Here's a great checklist which we can honestly say we do follow when creating websites.

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Provided by Smashing magazine, Make sure your web dewsign company check all these.

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Having provided a wide range of services to construction industry clients in 2009, we've decided to focus on the ones where we can offer the most added value in 2010. These are the three things which we think every marketing manager in the industrial sectors should have as priorities in their online marketing, indeed in all of their marketing, next year.

1. Understanding Online Marketing
It may sound vague, and organising that stand at the next big trade show in March is probably more pressing...
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Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of your website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective.

A great way to check your website.

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Much of what is written about search engine optimisation assumes that you're writing a blog, or a news story, or the next great 'how to' article" …but of course it's just as likely that you're writing that all important product page. So how do you make a page full of technical specifications work in the search engines?

Of course, such pages are critical: no one will buy anything from you if they don't understand what you offer. It's just that, no matter how creatively written and carefully ...
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Here's something to play with on a Friday: the new Free Keyword Tool from Wordstream. If you're a purveyor of power tools and think that your website only needs to work well in Google for the search term "power tools", try seeing all the other related search terms which this little tool will highlight.

A recent client of ours said: "it should be easy, we only sell [xxx], and I think the only other way you could describe it would be [yyy]." After a bit of brainstorming and playing around,...

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You may think these are obvious but they really do work in our expereince.

We've put a cost next to each, based on what we'd charge at the moment. And before you say "where am I going to find that much money from?", I'd ask: "instead of continuing to slowly cut down on things which stopped working years ago, like exhibitions and magazine advertising, isn't it about time you just stopped them completely?" You are allowed to, you know.

Right, here we go.

1. Rebuild your company website.
Why? Beca...
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Are you one of those people who occasionally studies their website traffic quite seriously but doesn't keep a more general eye on things on a more frequent basis?

Take a look at Polaris, which is a really great little application which sits on your desktop and shows you all your headline website traffic statistics from Google Analytics, with some of the most beautiful graphs ever. It's free too.
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Another great post from Smashing Magazine – Informative And Usable Footers In Web Design – looks at what to put in this small and neglected but important part of your website.

What do people expect when they scroll to the very bottom of the page? It would appear they want "About" and "Contact" information, some sort of link to an index or site map, and (on long pages) a "Back to the Top" link. Obvious really, but does your site have these in place? This information can be added easi...

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Have you seen websites where they offer a Live Chat service? Is this something you might like to consider for your website? From our experience customers really like the function. Even if they don't use them, it gives off a nice warm feeling that your company cares.

The good news is, it's quite possible to put one of those on your website for free, using Google Talk. If you have a Google account, and your prospect does (and an increasing number of people do), then here's what you need.
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Even if you're writing about something people are genuinely interested in, such as the Champions League Final, or Star Trek, or cute pets, you've only got a few lines to grab their attention and persuade them to keep reading. If you're writing about pressure transducers, or LEDs, or spectrophotometers, they're probably bored before they start, only reading about this stuff because they have to. You're going to have to work even harder to get them enthusiastic about what you have to say.

And ...

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As you know, generating links to your website is very important. Look, it's May, and in a few weeks' time there'll be no end of self-confident, web-literate students looking for a summer job. I bet that in six weeks, one of these could generate enough links for you that you could increase your Google traffic significantly. Let's say you get 100 visitors a day to your website, and a stronger presence in Google from a few dozen good links increased this by 25%. At £1.50 a visitor (the value yo...

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A common scenario in industry is for the sales manager to stick his head around the marketing manager's door and say "Now that we've got the Red Widget 2, I'd like all references to the original Red Widget removed from the website", which leads to the marketing manager doing just that, by deleting the relevant pages.

This is a mistake for so many reasons. Never just delete pages.

Firstly, you'd managed to get your original Red Widget page onto the first page of the Google results for "red wi...

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Using video marketing to drive traffic to your web site is an online marketing strategy many small business owners and internet marketers are beginning to embrace, with much success.

Having a traditional website only allows you to reach those people who first find your website. However, combining video, social networking and some simple video marketing techniques can drive hordes of qualified visitors to your website.

First, let's forget the silly videos you'll find all over YouTube of kids ...

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If you’d been doing the job you’re now doing thirty years ago, you’d have had a secretary to type stuff up for you, but over the years - in the dubious name of efficiency - it’s been decided that it’d be better if you’re made to type your own stuff up, slowly, and the company can save the cost of the secretary. You’re expected to have those skills, even if you almost certainly haven’t been trained in them. Similarly, more and more marketing people are doing their own copywriti...

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If there are any of you who don’t already use Google Alerts, you’re missing out on one of the web’s great free resources. Just type in a relevant search term, and every time something new pops into Google’s index, you get an email. Simple as that. At the very least, you must have a Google Alert set up for your company’s name.

However, by setting up Google Alerts for industry topics, you can create a continuous source of ideas for your blog, as Set Up Alerts to Monitor What is Happe...

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If you’re wondering if (or to what extent) your company should get involved in social media, there’s a good article called Is social media effective for B2B lead generation? on the Sales Lead Insights B2B Marketing blog which suggests that there’s not much evidence (to the author, at least) that it can produce sales leads. And for most of us, that’s what this marketing lark is all about.

I agree; I’ve not seen much evidence either. The likes of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc ...
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The most important, yet most often neglected element of a B-to-B web site’s home page is its main “billboard” messaging. A user will decide whether to stay on a site or leave within 5 seconds.

While a typical site will serve multiple objectives (e-commerce, marketing, customer service, employee optimisation/intranet, public relations, investor relations, channel partner relations), in most cases, the focus is on NEW LEADS AND PROSPECTS.

This being the case, we can never ASSUME a visit...

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