"Make Your Website Work" Google Ebook
Google’s new Ebook “Make Your Website Work” is out now.
It’s geared mainly towards increasing conversion rates for those who sell products online, but does give some helpful tips on how to present information to visitors and encourage them to pick up the phone or send an email.
Give it a read, you never know, there might be something new for you to learn in there which you can implement on your website.
Statistics software like Google Analytics make it easy enough to know how your visitors are finding you; but what about the ones who aren’t finding you?
All too often, website owners target their keywords to what they think their clients are looking for rather than what they’re actually searching for. A specialised product may have plenty of jargon surrounding it which most people may not be aware of, so perhaps it’s not the best idea to include it? Then again maybe people are using the buzz words… What about geographical searches? Should you include your town or county in your keywords for example?
Unfortunately there’s no hard and fast rule. There are billions of websites covering just as many subjects so it’d be naive to suggest that one size fits all. What’s the solution then, I hear you ask? Get your hands dirty with Google’s Keyword Tool!
It’s a free service that lets you search by keyword or keyphrase to find out how popular it is. Not only do you get relatively precise local and monthly statistics but also suggestions on related keywords. Just visit https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal and type some keywords into the box to get started. Find a popular keyword and start optimising your clever little site yourself, today, for free!
Editing your own website can be that easy. Our new movie shows you just what you can do with clever little site.
If you haven’t already seen our demo videos on YouTube here’s a quick Top 3 of the most popular ones:
From now on, as well as being able to create extra pages, embed videos and get detailed information about your visitors, you can now even sell products and services through your clever little site.
We’re doing this through Google Checkout, which is another one of Google’s great new services. A whole bunch of online sellers have already chosen Google Checkout over various other e-commerce providers such as PayPal due to Google’s straightforward, simple approach, great support and up-to-date information.
Sounds brilliant, so how do I use it?
Choose your options...
Followed by this:
... and generate your Google Checkout code
If you save your changes and click “View Changes” to view your site normally, you’ll see the new buttons appear on your page, ready to be used.
Your Google Checkout placeholder...
... and it's equivalent button on your site
Okay, cool. So what can I do now?
Well, here’s a few ideas: You could create an online art gallery and sell one-off items you’ve created, like paintings or sculptures. Or, you could utilise all those extra pages and create a full blown online e-commerce shop. You could even use your website as an online box office and sell event tickets through it.
The possibilities are endless!
Flash has been around for a while now - since way back in 1996 which is centuries in “internet years” - yet many internet users know little or nothing about it. Why should you? Does it really affect you? Well, yes - Flash can have a big impact on you and your website. Hopefully after reading this you’ll feel a bit more savvy so you can make the right choices for your website.
What is Flash?
It’s often referred to as a “video”, which isn’t really true. Flash is actually much more than that - a powerful multimedia format which can manipulate graphics, supports audio, video and contains a scripting language called ActionScript. All of these things combine to allow web developers to create anything from a simple animation to whole websites or powerful online software and games. One of the most famous uses for Flash on the internet today are the billions of videos streamed by YouTube.
So how does it affect me?
Traditionally Flash has taken a lot of stick for being inaccessible and typically bad for search engine optimisation. These days things have moved on and if you have a talented Flash developer working for you they will be able to overcome these challenges.
The real problem is that the powerful scripting features of Flash mentioned earlier could actually contain something rather nasty for your computer. Spyware or viruses hidden in Flash have been making the news for over a decade now and are still prevalent on “the bad side of the internet”. Rather than risk unsavoury images or viruses being loaded onto their computers, many businesses have simply blocked Flash with their security settings. Imagine you’re offering services to businesses - if your site navigation is in Flash how will they be able to view your website? Or worse, what if your whole website is in Flash? They’ll likely give up and go elsewhere.
Have I got Flash?
It’s easy to see if a website is using Flash. The most likely place for it to be used is in the main navigation menu or any areas which are animated. Just use your mouse to right click on the part which you think might be Flash and the menu that pops up will tell you - if it is Flash, you’ll see Flash Player mentioned on the menu. I’ve included a screenshot from Firefox, though it will be very similar in Internet Explorer or any other browser.
So I should avoid it at all costs?
Of course not! Flash has many excellent uses (just look at YouTube) and in some cases it can be the only way to achieve a certain effect. Some areas, such as arts or design are very graphic intensive and a rich, glossy movie could be just the ticket to show off what they do. Just remember it’s important to consider who might be viewing your website and make sure they’ll be able to use it.
If you were a doctor, you might not appreciate someone telling you that you’re going to get multiple pages - that entails a lot of running around and performing amazing feats of medical heroism… which bascially all sounds like rather hard work.
Talking of hard work, here’s something that got absolutely nothing to do with hard work. In fact it’s all pretty easy-going stuff.
*Fanfare*
You can now easily add extra pages to your clever little site, name them whatever you want to, and hide them again if you feel like it. All these additional pages are free as well - you don’t have to pay any extra for them at all.
How To Manage Your Pages
It’s dead simple. On your clever little site’s Dashboard page, find the drawer named “Manage Pages”, and click the “Manage Pages” button in there…
Open up your Manage Pages drawer on your Dashboard, then click the button...
… and then you’ll see something like this:
... and you'll see your clever little page manager
There’s some simple instructions at the top to give you a few pointers when adding, naming, and hiding your pages.
It’s all really easy though - you don’t need to spend 4 years in medical school for this kind of heroism.
Use the How Can We Improve? drawer to let us know your ideas
I just wanted to highlight one of the features of your Admin Home page - and that’s the “How Can We Improve?” drawer. If you’ve got some thoughts on something that would make things easier for you when you’re playing about with your website, or maybe you’d like to suggest something you’d love us to add, that’s the place to do it.
When you click the submit button, your clever little ideas get sent direct to our special collection of gifted, free-range geniuses (or is it genii?), who spend many happy hours pottering about in and around a large mansion we own in Shropshire. There they come up with various ways to make your clever little site even more clever (or is it cleverer?) than it already is. They like nothing more than building, tweaking and improving magnificently simple but powerful features, which then get passed on to our users.
They also like chemistry experiments, Diagnosis Murder, and rollercoasters. We organise a field trip to Alton Towers every couple of months, which they enjoy very much. You should see their genius eyes light up when we arrive. It’s wonderful.
Maps, graphs, pie charts and pretty colours - Google Analytics has it all
Of all the things Google have come up with over the past few years, one of our favourites is Google Analytics. Using this ingenious package, you can build up a great picture of the people who visit your website - this includes where they are in the world, what stuff they were looking at on your pages, what they searched for in order to end up on your site, and how long they spent there.
You can also quickly and easily compare statistics with those collected previously - for example, you can easily see how many people visited your site in the first quarter of 2009, compared to the same period in 2008. Of all the various website statistics packages we’ve used, it’s definitely the best.
Obviously we didn’t think that you guys should be without this excellent tool, so, as of today, we’ve sorted that all out for you. All you need to do is sign up for a Google Analytics account (which is free), and then plug in the unique “Web Property ID” they give you into the handy drawer on the Admin Home page of your site. Easy!
