this job all the time?
   

2. Get clarification of exactly what is supplied in the free offer – is it a hastily thrown-together website from a template or is it something that’s going to work?
   

3. Look at the portfolio of the web developer – judge their previous work and remember that they’re only going to put their best stuff online.   Make contact with the owners of those websites and without making them aware of your intentions, find out how much business their website generates for them.
   

4. Take some of the web developer portfolio websites and search for some phrases in Google that you’d expect to see them appear under.  If the web developer is also claiming that they get good search engine results for clients then you’ll soon discover how true that is.  
   

5. Finally, ask another web developer, through a trusted contact, what they think of the ‘free’ offer.  Most people know what they’d class as a ‘good’ web developer and although they may have higher costs, they’re generally still willing to help a company avoid making a mistake, even if they know they may not get the resulting business themselves.

Ultimately, you generally get what you pay for and although there are still some sharks charging far too much for websites that would normally be cheaper (i.e. the other end of the scale), the ‘free’ offers are generally worth avoiding.    Success for most companies is usually the middle ground but in all cases it’s worth getting as many opinions as you can of the company who you’re considering to create what is effectively the difference between success and failure online.

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Popeye vs The Weedy Geek

When you think of Popeye you think of muscles (and sometimes spinach!).  When you think of a weedy geek it’s the opposite.  Right or wrong, that’s the way it is.   The same applies to websites – which are the ones with bulging muscles and which are the ones that get sand kicked in their face?   And how can you discover how you’re positioned compared to your competitors?

A simple test you can do is to think of a few phrases you think your company should be visible under when typed into Google, and to do just that – type them in and see what companies appear.   If your company doesn’t appear in the Sponsored Links or natural results then that’s a totally separate issue (and one that can be solved with Custwin Gold) but our focus here is on the actual websites themselves, not the visibility.

For each of the companies that appear in Google and that you’d consider to be a competitor, you need to go through the following process, ideally as part of a group exercise so that you get a mixture of opinions:

1. Go to the competitor website and look at as much as possible – go through the website as if you’re a potential customer.
   

2. Note down just one to three aspects of that website that you thought were positive.  This could be the general design/feel of the website, it could be the use of customer testimonials, it could be guarantees given, or many other aspects.
   

3. Repeat the process for up to five competitors.
   

4. Take your notes of positive aspects and compare them to your own website.  If your website is lacking in those areas then from the viewpoint of the potential customer your website is the weedy geek and the competitor website is Popeye.
   

5. Expect to feel disheartened by what you find.  That’s a GOOD result because it gives you the impetus to make changes that will benefit you.

By going through the process of seeing your website as a weedy geek you become one step closer to getting some virtual spinach - which is either making necessary changes yourself or hiring in expert advice and help.   With your website freshly full of spinach you’ll soon be the Popeye kicking the sand in the faces of your competitors.

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Client Focus: Etienne Pradier

For the next few months the client focus will be on Etienne Pradier of www.butterflytrixagency.co.uk and www.frenchmagician.co.uk, who won the Custwin competition at Kent 2020 in April.   As always, we judge client success by the phone calls/emails we get and were pleased to hear recently from Etienne that results have been gained in the first few weeks of promoting his business online.

Our focus, as with all clients, is in finding the ‘quick wins’ and then building from there.   Those quick wins would normally happen within the first month of starting work for a client and they should be highly visible to the client as having originated from our work.  Here’s an insight into how Ricky Gervais, Marilyn Monroe, and others have helped with Etienne so far.

Although we can’t physically meet all clients (many come from all over the UK), we had the opportunity to meet Etienne and discuss his businesses and what he’d like to achieve.   This is important because it gives us a good feel for what the client is already doing with their online promotion activities and where there are areas that can be further capitalised on.  

The challenge with Etienne’s businesses is that there are so many different aspects that can be promoted and so our focus has initially been on getting the best return on time and money invested.    It’s not uncommon for clients to want to promote certain aspects of websites but for our view to be that it wouldn’t be economically feasible to go down that route.   Instead, our approach is to focus on what can be achieved with lower cost, can generate higher revenues for the client, and then to revisit areas, knowing that any investment in promotion that would be more costly has effectively been paid for through higher revenues already gained.

