Small Business Marketing 3 - Old City Web Services

Old City Web Services Launches New Website!

June 15, 2016 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

WE HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT !

We are very excited to show off our new website here at Old City Web Services! Everything has been updated from images for the website, the "About" section to our portfolio. Not only is it responsive on any device, but it's also easier to navigate through our site. So go explore our new site, and click on everything! See what Old City Web Services can do for your business!

We recognize we have to update our website, Is it time to update yours?
Contact Us Today to Get Started!

Optimize Your Website for Conversions

January 19, 2016 by anoadmin

Whether you have a website that needs updating or you are creating a new website, the best place to start is with asking yourself what the ultimate objective is. The answer probably falls somewhere along the lines of that you want it to look good and get results.

Conversion optimization is all about the action a site visitor takes on your website that will add value to your business. Conversion is anything from signing up for your newsletter, purchasing an item, booking a service, or clicking to call you. Optimization of conversions requires analysis of your website to maximize the leads your website brings in.

There are multiple ways you can maximize your website for conversions: High Quality Photography: One of the most basic things with big impact on your website is photography. Whether you are selling a product, a hotel room, or just want to show that your business is professional – nothing will draw viewers in and keep them clicking on your services like well presented photography. Mobile Optimization: Make it easy for viewers to your website to call you, make a purchase, reserve a room or a meal, or to find where you are located so they can walk in. This means making your site work for everyone no matter what device they are using to find your website. Mobile friendliness is absolutely imperative today, and will increase your conversions, improving your bottom line.

Call-to-Action Buttons: Give site visitors something to act on. A call-to-action button grabs attention and directs the site viewer to what they want to do on your site. These will help streamline user experience and increase your website's clicks and conversions for your targeted goals.

Is Anyone Finding Your Website?

December 8, 2015 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

You have a great website, but now what? You now have the challenge of bringing in quality traffic that will result in real conversions for your business.

Marketing your website once it's live is so important, especially today as the internet is continuing to explode with new, relevant competition. You may have been the only small business in your niche in town with a website 5 years ago, but now you have a lot more people to compete for search engine ranking with.

SEO, SEO & MORE SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the primary way people are going to find you online. DO NOT let your competition get ahead. Make it easy for people to find you by having your site fully optimized by a professional. SEO trends are constantly changing based on changes to the algorithm used by search engines, so this is something that should be ongoing and maintained to ensure you are one step ahead of competition.

For example, earlier this year, Google changed that websites that are not mobile friendly will fall in ranking and those that are mobile friendly will move higher because of the trend in internet usage by web traffic.

It's also important to have your Google Place listing current, and to be sure that the content you have on your site and continue to add to your website is relevant and bringing you the traffic you are looking for. It is absolutely imperative today to have a professional do these services for your online business.

Make sure your SEO is done right the first time -- contact Old City Web Services so that people will start finding your website online today!

Email Marketing and Landing Pages

December 1, 2015 by anoadmin

It is December and that means it is time for your small business to get serious about promoting your holiday sales and specials that you have going on. Email makes up over a third of the ways that consumers make holiday buying decisions.

The most important factor in your promotional emails is that they lead somewhere. In your promotional email, you need to send potential customers to a great landing page.

This can mean setting up a new page or editing a current one on your website.

The page should be catered to your sale, prices, promotion, or special that you are trying to convert customers with.

Some tips:

Make it mobile - it is safe to assume that many potential customers are on a mobile device when they are opening their email. The page you send them to telling them about your promotion has to be one they can navigate and read on their mobile device.
Keep it simple - the page you send them to should be dedicated to just the sales goal you have. Don't make it more complicated by giving them other distractions. A single page with a single goal will result in the highest conversion.
The elements - Stick to an attention grabbing headline and one great image.
Clickable call to action - give them one button to click that tells them what to do. That's it.

Follow these tips and your holiday sales are bound to increase. Need help creating a great landing page or formulating the perfect email? Contact us and we can help you today!

More Internet Terminology Explained

November 17, 2015 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

It can be a challenging task to keep up with both your small business and your online presence when often the terminology can leave you confused. Here are some useful definitions to help you as you work on your website so you understand what is important.

Browser – A browser is the software application you use to retrieve information from the internet. It may not seem important what browser you use or your site visitors are using, but often it is. If you use an outdated browser, the webpages viewed may appear broken and all the elements that you worked so hard on for building your website won’t look good. Having an up to date, user friendly browser like Firefox or Chrome is best when using the web.

