Mobile Applications have gone wild. You can now get mobile applications for just about anything you want, from tuning up a Guitar to games to recipies for this evenings meal and many more besides. However, Mobile Apps are very underutilised by small business owners.

One of the many things that we tell our clients is to go where thier audience is, and where their competition is not. If they can do that, they will be well ahead of their business rivals.

That is the case with Mobile Applications. Few small business owners know that a Mobile App, created for Android enabled and iPhones, can generate not only brand awareness but also, if you want to, revenue via direct sales, in much the same way as you would do with an eCommerce website.

The one in the image on the right is an Android App with eBay listings in it. That same listing is also available on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UKHolidayCottages via a slightly different route, but all the same, there are just two additional avenues for revenue of that particular website.

With everyone wanting to buy iPhones and other smartphones, isn't it time you took advantage of the mobile marketing revolution?

Call Tim on 01945 780821 or 07979 864718 to find out more about how your business can benefit from the Mobile Marketing Revolution.

What does this mean for your business?

It simply means that there will be fewer people spending money. People will do as they did in 2008, tighten their belts, cut back on luxuries and do their best to keep their heads above water.

What can you do to cut your business costs yet increase your customer base?

With most small businesses, their largest cost is marketing/advertising. And, one of the first things that they will do when times get tough is cut that budget. In doing so they will loose customers not increase them. They do this because people will tend to buy from businesses they know, or businesses that they see in local advertising. If you’ve stopped advertising, you simply loose your share of the business, and pretty much give it to those who are still advertising.

So the question was, how do you increase customers whilst lowering costs. Simply use the the power of the Internet. A professional looking direct response website and email marketing system along with a social media strategy will increase your businesses exposure, customers and bottom line!

At TS Web Consulting Ltd we understand Internet Marketing as well as website design for maximum conversion. So don’t wait until the next recession hits, call Tim on 01945 780821 or 07979 864718 to discuss you Internet Marketing needs.

To make newspaper advertising effective and to gain the most return on your investment, there are a few things that you should do.

1) Stand out from the crowd – Ok, you’ve been in business for 30 years, so what. Does that really make you any better than the guy whos’ just starting his own new business? Do prospective customers really care that you’ve been in business a long time? The answer to both these questions is a big No! Prospective customers are looking for solutions to their problems, if you can show that you can provide them with the solution, you will get the custom, no matter how long your you’ve been in business.

2) Call them into action – Just putting a phone number on your advert is not a call to action. To call a prospect to action, you need to give them a reason to contact your business. For instance, say you run a car servicing business, a call to action might be “call us now for a free pre-winter checkup”, and make the offer time limited. So your copy might read “call us before Oct 31st for a free pre-winter check up”.

I hear you saying “what’s the point in that, as it’s going to cost me money?” Yes it is going to cost you a bit, but the point is you are making contact with prospective customers and if you do a good job for them, they will remember it and most probably come back to you in the future – not to mention the fact that they’ll tell all their friends about the great service you provided!

3) Use a business website – An alternative to the above is for those businesses with a website (if you don’t have one you could be loosing out even more!). If you have a website for your business, use newspaper advertising to point your prospective customers to the website. By “point” I mean tell the prospect to go to your website to get something, not just have your website address on the advert.

In your advertisement, write something like “go to www.xyz.co.uk to get a free pre-winter check up”. On your website will be a coupon that the prospect can print off and bring to your business when they come (saves you some printing costs!). The website will also give you the opportunity to tell the prospect about your business and how you can provide the solution to their problem.

These are just a few ways that you can improve the response rate of your newspaper advertising and bring more customers to your business. To find out more ways to market your business offline and online, call Tim on 01945 780821 or 07979 864718.

If you answer no to the question, you may just have lost a customer and you certainly have lost the opportunity to sell to the customer over and over, unless they keep coming back to your business of course.

If you answer yes to the question, and give out your website address, what will they find?

Most small business websites consist of a brochure style, less than 5 page website. The problem with this is that because the website may be a year or two old and rarely updated, prospective customers do not know what your most recent offerings are.

Also, if your website is not updated regularly, it may easily slip down in the search engine rankings (assuming it got a high ranking in the first place), as search engines will rank a website with new content higher than one which hasn’t changed for a length of time.

Building trust by providing timely, and relevant information for the prospect is one of the main reasons that a prospect will become a customer.

It is for these reasons, and many others, that here at TS Web Consulting we do not create single page or 5 page websites. There really is only one solution for the small business owner and that is a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS allows you, or one of your staff, to easily update your website, providing up to date information and offers to your prospective customers.