To kick things off we focused on Lookalikes.   As you can see from the page www.butterflytrixagency.co.uk/look-alikes.html, the agency supplies lookalikes for various types of events.   On that page are pictured some of the lookalikes available and so we’ve focused on how we can make his lookalikes stand out from the crowd online – in this case, through using Google Adwords.

If you type ‘ricky gervais look alikes’ (and many variations on that phrase) into Google UK you’ll see the following result:

What you see, in the yellow ‘Sponsored Link’ box is the advert for Etienne’s agency.   It’s above the main Google search results, refers to Ricky Gervais in the title of the advert, and tempts you in with the words of ‘So Good You’ll Think He’s The Real Thing. Available To Hire For Events’.   

It’s worth also looking at what else appears under the Sponsored Links when you type variations on the phrase ‘ricky gervais look alikes’ (this also applies to other celebrities):

The point here is that people are generally lazy when they set up Google Adwords campaigns and because most people who type a phrase such as ‘ricky gervais look alikes’ are actually looking for him, they’re more likely to click on an advert that mentions him rather than an advert that doesn’t.

It’s fair to say that there aren’t huge numbers of people looking for Ricky Gervais, Harry Potter, Marilyn Monroe, and other lookalikes but the numbers are enough to want to be highly visible when people are actively looking for specific lookalikes (NOT when people are just searching for the names of those people).    So we haven’t just focused on specific celebrities, but on general phrases too.   For example, people who type ‘lookalike agencies’, ‘celebrity lookalike agencies’, and similar phrases.   The numbers of people typing these phrases are much higher (over 2,000 within a two week period) and so more clicks can be gained to the Butterfly Trix lookalikes page.

Something to consider here was that people use different phrases.  Some say ‘look alike’ and others say ‘lookalike’ (and plurals).  These are all treated differently within Google Adwords and so we set up different keyword phrases to ensure the adverts appear.

A few weeks into the Google Adwords campaign being live we’ve seen evidence that the visibility is attracting interest (including interest from lookalikes people wanting to be considered for Etienne’s agency).   This is just the start though and we now have the opportunity to significantly build up that http://www.butterflytrixagency.co.uk/look-alikes.html page with many more images of lookalikes (and the corresponding text - which is important in PPC advertising) so that we can create more Adwords groupings and therefore more potential clients clicking through to the website.

But lookalikes is only a small part of what’s achievable.   A taster.   Moving forwards our focus is on other areas that can be promoted and, most importantly of all, providing Etienne with fantastic insights into the actual companies that are visiting his websites looking for the services on offer.   As we’ve said before, the ability to analyse who is visiting the website, what they’re viewing, and what they typed to find the website, is what will make the differences between companies that are squeezing the most from their websites and those that are doing ‘just enough’.

For now though, the thought to take away is that every new client looking for lookalikes that Etienne gains, is a client that could stay with him for years and be upsold other services.  Add to that those who make contact wanting to be considered as part of his agency, and his strength builds further.    When you consider how little it actually costs to attract those types of people to a website, it’s a no-brainer to gain professional advice.

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25 Hours A Day?

If you’re in the position where you seem to be constantly busy in your business then there’s a good chance you’d leap at the chance to have 25 hours in a day.  But is this really the answer?  If such a thing as an extra hour a day was available, surely we’d just fill it with much of the same?

This is something Custwin sees a lot with clients – busy people who, although business is being gained through the website, never seem to have enough time in their lives.   The answer, in most cases, is to find a way to sell the business differently.

Hands up how many people want to work the number of hours they are?

OK, hands up how many people would like to work less hours in the day-to-day, more hours in activities they want to, AND be earning more at the same time?

There are numerous publications on passive income and the purpose of this is not to regurgitate them but instead to focus on just one thought that can benefit businesses with websites, who would like the opportunity to generate extra enquiries and revenue, which frees up time for other activities …

This idea is to consider ‘going national’.  This doesn’t actually involve creating new branches/offices etc. all around the UK but instead changing the angle of the website so that you’re seen to be offering your services all over the UK.   The Custwin site does this already – in our case we can work with anyone in the UK (or the world actually) because of the nature of our work, as seen on the page http://www.custwin.co.uk/where-we-work.htm.  