Blog – a blog is a website or place on your website where you add recurring information. It can be a personal blog, editorial, informational, or sales. A blog is a great way to regularly update your website, which Google loves for search rankings if you are using the right keywords.

Keywords – Speaking of keywords, here’s what that means: keywords are words used in your webpage that both describe the work that you do and make your site relevant for showing up in search engines. You can make your website or webpage show up in popular searches by using keywords, but make sure that the words you are using are relevant to your site. You want people to not only come to your site, but to stay because they’ve found your information useful.

E-Commerce – this is the use of the internet to sell products. You can leverage your website to not just draw people to call you or come into your store, but you can also sell directly to them online. Consider setting up an e-commerce shop online to increase your sales reach.

Plugin – a plugin extends or expands the functionality of your website. Plugins are easy-to- use additions to the backend of your website that make things like building forms, displaying photos, and even adding an online shop much simpler and more streamlined and easy to maintain.

All of these are things that we can help you with to maximize your website, too. Contact us today to learn more!

Why Good Marketing Needs Print Media

November 10, 2015 by anoadmin

We all know that every day, new trends are emerging on the internet and technology is ever-changing. For many, this leads them to believe that print is dead. Maybe surprisingly, though, print is far from dead. For many small businesses, print marketing is part of their overall marketing plan and goes hand in hand with their digital communication.

There are many ways in which print can be a very effective tool in communicating the message of your small business to your target audience. At Old City Web Services, we offer design of rack cards, business cards, folders, brochures, and other print media to meet your business needs.

Here is why you should be using print media in conjunction with your digital marketing:

Personalization:

First and foremost, people know that print media takes more time, more cost, and more effort to put together. If you add personalization to this, it will make the recipient realize that you are willing to go an extra step to share your business with them. This alone can add value and lead to increased sales for your company.

Print and Social Media

Print is a great way to combine the efforts you are putting into your online presence. Having print media like business or rack cards created that draw people to your social media sites is great way to spread the word about your small business.

Uniqueness

It can be really hard to stand out in the crowd these days now that it seems like everyone has a website, everyone has a facebook page, and everyone has a business card. This makes design that much more important. It’s not just having a website or print media that matters. It has to be well designed, eye-catching, and memorable. Print marketing can be successful, but it doesn't guarantee it. Put thought into it, get a firm to help you that knows trends and can help your small business grow in all ways possible.

Promoting Your Website Part I: SEO

August 5, 2015 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

The next 4-part series we have is going to focus on how you can take the website you have now and promote it, maximizing it's potential and making the most of it for your business.

Today, in Part I, we are discussing Search Engine Optimization, more often known as SEO.

The foundation of promoting your website is having it positioned in web search result rankings. SEO is what works in the background of your website and plays a vital role in how successful your website will be.

How do you, as a small business owner, use SEO to promote your business?

Set Goals: in order to do this, you need to determine the main purpose of your site. Then you can target customers, which will help you define the audience that you are trying to reach. Then you can pinpoint your competition for that audience which will help you determine what your goals for SEO will be. Your goals can be in relation to your own business - to increase your online sales leads, or in relation to your competition - to rank higher than them in search engines. Or you may have branding goals - to dominate the search rankings for a certain term closely related to your brand.

This brings us to Keywords: You, as the owner of your business, know a lot about what words define you and the services you provide. But you also need to know what others think of and what words they will use when trying to find your niche. The combination of what you know and what internet viewers are looking for, will help you to make the most of keywords to keep your business promotion strong in search engines.

Remember that SEO is your website's Way of Life: Everybody knows that for your body to be healthy, it has to be maintained constantly - regularly eating healthy and getting exercise. The same is true for your website. You can't just go for a 5 mile jog and call it good for life. You have to keep it up. You can't just set up your website and leave it. It has to be regularly maintained and tweaked to keep up with growing needs and requirements on the internet.

Next week, we'll discuss more about branding and branding goals for promoting your website in Part II of this series. Be sure to check it out!

Customer Retention Part IV: Share Your Knowledge

July 15, 2015 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

In this series about Customer Retention, we have looked at Customer Retention: Building Your Business Community to Build Your Business, Customer Retention Part II: Use Social Media for Word of Mouth Marketing and Customer Retention Part III: Recognize Your Customers. We are wrapping up the series with today's Part IV in which we'll discuss sharing your knowledge to retain customers.