Although a CMS sounds complicated, using a CMS is just as easy as using wordprocessing software and having the ability to update it monthly, weekly, daily even, your customers will keep coming back to see what new products/services you have to offer and keeping your business fresh in their minds.

At TS Web Consulting we can have a CMS based website up an running for your business in just a few hours, ready to start gathering visitors and bringing new customers to your business. The return on your investment can be huge and continue for many years to come!

To find out more about using a Content Managemnet System and Online Marketing of your business call Tim on 01945 780821 or 07979 864718. Alternatively, you can email your questions, by clicking here.

In most cases, the reality is that it’s hard work, you’re dealing with getting stock, dealing with customers both sales and service, you’re dealing with the bank, doing your accounts, marketing and a whole load of other stuff. The reality is, starting and running a business is hard work!

That is if you try to do everything yourself!

One of the most important aspects, and in many peoples minds the most expensive, is marketing.

Marketing is the most important activity simple because if people don’t know about your business, they won’t come and check you out. But, unfortunately, most startup businesses get this wrong and waste money by doing the same advertising and marketing that thier competitors are doing, like newspaper ads and flyers.

The thing is, most of your competitors have absolutely no idea if their newspaper advertising is working or not. They are spending several hundred pounds each month and have no idea whether they are getting any return on their investment.

Using the Internet, in addition to other advertising methods, it is not only very easy to track how many people viewed your web pages, it is also not difficult turn those visitors into prospects and then into paying customers. Such is the power of having a direct response website.

In addition, a good website that captures visitors attention can be changed on a regular basis, even down to every hour if you want, try doing that with a Yellow Pages advert!

If you want to learn more about how having a web presence can help a startup business thrive from the off, take a moment to fill in the form on the right there and download our free report, “Increase your profits whilst reducing your marketing costs”. It will take you about 15 minutes to read and open your eyes to the many possibilities that the Internet offers start up businesses.

1. Keeping In Touch — Your customers and clients are the lifeblood of your business. What better way to stay in touch with your existing customers than through a newsletter? A newsletter allows you to add personal touches to your relationship and celebrate milestones, both your own and your client’s. In addition to furthering your relationship with your clients, a newsletter can also allow you to introduce new products, offer special sales or discounts to your existing client base, and encourage referrals.

2. Hook In New Customers — Unless they have an immediate need or came to you through a powerful referral, most potential customers won’t buy right away. Often they will shop around and compare, which means you will likely never see them again. However if you have a free newsletter that offers interested clients the opportunity to learn more about you, your business, and your products for free and they can also learn more about your interaction with your existing customers. A newsletter can be a very simple strategy to turn a one-time visitor into a lifetime customer.

3. Establish Your Expertise — No one knows more about your business than you do which makes you an expert. Likely the building of your own business has further left you with a great deal of expertise in your field. Share your nuggets of knowledge through your newsletter to deepen your relationship with your existing customers and convince potential customers that you are the answer to their problems.

Now that I have convinced you that you need to publish your own newsletter, I want to go over a few questions that budding editors and publishers always ask.

What exactly is an electronic newsletter?

Just like their paper counterparts, electronic newsletters deliver written messages usually relating to a common theme or topic. The main difference is that an electronic newsletter transcends paper and ink and most likely only ever exists on a computer screen.

Some electronic newsletters are delivered only via email while others are delivered only on the web. Most are delivered in some combination of the two.

You can choose the method is most suited to you and your audience.

How do you publish an electronic newsletter?

It is much easier to start publication of your own electronic newsletter than it is to start up a print publication. You simply need to decide on a topic, name your publication and start writing. It is easy to find an audience (beyond your own customer base if you choose) through the various ezine and newsletter directories around the internet as well as going directly to the source, for example discussion boards for people interested in your topic.

You will need to determine a delivery method, which means most likely setting up your own web site or page on your existing web site; creating an archive for your issues once they are created, which could mean setting up a blog; and tracking your readers, which likely means setting up a mailing or autoresponder service.

To find out more about newsletters and email marketing contact Tim on 01945 780821 or 07979 864718.

Search engines constantly change their algorithms, shuffle their indexes, merge results and share content. The only consistent thing about marketing your website to them is that what works really well today probably won’t work so well tomorrow.

That’s why you need an experienced search marketing professional who keeps two fingers on the pulse of the major search engines. If Google hiccups, we know about it. If Yahoo! gets stubborn, we’ll coax those rankings back to the first page.

Working with search engines is a long-term, high maintenance relationship and we’re  dedicated to managing that relationship so you don’t have to, and at an investment you can feel good about.

So How Exactly Does SEO Work?