But what if you’re a company that can’t easily work remotely?

Let’s say that you’re a widgets consultancy company and you’re based in London.  You know that people need widgets consultancy all over the UK but generally, that type of consultancy has to be offered in person and you’re not going to travel all the way to Newcastle!   So what you do is build up relationships with other widgets consultants around the UK and have an agreement to pass each other business (either reciprocally or in exchange for a commission payment).   You then change your website to incorporate a UK map and a suitable message that makes it clear that anyone from around the UK can use your services (there are certain ways to best-achieve this – ask us how if unsure).    This then allows you to boost up your online visibility (e.g. via Google Adwords) and attract website traffic in from further afield.  

As long as you’ve adapted your website correctly you’ll soon be attracting in plenty of enquiries from much further than your typical market area.  If you were in London and an enquiry came in for Newcastle (assuming of course that you’d used Google Adwords to create an advert that appears when people type ‘widgets consultant Newcastle’, and similar variations), then it’s a short step to pass that enquiry onto your counterpart who covers the Newcastle area.

Of course, there’s a fine line between carefully portraying yourself as a ‘UK’ company and blatantly telling lies on your website but done correctly it works extremely well and will result in you building up a steady stream of either commission payments or reciprocal work for very little work on your part beyond the necessary changes to your website.

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Sponsored By Tetley

How important do you think it is for your website to load fast?   From the viewpoint of a potential customer it’s very important because they’ll be off elsewhere if your website doesn’t load fast enough.   But there are other reasons, including how much it costs you per click if using Google Adwords.   So, does your website load fast enough or could it be ‘Sponsored by Tetley’?

According to Google, the speed that a website takes to load has no impact on your natural search engine positioning.  However, from a Google Adwords perspective it’s quite different.

People generally think “Google is Google” but officially, the ‘natural’ search results are treated very much differently to the ‘pay per click’ results.   When a website loads slowly it has a negative knock-on effect to PPC for the following reasons …

The reason for this article was the discovery of the website www.frontierpitts.com.  If you go to that website you’ll find that it loads extremely slowly initially and the poor performance continues as you go deeper into the website.   It’s possibly the slowest loading website we’ve ever seen.   If that company had a Google Adwords campaign to promote their products then the slow speed of pages loading would have a negative impact on that campaign. 
  
One of the factors that impacts on the cost and positioning of Google adverts is how the Google system views the landing page quality.   This is basically Google saying that it wants there to be a good experience for people who click on PPC adverts (otherwise they may not click on other PPC adverts in the future, which has a negative knock-on effect to Google’s bottom line).   If someone clicks on an advert, Google expects that person to land on a page that:

1. Contains relevant content

2. Contains unique content

3. Loads quickly

If the Google system perceives that any of the above aren’t performing to the benefit of anyone who clicks on the PPC adverts then this will have a negative impact on what’s known as the Quality Score. 

There are other factors that count in the overall Quality Score but in summary, the higher the Quality Score (10/10), the cheaper the clicks and the better the positioning in the Google search results.   If a website loads so slowly that it may as well be ‘Sponsored by Tetley’ (i.e. you have enough time to pop out to make a cup of tea) then that will have a negative impact on the Quality Score. That negative impact means that costs per click are generally higher.

There are differing opinions about what a ‘good’ loading time is but opinions tend to be around a website fully loading within 4 seconds of the person landing on it (for broadband users).   We put this to the test with a useful free utility that can be used at http://tools.pingdom.com/.    We entered the Custwin site first of all and the site loaded in a reasonable 2.6 seconds.  We then entered the Frontier Pitts website and it took a whopping 20.8 seconds.   

There are many issues to be considered when wanting to get the best out of Google PPC campaigns but many, such as this one, are little-known so it’s always worth testing the speed of a website before attempting to use PPC advertising because if the site is too slow then it’ll damage the potential success of the PPC campaign.

Of course, we shouldn’t lose sight though, of the fact that the biggest problem of slow-loading websites is that potential customers (i.e. real humans, not speed-measuring software) will exit a website that doesn’t deliver what they want quickly.

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