d05f425d

Jargon Buster

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 14:59:54 GMT

A potted guide to jargon and acronyms in the digital world

WEBSITE JARGON

CSS = Custom Style Sheet : this is for the experts, just ignore!

CTA = Call to Action. A button in other words e.g. Add to Basket or Contact Us

Domain name: this is your website address e.g. emmas-crafts.co.uk

GDPR = General Data Protection Regulation : this is the EU law that is being honoured by the UK after Brexit that means all site owners

MUST tell site visitors that cookies are used on their website and to ask their consent. Cookies are used both to track a customer through the purchase process (making sure the correct information is sent from stage to stage) and for marketing e.g. a cookie is attached to a visitor that can then show the visitor an ad for your site when they are browsing somewhere else. This law also rules that a website must ask and get permission from a customer to send out marketing emails later. The customer must actively tick a box saying ‘yes, I want to receive email’ before you can send them one.

Meta : (not the new business name for Facebook and Instagram...) Simply, this refers to the part of the process of making your site present well on Google’s pages where you insert titles and descriptions of the site and its pages. These are called Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions.

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation: You want your site to be listed by Google and Microsoft, and have heard that you must use keywords competitively on your website to get as high up the ranking as possible. For the small business, I think it’s more important to get your website to be as user friendly as possible with concise, descriptive text about you and your products then attract people to it by other means. Chasing SEO with keywords is time consuming and may make your site read weirdly.

SSL = Secure Sockets Layer! This is a piece of tech that makes your site safer from hackers. It’s a must-have, not only if you’re taking payments or names and addresses, but also because Google rewards you for having it.

URL = Unique Reference Language also known as your website address or domain .

MARKETING JARGON

CPC = Cost per click: This is when you are running an advert and tells you how much you’ve spent for every person that has clicked on it

CRM = Customer Relationship Management: anyone who has interacted with your business should be nurtured because they might do so again. CRM is managing how you store any customer information, how to interact with them, planning emails to send to them etc.

CTR = Click Through Rate: Conversion rate: the percentage of people who click on a post or an ad and ‘convert’ i.e. contact you to do business or buy from you. This helps you to judge what content has been successful.

GA = Google Analytics. Many of the site builder platforms have their own page showing you how many visits you’ve had etc. But, once you start marketing on Facebook or sending out sales emails, you should try to understand how many people have responded to you, if they’ve bought anything etc. This is where Google Analytics comes in, it’s very comprehensive and used by a lot of the big websites,

but is usable by us smaller businesses too.

KPI = Key Performance Indicators. An industry favourite, it just means you need to identify what is most valuable to you from your online activity – clicks through to your webste, actual sales of bookings etc.

PPC = Pay Per Click : a way of describing an ad that you pay for.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing. To get your site listed at the top of a search page, the easiest route is through a paid ad set up with Google and Bing (Microsoft)

Touchpoints: I don't know why this irritated me so much, but it is a meh word if you ask me. It's used to describe anywhere that a customer may come across you (social media, website, in your shop etc.).

The importance of lists

Tue, 14 Jul 2020 14:54:07 GMT

It's amazing what we forget...

I took myself off on a walk this weekend. Nothing unusual in that other than it was one I hadn't done before, but I'd read the description of the walk in my book, checked it on the map and felt fully prepared as I set off with a jaunty step.

After a very short time I felt that I wasn't quite on the right track and reached for the map and my compass to see if I could work out what I was doing wrong. No compass. Interesting. Well, I thought, I'm not that far from the start so I can just turn around if needs be, and on I went without further ado. Everything was fine and I had soon reassured myself that I was going in the right direction and after a lovely hour or so I thought I'd stop for a snack. No snacks!

Clearly, the lack of nuts half way round a pleasant amble in the Cheviots is not a life threatening issue (although my friends and family may disagree because a Hangry Emma is quite a scary being) but I was annoyed with myself because I NEVER forget to bring snacks, or a compass for that matter, and here I was staring despairingly into the void of a food-free backpack. I thought to myself, hmm, I should write myself a pre-walk checklist.