This is the million pound question. And we can almost guarantee you that for every person you ask, you’ll get a different answer. That’s because marketing to the search engines is like any creative endeavor: cooking, painting, carpentry, etc.

If you ask five people to bake a cake, you’ll get five unique cakes each with different ingredients. Ask ten people to craft you a chair and you’ll get ten distinct pieces each with its own style.

Because the search engines change their ranking algorithms (the equations they use to analyse a website’s reputation and rankability) so often, and they each use such widely varying criteria, there are literally hundreds of ways to promote your site to the first page of search results.

However, there are certain universal guidelines regarding what central principles and elements are vital to your search marketing strategy. There are also very clear rules against certain practices that attempt to cheat or trick the search engines.

Fundamental Principles for Successful SEO

1. Content

Content (the written word) will always be your key ticket to top rankings. Without it, any rankings achieved will be short-lived. For content to help your ranking, however, you need a lot of it and it has to be updated regularly. Most importantly, each page of content must target a specific keyword term.

However, if your site possesses content that is auto-generated or is poorly written, i.e. a human visitor would not find it useful and informative, the search engines will figure it out and demote your site, possibly even blacklisting you and preventing you from showing up in their results at all.

We develop well-written, search phrase targeted content for your site that is updated consistently and monitored for rankability. Your business will enjoy the added benefit of an ever-growing resource library of information that your site visitors will enjoy and which will also help with your sales conversions.

2. Links
More specifically, one-way links from authoritative sites in your niche market. You can find out how authoritative a site is by looking at its Page Rank.

Page Rank, or PR, is a ranking system Google devised to show how much weight or authority a particular site has. No one can say the exact methodology Google uses to assign Page Rank, however all SEO experts agree that it largely has to do with the amount of incoming links a site has, how long it’s been around, and visitor activity on the site (yes Google even knows how long someone remains on your site after they click through from the search results!).

What this means for you is that you want as many high PR sites linking into your site as possible (without you linking back to them). This is because Google gives these sites a lot of respect and values their “recommendations” signaled by who they choose to link to.

If all this sounds a bit complicated, think of it this way:

Google and the major search engines analyze your website the way scholars judge academic papers. The more journals and other reputable papers cite your research and quote you, the more authoritative and “expert” you become.

We negotiate inbound links on your behalf, concentrating on links from sites related to your market whose reputation thematically relates to the reputation you’re trying to build.
We also make sure these links deep-link into your website, meaning that they link to various pages in your website, rather than just to your homepage (also a sign that you’re highly authoritative).

3. Visitor Behavior
Google knows everything. Other Search Engines like Yahoo! and MSN aren’t so far behind. If a visitor clicks from their search engine into your site, and leaves immediately, Google knows that they didn’t find what they were looking for. If too many people do this, Google will drop you from their rankings because they assume you’re not relevant for that particular search term. This is why website design, compelling content, and conversion analysis are important.

We offer Website Conversion Optimization in addition to SEO to help you address this particular issue.

4. Human Idiosyncracies
Google wants to know that a human is running the show. Automated SEO software, or any techniques that add hundreds of pages to your site within a week, or which create content automatically, are a dead giveaway that you’re doing something Google doesn’t like.

This won’t just get you knocked off the top 10 rankings – Google and other search engines will ban your site from ever showing up in their results – even when someone searches your exact domain name. This is why any illegal or unethical techniques will kill your business.

We hand craft every single page of information on your website and upload those pages consistently over several months.

Universally Illegal SEO Practices: Avoid at ALL Costs
Search engines may be vague about what you can do to get top rankings. However, they are not vague about those practices that will get you banned from their rankings. For instance, Google provides Webmaster Guidelines that detail what you are NOT to do when promoting your website.

When you are looking for an SEO professional, be aware of these illegal techniques and the different “pet names” given them by dubious fly-by-night companies.

You can download these tips in an easy-to-read PDF format. You’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to read this file. You can download it free by clicking here.

They reported that small business owners were struggling to survive because of the local Superstore just up the road. However, one business owner featured in the report, reported that she was doing ok, and surviving the decline of feet through her shops door. Why, because along side her bricks and mortor business she has a website that is bringing her sales.

Now this business owner realised the value of the Internet and how so many of her customers are using the Internet to do their shopping nowadays, but she is actually missing a piece of the puzzle and not making the absolute most of her website.

What’s that piece? Quite simply she could also be using that same website to bring people into her premises. Think about it for a moment. If she can get a customer to buy from her business on her website, how hard would it be to give those buyers an offer that would bring them to her shop, and once there buy even more from her, making her business even more profitable, even in the present economic climate.

