What is WordPress?

WordPress is software that is installed on our server and provides a platform on which we can build your website. The system is tried and tested and under constant development and is used by more than 2 million websites worldwide  from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Because of the design of the software and it’s widespread use it can be used to create any type of site from simple single page sites through to very complex e-commerce and social networking solutions.

When you have something interesting to say, but there isn’t enough room on Twitter to say it… link back to your website. This might be for some special news that your followers will find interesting, or it could be for an offer or a competition. The important thing, as always, is that most of the time it something useful or interesting and not just promoting your business and products.

One of our clients, Brenmoor Ltd,  produce a website with useful information about patient identification issues to support their range of healthcare products. The company also provides a ticketing solution for the Grassington Festival near Skipton by using their printed wristbands.

Last night we were invited by Brenmoor to see comedian Ross Noble, who took the opportunity to use the wristbands as part of his routine. A quick photo of the wristbands was added to the Brenmoor Twitter page along with a tweet this morning pointing back to a few more details of the evening.

It doesn’t really make much difference on Twitter how big your business is, on Twitter other users are there to connect with people and get updates that are useful and meaningful to them.

Use your posts to make conversations and offers, not to put out polished brand messages that have quite obviously been engineered. Asking questions is a great start, not only does this make you group on Twitter feel involved, it also give you great feedback that might even lead to new products or services.

Online sales jumped by 22% in May, according to new data, with large increases in alcohol, electrical goods and clothing.

The leap in sales represents the highest growth figure since June 2008, according to Interactive Media Retail Group’s latest e-retail sales index. Shoppers spent £4.5bn online during the month, equivalent to £73 for every person in the UK.

Tina Spooner, director of information at IMRG, said:

“With online sales growing at their highest rate in almost two years, this is good news for the e-retail industry. The fine weather in May, together with the build-up to the World Cup appears to have had a positive impact for e-retailers.”

Alcohol sales leaped by 23% year on year, boosted by discounted price offers by many retailers.

Sales of electrical goods grew 14% year on year, while clothes sales rose 32% as shoppers responded to the warmer weather.

If you’re interested in selling your products via the web, but unsure where to take the first steps, ask about our E-commerce hosting solutions, available on a monthly hosting plan.

If you’re a retailer either on line or with a shop locally, a great idea for web marketing is to use Twitter for announcing special offers or promotions.

The beauty of Twitter is that it’s instant and can gain a very fast reaction. Chris Wildman of Paganum Produce, an on line food retailer based in Malham. North Yorkshire, is someone who uses this to great effect. Chris has a large following on Twitter and is also a well respected food blogger. When he attends events with Paganum he quite often makes an offer of some free product via Twitter to the first person who approaches him at the event with a specific phrase. Not only does this attract people to his stall, it’s also a very good ice breaker.

Although very much an internet expert himself, Chris benefited from some mentoring with on line marketing strategy from us which was funded by  a government training grant.

As a web design and hosting business based in NorthYorkshire, we know how difficult it can be for our small business clients to access grant funding. The process is often long and complicated and then you find out at the end of it that you don’t qualify anyway because of some technicality that you weren’t aware of. When you run a business you are often too busy fighting fires and attending to day to day business matters to have time to apply for funding.

Through Train to Gain we have found a grant which is both practical in helping your business and a simple application process. This funding is available to business leaders in Yorkshire and Humber to help them develop skills in managing their business. The application is a single page form, followed by a visit from their representative which takes about 15 minutes… if you qualify you are informed a couple of weeks later and you can start.

As training providers we can then help you with aspects of the internet or internet marketing that you feel you need to understand better. Our help usually consists of one to one mentoring with the owner or director of the business in pointing out ways of using the web and social media to increase leads and sales and to help formulate an web marketing strategy.

We have helped a number of businesses in Skipton and North Yorkshire with internet marketing campaigns using their own website, social media and email marketing. The funding is useful in providing a risk free starting point to help key people in the business understand what tools are available to them and how they can be used.

Click here to find out more about the grant funding >>

Click here to fill out a contact form or give us a call on 01756 636106

Why use WordPress?

The problem

One of the major problems that we have found facing new clients is that they are unable to update their own websites. This may be that they lack the required technical expertise within their business, but more often than not it is because their existing hosting company don’t provide a facility for them to do so. Most traditional web hosting and design companies provide web space and design sites and then make money from charging a large hourly rate to update the site. This results in the site being static and quickly outdated or unjustified costs for keeping the site up to date. Not only does the site look out of date to prospective clients and users, it will also lose relevance and therefore ranking with Google and other major search engines.

A screen shot of the client dashboard for this page. (click on the image to enlarge)

The Skipton solution

Our solution is to provide value for money hosting and install WordPress as a “content management system” or CMS. This enables our clients to update and manage their own site, using a set of tools similar to a word processing package like Microsoft Word. These updates could be as simple as adding the odd news story through to managing complete e-commerce sites with stock control, payment and order processing. The client may choose to update the site for themselves or pay an outside agency to do this for them, or a combination of both. The important thing is that the content on the site is fresh and relevant and the business has control over both the content and the cost.

Babyway run their complete on line shopping solution on one of our WordPress hosting solutions.

Flexibility

Another important aspect of all this as a hosting solution is that because the content is held in it’s own database, the whole thing becomes very flexible and scalable. In other words, the site structure can be changed and re-worked without altering the the content, this allows the same content to be displayed in any number of different ways. Some businesses may only need a very simple one or two page information site, while others need complex magazine styles, portfolios or shopping facilities – all of these are possible from the same platform. We provide a WordPress hosting platform for Yorkshire based Babyway who specialise in baby products. Based on our hosting the company are able to manage the whole of their on-line e-commerce solution along with optimising for search, blogging and email marketing.

All of this makes for a very simple, cost effective solution for your website. Not only that, but you’ll see the benefit from increased traffic from search engines such as Google as your site becomes more interesting and relevant.

Air Cooled - micro site

When we became involved, Air-Cooled was a start up business and it’s founder, Lee, wanted to establish a presence on the internet in a simple and cost effective way. Lee wasn’t familiar with internet marketing and didn’t feel at the time that he would be able to manage his own content as his time would be taken up with running the business and providing service to his customers.

We suggested that the first step should be one of our micro-sites for a quick solution that would buy him some time to test the water before getting more involved. The site has now been picked up by search engines and provides a valuable source of leads for the business and a point of contact for word-of-mouth referrals.

Lee is so happy with the way things are going with the business, that he is now discussing the next stage and thinking of taking part in one of our training programmes and having a content managed solution.

We could have persuaded Lee to spend more of his start-up capital on a bigger website, but it wasn’t for him at the time and he now feels more confident about the next stage.

When used correctly and creatively, email can be one of the most cost effective and powerful marketing tools available to you.
Email marketing is something that any business can use for a very modest monthly outlay and is capable of providing a very healthy return on the investment of time and money. One of the most important things in being successful with your email marketing is to have a well planned campaign and follow best practices to avoid alienating potential customers, who will then remove themselves from your list of subscribers.
Over the next few weeks I will set out some of the techniques that I think will help with creating a list of subscribers and keeping them subscribed to your list.
We will also look at our e-mail marketing solution and some of the tools available for creating and managing mailing lists and some useful internet resources that will help to build a successful email marketing campaign.