Which is a long way of saying that even when you have been doing something for ever you can still forget vital things and the same is true in spades when building or updating a website or starting an online ad campaign. I spent years managing online projects of varying sizes and complexity, and almost every time once the designer had completed a site to everyone's satisfaction, the team would say 'cool, can you put it live now?'. 'I'm afraid not', I'd repeat for the 9,000th time, 'I have 6/16/60 more things on my checklist that we need to do before we can even think of going online'.

A friend of mine did this the other day (I'd worked with her for years, she should have known better!) sending me a message to say that she'd posted about the launch of her amazing new e-commerce site on Instagram, and was hoping to finish off the 'last bits' over the next 3 days. The last bits were the usual things that lounge at the bottom of a list even if you've written one e.g. Terms and Conditions and Privacy statements but in this case also included testing the site to check a customer could successfully buy an item! This friend is also a mother of 3 children under the age of 5 so it wasn't that surprising, but let's face it, she should have had a list.

As a result of this alarming week, I have decided to create some lists for you to download and use. One list won't ever fit all online projects, but it'll be a start.

Check list 1 for a basic website build.

Watch this space!

If I can build a website so can you!

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 15:11:42 GMT

All about finding out that improving your online profile can be relatively easy...

I don't know about you but I wasn't able to do anything during the first period of lockdown.

And I mean anything, I could barely read my book, which is saying a lot for Dick Francis. Thankfully, I'd moved into my flat in Newcastle 3 weeks before lockdown, so had at least made my move from Down South to start my new life in the North East. Lockdown should have been an ideal time to start my long planned online consultancy business, lots of time to focus on what to offer and to whom, but apart from chewing it over like the cows chewing the cud on the Town Moor, I achieved nothing.

Then all of a sudden, despite forebodings about the easing of lockdown, I felt able to do something. Inspired by P.J. Wallman, who had asked me to help him with his website , I decided I should build my own. I have a lot of contacts who could have built the site for me - they are experts and I felt I should rely on them. But what Peter Wallman made me think about was having the hands-on experience of using the template-based tools so that I could help other businesses who were also doing it themselves.

So the next week was spent visiting SquareSpace, Go Daddy, Wordpress and Names Co, Shopify etc. to delve into what they have to offer in terms of flexibility, ease of use, background tools e.g. being able to enter your SEO elements like keywords, and of course, cost. Names Co worked best for me - simple to use with lots of template options (templates within templates too) along with a thorough set of background tools including being able to add code for Google Analytics, add the favicon (that little pic you see in the browser tab, cute!) and other important SEO things like Page Description, with the added bonus of explanations about number of characters, where it'll appear etc.

My site, as you see, is very simple - just text and images, but I'm happy with its look and the fact that if you type in emthax digital into google, a link will be shown. Result! I knew that I needed to plan out the content, I'd done it enough when I was a website manager, but I hadn't realised that it's a lot harder to do when it's all about your own business than when it's about someone else's. I reckon the planning took about 2 weeks, and even then it changed when I came to look at building the site. Building it probably took half the time. Once I had decided what I needed to say and worked out how to create (drag and drop!) areas where I could say it, I was off. None of the photos are mine either, well, except the one of me - all supplied through the tool for free.

Clearly, if your business is more complex or involves e-commerce, then you will need to make sure that the tool you choose gives you the flexibility you need for your particular set up. You may have very specific requirements for the product you are selling and it's this you need to plan out, so you are confident you're using the tool that's right for you. It can work though - a good friend of mine has her own florist shop near Brighton - her skill set is arranging and selling flowers and yet she was able to build a beautiful and robust online shop for herself too, using SquareSpace. Check it out here , pretty impressive.

So here I am. From a 4-hour daily commute on Thameslink to a cottage on a farm in Amble, Northumberland; from a life within one great company to a life less ordinary on my own - emthax digital has been born and already has a website!