Good morning everyone, I trust it was a good weekend. We're really getting close to the busy time of the year and a couple of people I spoke to last week had two and three weddings last weekend - that is good going for March!!!!
I've got some really exciting news for you today, we're getting close to the launch of the Your Wedding In website that I have mentioned to most of you that I've spoke to in the last few months. To launch the site there is going to be a truly monumental publicity campaign and promotion the likes of which we have never seen before!!!
I know it sounds like a lot of hype but, trust me, this is going to be huge!
You see over the last few months, as well as helping and giving advice to you guys, I have been studying, researching and talking to the biggest names and pioneers in marketing. It's been tough going let me tell you, I've worked 14 & 15 hour days EVERY day for as long as I can remember!
What all this hard work means though is that I have an absolutely killer promotion lined up which is going to include all the strategies that I have written and spoken about as well as some others which are completely new. It will be a great demonstration on how to use the techniques and create desire for a product so make sure you follow closely.
If you're a sceptic about anything I have said or written in the past then watch this space and you will see how powerful the methods are. As individual methods they are good, but when they are combined and used together you'll be amazed!!
It's going to be a big opportunity for you guys too, I'm going to post a video on the blog explaining all about it this week but I'll give you a few brief tasters now.
The campaign is going to be national with extreme levels of exposure online, offline in all types of media all created it will be limited into a short space of time - the next two months - which will increase the exposure further and will then come to a head when the site is launched on a specified date - top secret for the time being.
I know everyone has their own thoughts and views on marketing, advertising and promotion and a lot of you probably won't be interested in taking part, but I would highly recommend that you follow what's happening very closely (I'm pretty sure you won't be able to avoid it anyway) as it will give you some fantastic ideas and a first hand insight into the effectiveness of a good campaign.
As usual members of the Evolution Programme will be offered the first spaces free of charge, so if you are a member then contact me and I can give you some more specific details. If you're not a member then I'm afraid membership will be made unavaiable for the campaign period, that gives you approximately 36 hours to join otherwise you'll have to wait.
To keep up to date with developments on the campaign then register your details on the Evolution home page and you'll receive further details by email.
http://www.evolutionweddingservices.co.uk/
That's it for now, things will be happening pretty quickly now though so make sure you check back often.
Until then
Edward
Monday, 31 March 2008
Thursday, 27 March 2008
The Effect of Your Email Address
Good morning everyone and I hope you are all enjoying the first piece of half decent weather for what feels like years!!!
I was reading an extremely interesting report yesterday and I thought that I had to share it with you as I know many of you may be directly affected by the information contained in it!
The report was carried out on the value of having a company specific email address over a generic one - @evolutionweddingservices.co.uk over @hotmail.co.uk for example. The research carried out suggested that potential customers perceived a generic email address as unprofessional and, faced with a choice, were 80% more likely to contact a company with a company specific email address.
80% more likely!!! That's 8 out of 10 people, a huge amount.
Let's put it into perspective.
Imagine you've got a pretty good website and you're getting 100 visitors through it per day. Unfortunately you're never going to convert all of your visitors into enquiries, but you can potentially get up to 10% (sometimes beyond) if you implement my techniques (but I'm sure you knew that already :)). That means of your 100 visitors, 10 will be making an enquiry... unless you have a generic email address. In that case you'll be getting only 2!
I've already had this conversation with someone who replied "I can live with two enquiries a day!" I think he missed the point slightly, but my response was "Maybe you can, but can you live without the 8 enquiries you are losing?!?!?"
He was adament that this was fine so I ran through some figure with him (it really bugs me when people can't take good advice!). It turned out he was spending copious amounts of money on advertising to get these 2 enquiries per day along with a few telephone enquiries so I laid it on the line for him - "How much would you be willing to pay for an advert that bought in an extra 250 leads per month?" I could sense he was starting to get the point!!!
Most hosting companies will supply you an email address which is specific to your web domain for a maximum of £7-8 per month, most a lot, lot less. That could mean a 500% increase in enquiries for less than a tenner a month - if that doesn't make sense to you, then you are wasting your time reading this!!!
FYI a generic email address is anything that is recognisably not associated to your website: aol, hotmail, gmail, live, yahoo, lycos, plus any number of others.
If you have any questions then just give me a shout, or look at the articles in the members pages of the Evolution site. If you need to email me its edward@hotmail.com - only joking!!!!
Until next time
Edward
I was reading an extremely interesting report yesterday and I thought that I had to share it with you as I know many of you may be directly affected by the information contained in it!
The report was carried out on the value of having a company specific email address over a generic one - @evolutionweddingservices.co.uk over @hotmail.co.uk for example. The research carried out suggested that potential customers perceived a generic email address as unprofessional and, faced with a choice, were 80% more likely to contact a company with a company specific email address.
80% more likely!!! That's 8 out of 10 people, a huge amount.
Let's put it into perspective.
Imagine you've got a pretty good website and you're getting 100 visitors through it per day. Unfortunately you're never going to convert all of your visitors into enquiries, but you can potentially get up to 10% (sometimes beyond) if you implement my techniques (but I'm sure you knew that already :)). That means of your 100 visitors, 10 will be making an enquiry... unless you have a generic email address. In that case you'll be getting only 2!
