Generate UK – Digital Marketing Blog

When-ever you venture into Internet marketing or think about putting up your business on the web, it is not worth if your WebPages are not ranked within the first three or four of the first page of Google or any other search engine search results. When I started with my website, I had to know about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), and just knowing did not help. To get my site exposed to that level of being noticed, I had to learn the SEO techniques and as I gathered the experience from the results I achieved, I found my website having an excellent ranking by Google.

The Internet marketers use all kinds of marketing techniques to get a formidable ranking which gives them the advantage of having created for themselves a leading edge over other similar Internet marketers. There are various marketing techniques used. However, the most important is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), which forms the basic foundation in driving more and more traffic to your website. You need to have your business known to people, and SEO, if done correctly, provides you the automated way in getting traffic to your website. The important thing about doing SEO correctly is to research for correct keywords that you need to use. This needs your effort in spending time to find the keyword phrases and use them with the other known marketing techniques.

You need to learn SEO techniques only once, and as you gather the experience and get to understand the technique better, you should be able to apply the knowledge to all your future website designs. The main thing is selecting the proper keywords and keyword phrases for each of the websites you design which affects greatly the traffic driven to your sites. In order to succeed as an Internet marketer you would need to learn the other techniques involved, but SEO remains as the most important technique which can have your website exposed to the people looking for whatever you are trying to sell.

The intention in marketing your products, services, and anything else is to earn money, and more correctly you apply the concepts of SEO techniques and have traffic driven to your website, you stand a better chance to promote your business. There are tools like Google Adwords Tool which helps immensely to search for the right key phrases. There are several free stuffs available for SEO experts for proper handling of your advertising techniques, and when you combine these with the techniques for advanced marketing methods you get the results that you want.

SEO is vital to your Internet business since the traffic driven to your website is mainly through search engines. In order to gain the leading edge over your competitors, SEO plays a vital part in designing your website, and it is virtually the only way you could get a decent ranking in search results obtained through Google or like search engines. Search Engine optimisation techniques applied correctly to your website makes all the difference between high traffic frequency and being lost amidst the numerous other businesses.

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Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild built Waddesdon Manor 120 years ago on a hill 60 miles from London, in the style of a French 16^th century chateau. He was an inspired collector and the house was designed to accommodate his exceptional French 18^th century furniture, Sevres porcelain, English portraits and Renaissance works of art. When Ferdinand died in 1898 he left Waddesdon to his sister, Miss Alice. In 1922 the house passed to James de Rothschild, her French cousin. James inherited a substantial part of his father Baron Edmond’s great collection and brought this to Waddesdon. In 1957, in order to ensure its future perpetuity, Waddesdon was bequeathed to the National Trust by James de Rothschild, although his widow, Dolly continued to manage the house until her death in 1988.

Waddesdon has gone from strength to strength and today attracts on average 350,000 visitors per year.  Whilst visitor numbers are excellent it’s really important that Waddesdon seek to build upon other revenue generated areas of the organisation.

Towards the end of 2008, Waddesdon Manor decided to move away from their managed ecommerce system. They were looking for a shopping cart that was easy to use, scalable, rich in features and performance allowing Waddesdon to implement new products from new initiatives. This included a recent project where Waddesdon commissioned the Royal College of Art (RCA) student designers to create a range of products to be sold in its shop. These exclusive items are now available on the new Waddesdon Manor Online Gift Shop.

As well as efficiency the new system would also allow Waddesdon to move away from their current ecommerce subscription model, which attracted annual costs.

Due to their energy and experience in delivering ecommerce solutions Generate UK were chosen to project manage and deliver a new online shop.  To achieve all of the objectives highlighted above Generate UK worked closely with Waddesdon Manor to understand:

• Design and branding requirements
• Waddesdon’s backend ordering and fulfilment processes,  to understand how the shopping cart would fit in would fit in with the rest of the business
• How the products should be represented on the site and to the search engines
• The products and categories to help structure and implement easy navigation rules

The shopping cart scales to support an unlimited number of products and can quickly and easily be managed by anyone without HTML or other technical skills. It even integrates directly with Royal Mail for real time delivery prices, which can be rolled out across the store or changed per product.

Kim Hallett, Head of Sales and Marketing commented; the online store is a fundamental part of our business, the old system was exceptionally hard to use and made our lives miserable! It was important that when we changed to a new system it was flexible, dynamic and easy to use, whilst improving the backend sales process. It was also important that the new site look great and improved our search engine rankings. Generate UK guided us through the whole process and made the project really easy. The shopping cart is fantastic to use and we are already benefiting through a great new look and improved sales figures.

Please click here to visit the Waddesdon Manor Gift Shop

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The Eight Bells is an independent pub in Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire the home of the famous Midsomer Murders!

The Eight Bells is an attractive friendly pub that has been serving the local community for over 400 years.  The pub has gained a reputation as a great pub to enjoy a relaxing drink in beautiful surroundings. The menu at the Eight Bells is traditional home made pub food, which is locally sourced and produced wherever possible.