There are many ways that virtually any business can use a website to bring customers through the doors of your business or to contact you about your services and get them to purchase even more from you, helping your business prosper.

Having a website for your business, isn’t just about getting your business name out there, it’s about building a relationship with your customers or clients. It’s about telling your website visitors about how your products or services can solve their problem and then giving them a reason to come to your business for the solution.

To find out how your business website can be much more than just a piece of virtual real estate call Tim on 01945 780821 or 07979 864718 now, before your premises becomes a ghost town too.

In 2008, business for Jex Plant was very flat and we barely ticked over. It was in October that I decided that a website would be an asset to the business but being the skeptic that I am, I was not totally convinced that a website would make a huge difference to my business fortunes.

I spent a little while talking to website designers but when I spoke to Tim, of TS Web Consulting, I was not only confident that a website would increase business, but I was also sure that the solution that Tim proposed would be the preferred solution not just because he knows how to build websites, but because he is a marketer that builds websites!

Working closely with Tim, we developed two websites, one for my mini digger hire service and one for my plant hire and dredging services. Not only did Tim create these two sites in a very short space of time, but they were both very quickly ranked on the first page of Google, and enquiries started coming in.

Now, May 2009, my business revenue is up almost 40% on this time last year and, with a growing number of enquiries coming through the websites, I can only see the business growing over the coming months, thanks to Tim’s expertise in developing two customer focused websites and maintaining top ranking for them both.

Kind Regards

Peter Jex
Jex Plant UK Ltd

To verify this testimonial, please feel free to call Peter and ask about his experiences. You can contact him via his website at http://www.diggermandiggerhire.co.uk

So what kind of questions should you be asking when you are looking for a website design company that can help you grow your business.

Question 1. Do you guarentee first page rankings for my website?

Answer: If they answer yes, give them a wide birth.

Website designers can get you on the first page of Google and other search engines, can they guarentee it? No. Google (and other search engines) is a law unto itself. They set the index formulas that they use to rank websites for particular search phrases and that formula is a very closely guarded secret.

So, website designers and Search Engine Optimisation professionals are in guessing mode, they may know that there are some tactics that work today, but if Google descides to change the formula tomorrow (and they change it regularly), your site could end up on page 500, where no-one ever looks.

Question 2. Do you have examples of your work that rank well in Google.

Answer: Of course I do. Here’s one, www.joblogcompany.co.uk, do a search for joe blog company.

But the thing is, if you do a search for a particular website or company name, and that site is already indexed, it will always come up number 1. What you should be asking is “what are the search terms that you have designed websites for, and what are those websites”. These are the phrases that people use when they are searching for a particular type of business. When the design company tells you which search terms they rank well for you should then do a search using the search terms that they give you and confirm they are telling you the truth.

You could also contact the owner of the website and ask them about how much it has helped their business ie. how many new customers they have gained through it.

Question 3. How do you market a website?

Answer: We submit the website address to the top 20 search engines.

When a website is submitted to a search engine, the address of that website is add to the end of a list of websites to be checked (also known as Crawled). That list could be hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands long. This strategy might get your website indexed within a month if you are lucky – the average is between 6 and 12 months.

Also, even with the website submitted to search engines, there is no guarentee that the site will be indexed, and appear in the search results.

There are many other ways to get a website crawled and indexed in much less time, even down to less than 24 hours of the website going live. Sometimes it can take up to 3 weeks, but the fact is that just submitting a website to a number of search engines isn’t likely to get your website indexed and ranked in a short time frame.

Question 4. Will a Flash intro page enhance my website?

Answer: Of course it will. A flash intro on your home page will make your website look very professional.

The reason that some web developers push flash intro’s is simply that they can charge more for the work because pages that use Flash are time consuming to create.

However, most web searchers hate Flash intro pages simply because they take a while to load into the visitors web browser.

The other downside of using Flash intro pages is that most search engines cannot read flash, so the page has lost any optimisation value that it otherwise could have using text and graphics.

Question 5. Who has control of the domain name and hosting?

Answer: Oh we look after all that for you.

The answer should be, we will register the domain name on your behalf, using an account that is setup specifically for you. We will give you the login details when this has been done. We host websites on our own servers, but on completion of the website we will give you a copy of all the files necessary for you to transfer the website to a different host should you decide to no longer use our services.

These are just a few of the questions that you should be asking a website design company before you engage their services. And above all, you should be ensuring that your small business website will bring you a return on your investment and actually add to your bottom line, rather than just becoming one of those expensive marketing methods that does nothing to increase the business that your company gets.