Going gets Tough – Tough get Going

In today’s economic climate we all need to be switched on with our business plans, our customer needs and most importantly our websites - as these are most often the first point of contact people have with our brand. Our Web Design Magic website is no different!

We have known for a while that our website was overdue for an update, but the steady flow of work made this task slide down the priority list. With our team growing constantly we needed to ensure work flowed in and amazing websites flowed out. What we needed was a smarter layout that future proofed the Web Design Magic website, making it easier to update and refresh again in the future. Here’s how we did it.

Let’s Freshen Up

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Our first task was to freshen up the site and modernise it. Some of the terminology and concepts were dated and no longer applicable to our target market. After extensive reviews of national and international design agencies we established “common terminology” for these services. We spent many hours reviewing Google keywords and traffic statistics to ascertain how people were finding us online and we used this information to develop the design and body copy.

One technique we commonly promote to others is to “think like your customer”, so we interviewed our own key clients and documented what they felt was important when purchasing a website. This exercise changed our ideas about what we displayed on the front page as well as where it sat on the page and so the main navigation bar was changed showcasing our most important information.

User Friendly

Clients and prospective clients want to see what we offer, but our old site had our products and portfolio hidden away (http://www.webdesignmagic.com.au/View-Our-Portfolio.aspx). We moved them up the front to increase the likelihood of engagement by our users and to increase accessibly by making the site friendlier to use. Our products are all now featured on the front page and our portfolio not only features our impressive clients up front (or the “hero’ sites, as we like to call them), but it’s also a great place to get ideas and view our previous work.

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Newsletters & Capturing Subscribers

Our Content Management System (CMS) is a feature rich product capable of combining many tasks within the one simple administration system. One feature we weren’t using to its capacity was the newsletter tool. In the previous CMS version the newsletter tool was fairly basic and so we let that task slide a little, but in Kentico Version 7 (http://www.webdesignmagic.com.au/Website-Design/Kentico-CMS-Websites.aspx ), there is no excuse. We now have a steady flow of subscribers to whom we send out our Magic Mail newsletters. It is key to keep in touch with clients, old and new and this is by far the easiest way to do it. Measurable too - using the Kentico 7 Enterprise Marketing Suite.

Freebees

Everyone likes a freebee, so we decided to give something away – something relevant to those businesses we work for and want to attract. We have partnered with businesses coaches Jeff & Kane who have allowed us to give away free tickets to their 2 day business seminars as an incentive to sign up to our newsletter. These two guys, Jeff and Kane have built 5 multi-million dollar businesses from scratch (two of which have become international brand leaders). They have advised Celine Dion, Frank Kern and even Richard Branson. They also get rave reviews from industry giants like Frank Kern, Bob Proctor, T.Harv Eker and Les Brown.

Download your free tickets now!

Add a Video

Some people don’t like to read, so on the home page, the addition of a video on Kentico CMS now allows visitors to easily understand what the solution is all about without trolling through pages and pages of information. If they want to learn more, they can get further information linked from the same section on the home page once they have finished watching. Much easier than the previous site, when the Kentico product information was buried 3 clicks deep in our general website information.

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Social Networking

Another key area we ramped up was our social networks. We spent days and days tweeting, connecting and status updating and monitored the success of these campaigns. We will continue to grow these well into the future as our opportunities will increase as we get our message out to more and more people. We’ve seen a measurable change in a few small weeks!

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Monitor your Results

While we made many changes to our website, the most satisfying part is seeing the results. No longer do we rely solely on Search Engines to randomly bring us traffic, but now a very large component of our traffic is direct. This means users are now visiting our sites from other avenues - increasing traffic and opportunity.

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Are you ready to increase your traffic and sales?

Many of the changes we have made to our own Web Design Magic site can easily be implemented into your websites too. Are you ready and raring to go? Simply request a quote and you'll be on your way to a powerful and persuasive website revamp.

Want to talk about it first? For a FREE consultation, call us toll free on 1300 308 210 or email us and we'll get back to you within 24 hours.

Posted: Wednesday 17 October 2012
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