One of the things any customer can end up feeling frustrated by is that they don't always know the ins and outs of whatever it is your business does. They have to trust that you are doing the best job for them and that you aren't taking advantage of their lack of knowledge. One thing that can help in this is to actually proactively share your expertise with them.

You can share tips, tricks, tutorials, and ideas with your customers. This not only establishes you as an expert in your field, but builds trust with your customers because you are showing them you aren't afraid for them to learn and know more about what you do.

At Old City Web Services, we implement our expertise everyday when we build and design websites for our customers and help them maintain their online presence. We also share our knowledge, by providing training and information for our clients to take with them after a project is complete so that they don't have to rely on us entirely. We offer a service that helps our customers save money and that builds a relationship of trust.

Sharing information doesn't always have to be so in depth. You can offer quick ideas and tips on your social media pages or offer face-to-face knowledge with your clients. You are the expert and you want your customers to rely on you for that, but you don't want them to feel taken advantage of. If you charge for your expertise but build trust by sharing it too, your business will blossom and your customers will remain loyal.

It is 10 times more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to keep an existing one. This series has focused on keeping customers happy, encouraging them to spread the word about you because of their satisfaction, and building trust with them. Putting efforts toward keeping existing customers will prove beneficial in the long run.

Customer Retention Part III: Recognize Your Customers

July 8, 2015 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago, we looked at Customer Retention: Building Your Business Community to Build Your Business and we ended with the importance of using social media to add value for your community base. Last week we talked about Customer Retention Part II: Use Social Media for Word of Mouth Marketing. Today, in part three we are discussing Customer Retention through recognizing your customers.

Not only is it important to build your customer base and to get those happy customers talking about your business, but it's very important to make sure that you are recognizing and appreciating your customers for being loyal to your business.

It's a competitive marketplace, keeping and building a loyal customer base is vital to maintaining and growing your business.

Customer appreciation programs are often used to expand these relationships and make a customer a loyal one. If designed properly, customer appreciation can result in positive customer reviews spread through word of mouth and social media sites, as we discussed last week.

One of the most important factors in customer loyalty leading to great reviews is providing quality service and products. Programs that reward loyal customers to show appreciation are also required.

Some ideas for showing your appreciation for customers in your efforts to retain them:

Provide a free gift or service to long-term loyal customers
Recognize customers on social media for their brand loyalty. Truly, often, just saying "thank you" and meaning it goes a long way.
Check in with customers who have given you their contact information. Make sure they continue to be happy and see if there is anything else your business can do to meet their needs.
Setup a loyalty program that includes a freebie or special after a certain amount of purchases

All of these are easy to do from a customer service standpoint and can be incorporated into your online presence well.

Promote your special for long-term customers on social media. Post on your website that you have a loyalty program, use social media to thank the people who have made your business what it is today.

Next Week's Installment Customer Retention Part IV: Share Your Knowledge will focus on how sharing your expertise with your customers will keep them coming back. Be sure to check back and see how to continue building your customer base and retaining customers.

Customer Retention Part I: Build Your Business Community to Build Your Business

June 29, 2015 by anoadmin Leave a Comment

The most important part of your business is the customer base you have, and ultimately the community that you build around your business. Sure, a customer is a customer, but loyal and long-term customers that form a community around your business are what will keep you running strong.

How to Build Community with Value:

Unfortunately building a strong customer base and community around your business isn't one-size-fits-all or a trick that can be done overnight. It takes a lot of time, a lot of patience and a lot of hard work on your part. But at the heart of building community is offering something of value. Value is something that holds worth. Something that is important to someone. Something that serves a purpose.

Value will be something only you know based on listening to your customers, seeing what they gravitate toward when they come to your business. Why are they there? What are they looking for? This is all about them and not about you. You may have your favorite room, product, meal or item in your shop, but if that isn't what your customers are after, you have to listen to them. Provide what they are seeking. Loyalty will come naturally.

Use Social Media to provide Value:

Value is something that you can offer regularly. With social media, you can build on your customer base by offering self-less ideas. Share ideas of people or businesses in the same niche. You don't need to just compete. Share others' ideas. Share others' opinions. Show you hear others and what they need and they will appreciate and respect you and your business and come to trust your brand for the honest voice you use with your community on social media.

Next Week, we'll continue discussing Customer Retention and social media when we look at Customer Retention Part II: Using Social Media for Word Of Mouth Marketing.