|
I'm currently a good example of what not to do. I always encourage people to update their website and social media as often as they can; being active on your site only helps with your organic reach and build your profile.
I have not been paying attention to that. I find that when life gets busy, I neglect my All Sorted presence. I suppose in my mind I must subconsciously think, "I'm busy working, so I'll do my own marketing later," Little and often is a good motto here, and one I need to adopt. In other news, one of the All Sorted family have launched their new business venture and website! I wish Jon and Shae-Renee nothing but the best of luck with Budget Caravans NZ, if I had any spare money I wouldn't hesitate to buy my own home-away-from-home. It would be a pretty great way of seeing more of Aotearoa and no one said adventure had to involve "roughing it". Until next time... Fx I'm ever so pleased to welcome a new client to the All Sorted family; Intuitive Birth is giving me the chance to learn about their business and come up with new ways to reach their target market.
It's only been a day but Sarah-Jane has already given me a whole bunch of information about what they've done to date, and where she sees her business going in future. I haven't been able to spend too much time on it yet, but I can already see some great opportunities to spread the Intuitive word. My main focus is trying to get some real bang for her buck. As a mum I attended atenatal classes, so thankfully this isn't completely foreign to me, but I still need to do my research to ensure I get the language and audience right. I'm looking forward to it. Until next time... Fx Following on from my recent post, the client gave me what I was waiting for and I've been busy working on bits and pieces to help him and his wife start-up their new start up.
I'm taking care of the design & build of a website that will be super easy for them to manage and maintain themselves. They've chosen a logo concept which I was then able to turn into business cards, which should hopefully be with them as early as next week. As part of the design & build of the site, I had to do a bit of research into the market they're about to enter. I checked out their NZ competitors and also some overseas companies. and I was surprised to see how clinical they all seemed. Given what they're selling (all will be revealed when they're ready to launch), I would have thought selling the dream as opposed to the pure mechanics of the thing. So that's what I've tried to do with the copy; appeal to the whimsical and flight-of-fancy side of their target market. I mean, if you're Googling their product, you're already pre-disposed to forking out the cash and just doing it... all you might need to actually do it is for someone to give you a gentle push with some words of encouragement. At least that's what I reckon. Until next time... Fx Further to my most recent post, y'know the one about being a bit too cheap but in a good way, I am delighted to say that the quote was accepted and I have officially scored myself a new client!!
Thank you Budget Caravans, I won't let you down. Before I really get involved in the process, there is some basic but important information I need from the client. I'm just waiting for him to get back to me with that stuff and and doing my best not to start working on things until I know what's what. It's hard though. Patience is not one of my virtues. I have a bunch of copy ideas I want to flesh out and I have some logo concepts I want to start creating. But I have to stop myself. I am working to a budget on this one, as opposed to an hourly rate. There's no point going down a track that ends up completely wrong. Did I mention I'm not very good at the waiting thing? I'll keep you posted on this one. Until next time... Fx I put together a quote the other day for a full design & build of a new website, and coming up with some logo concepts.
After doing my happy dance and asking a number of questions to determine just how full on they wanted their website to be, I made an educated guess on how long the process should take. The quote isn't astronomical, in fact its very reasonable. Some might even call it cheap. Which makes be wonder whether someone would question the quality of the work produced. I've done my research; logo concepts can cost around $500, and a design & build of a straightforward website (including copy writing) can cost anywhere around $2,000. I would never be able to justify charging someone that much. But if you pay that much, would you expect the work produced to be better than someone who charges less? Does a smaller bill mean poorer quality? I wouldn't think so, but some might. I would be stoked that the work can be done for a fee I could afford. Just something to think about. Until next time... Fx A client found themselves with a big pile of end-of-lines, samples and damaged packaging items they'd been given by a friendly supplier. They wanted to let everyone know about it, without spending a bunch of money. You know how it goes.
When considering something like this, you've got to take a good look at the resources you've got to work with, in this case they had their website, Facebook page, a customer database and a tiny budget. My advice; use everything! Step 1. Create an effective banner for the website homepage Step 2. Create an email to send out to the database Step 3. Share email on Facebook (or if you'd prefer, create a Facebook specific post Step 4. Boost the Post on Facebook By 'Boosting the Post' you can choose a far smaller budget than if you were 'Promoting the Page' (in this case, we entered a daily budget of only $1.50). You can also specify a target market and the duration of the promotion. All of this took a couple of hours to get sorted, and within a day of the campaign starting some of the items sold out! If that's not success, I don't know what is. So if you've got something you want to "go loud" about but think you don't have the means to do it justice, just remember that an effective campaign can cost less than $20, Until next time... Fx First off, Happy New Year!
I hope the rain and wind hasn't got you down, just remember the saying "after a hurricane, comes a rainbow"... or is that Katy Perry lyrics?! I'm sorry to say that my first post for 2016 is a bit of a rant. In the past few weeks I have visited too many websites that are ugly, hard to navigate, don't provide the right information or all of the above. It doesn't make sense to me that this far into the online game, so many places haven't put their best digital foot forward. Especially when it can be such an easy fix! I don't think websites need to have all the bells and whistles, but they should enable people to find what they need with ease and give them a positive first experience with your business. Every time I visit an unfortunate site, I feel like sending them an email saying, "hey, you can do better than that... let me help you" but I'm not sure how they would feel about that. Insulted? Or interested? Maybe I'll give it a go. I'll keep you posted. Until next time... Fx There's a certain satisfaction you feel when publishing a website that you've been working on and improving over a period of time. I love it when the work I've done for the site, whether it be design, copy writing or just improving the flow, pleases the business owners so much that they say the magic words, "Okay, we're good to go live now!"
I'm not going to lie and say the re-design I've done for Mutts n Moggies was easy peasy; their old site had quite a few quirks and the CMS they inherited proved surprisingly tricky to navigate, but that just makes the end result just a little bit more rewarding. I hope Carley and Quintin are as happy as they've told me they are, and I hope the new look site helps take their business to the next level (it's already come up leaps and bounds in organic Google search results; yay me!). The job isn't complete yet, I still need to show them how the new site works and the best way to update their info, but that's just the finishing touches. I believe you should celebrate the wins, no matter the size. So this post is me, celebrating and sharing my little win. Until next time... Fx Over the past few years, I've worked with various CMS (Content Management System) programmes to maintain various websites. Most of the time I find them to be intuitive and easy-to-navigate, which means I can get away with not reading the heavy duty user manual (hence this post title).
I enjoy learning how each website is built and discovering the best way to use the system to make it work for the business it represents. It's pretty great when even the smallest of tweaks make a big difference, like changing the colour of the background (helpful hint: "white space is your friend"). I do find it pretty frustrating when I come across a pricey CMS that is so weirdly laid out that even trying to find where to edit the home page is like trying to figure out why its still so cold this late in the year (c'mon lady sunshine, we miss you!). For many small business owners, tricky website management programmes make simple website maintenance a task that goes into the "too hard basket". It should be reasonably quick and painless but for many, it's not. If you are about to embark on the adventure of building your own website, please do some research into the usability of the CMS... you don't want to get stuck with something that doesn't do your business any favours. Until next time... Fx |
Sharing is CaringAre you there readers? Archives
August 2017
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