In recent time the Eight Bells have won awards for Real Ales; with the Cask Marque accreditation and also the Beautiful Beer Gold award. Recently, they were included in the Good Beer Guide 2010 and were awarded Aylesbury Vale’s Community pub of the year 2008

Unfortunately the old site did not represent the pubs great atmosphere, great service, excellent beer and pub food which it offered so they decided it was time for a change.

Generate UK worked with Helen, the owner of the Eight Bells to understand her exact requirements. Increasing traffic, improving the design and most importantly it was evident from the start that Helen required a content management system (CMS). This was to allow Helen and her team to update the website in the future with content changes, new menus, images etc

Whilst design was very important to Helen, to make sure the Pub was presented in the correct way the Eight Bells also wanted to focus on making their site highly visible within the search engines both locally and regionally.

Generate UK built a great new design and integrated it within the Generate CMS platform which now allows the Eight Bells to take full control of their own website.  Focusing on location, primary and secondary keywords i.e. pubs in Long Crendon was essential as this has now ensured that location based searches will present the Eight Bells pub high within the organic search engines.  The result of this will increase traffic and raise the venue’s profile locally throughout the surrounding counties.

This has already substantially increased the number of unique visitors to the website which has generated more visitors to the pub which in turn has delivered more business.

Helen Copleston, Proprietor of the Eight Bells Pub stated “A key challenge for any small business is finding the right company to work with who will give you honest advice and won’t charge the earth.  I found Generate UK brilliant to work with; they’ve built the Eight Bells a great new website and guided me through the whole process, advising me on keywords, design structure and even budget. They were very reasonable in cost and for what they have delivered I am over the moon!  We now have a future proof website that my team can amend as and when is needed and the content management system is really easy to use. The overall experience was great and as a result is generating more revenue, a great investment. Many thanks!”

Visit The Eight Bells Pub website

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The benefit of adopting the affiliate marketing model is that it’s an extremely low risk way to open up new sales channels. The downside is that it works best with a product or service that is more of a commodity than a bespoke solution.

Many of the world’s largest organisations operate their own network or belong to an affiliate one.  The main reason for this is that the cost to enter is minimal and the business method is simply that you pay based on performance. This means that as long as the affiliate meets your branding and quality criteria, you are in the beneficial position of only needing to pay once a sale has been completed.

There are two ways to approach affiliate marketing; either by joining a larger well established affiliate network, or by creating and managing your own program. Both have their merits and are worth considering in more detail.

Econsultancy.com recently predicted the UK market for affiliate marketing to grow to £4bn in online sales in 2009. This is an extraordinary figure and demonstrates the size of the channel available.

If you are considering an affiliate marketing scheme we would suggest:

• Create objectives for setting up an affiliate program.
• Identify products, services or solutions that could be used.
• Gap analysis on sales training material available and other sales tools.
• Explore your own affiliate network or join a larger established one.
• What are the rewards and criteria for being an affiliate?

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Dance2Xtreme is the online shop of an independent family run business based in Maidenhead, Berkshire. They carry a wide selection of quality dancewear and accessories for ballet, tap, modern and jazz. They also provide the latest fashions for ballroom, gymnastics and ice skating costumes.

Dance2Xtreme have traditionally sold from their shop in Maidenhead, they decided that they wanted to offer their products online as this would provide them with a new route to market. It also meant that they were able to extend their reach and sell to new customers outside of their traditional geography.

Selling products online was a new experience from Dance2Xtreme, so it was critical that their ecommerce system was easy to use and flexible. In particular adding new products, editing products and the fulfilment engine, which automatically creates emails and invoice information for their customers.

The other important factor for Dance2Xtreme was that they wanted to “future proof” their site and offer features that they may not use from day one; this included the ability to offer promotion codes/vouchers, gift wrap service, wish lists and customer reviews.

The Ecommerce system from Generate UK was the perfect fit. It is an advanced shopping cart system that was designed with the business owner in mind. It is very intuitive and runs via a simple control panel where you can manage every aspect of your store, right down to the customisation of your product variations such as size and colour.

The shopping cart scales to support an unlimited number of products and can quickly and easily be managed by anyone without HTML or other technical skills. It even integrates directly with Royal Mail for real time delivery prices, which can be rolled out across the store or changed per product.

The Dance2Xtreme website is an exciting next step for the proprietors; they are looking forward to marketing the website and welcoming new and existing customers to order online. In the future, new products and brands will be added to the store as well as a unique custom dancewear design area, where customers can work directly with Dance2Xtreme to design an exclusive piece of clothing.

What Dance2Xtreme had to say; Lin Sweeney, Director stated “Initially I was very nervous about the whole project until a friend recommended Generate UK. Their knowledge was amazing and they made the whole process easier than I thought it would be. They often went above and beyond what was needed and that I’d signed up for. The site looks great and really easy to operate, thank you for all you help! Lin Sweeney Owner – Dance2Xtreme “

Please click here to visit the Dance2Xtreme website

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