I've already had this conversation with someone who replied "I can live with two enquiries a day!" I think he missed the point slightly, but my response was "Maybe you can, but can you live without the 8 enquiries you are losing?!?!?"
He was adament that this was fine so I ran through some figure with him (it really bugs me when people can't take good advice!). It turned out he was spending copious amounts of money on advertising to get these 2 enquiries per day along with a few telephone enquiries so I laid it on the line for him - "How much would you be willing to pay for an advert that bought in an extra 250 leads per month?" I could sense he was starting to get the point!!!
Most hosting companies will supply you an email address which is specific to your web domain for a maximum of £7-8 per month, most a lot, lot less. That could mean a 500% increase in enquiries for less than a tenner a month - if that doesn't make sense to you, then you are wasting your time reading this!!!
FYI a generic email address is anything that is recognisably not associated to your website: aol, hotmail, gmail, live, yahoo, lycos, plus any number of others.
If you have any questions then just give me a shout, or look at the articles in the members pages of the Evolution site. If you need to email me its edward@hotmail.com - only joking!!!!
Until next time
Edward
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
What's Been Happening at Evolution
Hi everyone and welcome to a new week on the Bride Booker Blog - albeit just a short one!
You'll have probably noticed that there hasn't been much activity on the blog over the last two weeks and this is partly because I had the virus/flu/sickness which is going round (I've still got an extremely annoying cough that I can't shake off!) but part of it is because I've been working flat out on the new video section of the Evolution site.
If you've spoken to me in the last 12 months then you will have heard me say about video being the future of online marketing, well it got to the point where I was embarassed to keep telling people when, although it is as good as fact, I still hadn't practised what I preached and there isn't a single video on the Evolution site.
Obviously this has been of growing concern to me as I'm telling more and more people that it's the way forward so I've been working on putting it right. As a result, there will be a series of videos going live on the site over the next few weeks including the new Video tutorial section which will cover a variety of subjects.
We'll be looking for guinea pigs to try the videos and also request tutorial subjects to give me some feedback. If you are interested in testing some of these tutorials please get in touch with us either by phone or email and we'll add you to the list.
In addition to this section of the site I'm also planning on producing a video post for the blog on a regular (probably weekly) basis.
I'll keep you up to date with the progress of the new content, but if you want to learn more about producing and adding video content to your own site then just give me a shout - you won't make a better decision all year!
Until next time.
Edward
You'll have probably noticed that there hasn't been much activity on the blog over the last two weeks and this is partly because I had the virus/flu/sickness which is going round (I've still got an extremely annoying cough that I can't shake off!) but part of it is because I've been working flat out on the new video section of the Evolution site.
If you've spoken to me in the last 12 months then you will have heard me say about video being the future of online marketing, well it got to the point where I was embarassed to keep telling people when, although it is as good as fact, I still hadn't practised what I preached and there isn't a single video on the Evolution site.
Obviously this has been of growing concern to me as I'm telling more and more people that it's the way forward so I've been working on putting it right. As a result, there will be a series of videos going live on the site over the next few weeks including the new Video tutorial section which will cover a variety of subjects.
We'll be looking for guinea pigs to try the videos and also request tutorial subjects to give me some feedback. If you are interested in testing some of these tutorials please get in touch with us either by phone or email and we'll add you to the list.
In addition to this section of the site I'm also planning on producing a video post for the blog on a regular (probably weekly) basis.
I'll keep you up to date with the progress of the new content, but if you want to learn more about producing and adding video content to your own site then just give me a shout - you won't make a better decision all year!
Until next time.
Edward
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
Websites That Work - Part 3
Hi everybody and firstly apologies for the absence of any posts on the blog last week. Unfortunately I got struck down with the flu bug that's going around and was layed up in bed all week. I'm back now though and raring to go!!!!
Hopefully my time off from the blog has given you adequate time to consider the first two posts in the series.
On this post we're going to cover the planned progression of your site. In Part 1 we covered having a goal for your website and this lesson leads on from that on how we can lead our visitors into the desired outcome.
This may sound very complicated to some of you but it is something which goes on all the time, any high street shop you visit will have a carefully planned layout which is designed to squeeze the most money out of you - sweets at the counter ring a bell, do you think they're there because a series of shoppers thought it would be a good idea?!?!?!
As an example for this I'm going to use an Invitation company who has a site which enables customers to order online.
What is the goal for this site? Clearly if your site has an online store then your goal is to make a sale of a particular product or service so therefore we're looking to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to make their way through to the checkout and make a payment.
The best sites will minimise the number of steps to get to this outcome and will remove any potential barriers which could prompt a visitor to leave the site. What could these barriers be? Hard to find products, unclear layouts, not knowing what to do are all fairly major barriers which will more likely than not see your visitor find a site which they can use.
Don't think that I'm being picky on this, I worked with a company not so long ago who had a pretty good site and were experiencing fairly steady sales. They wanted to spend a lot of money making their site more visible through SEO and Adwords campaigns. I always like to make sure that things are working the way they should before I take on any project so I took a look at their site analytics. What it showed was that they were losing a massive 50% of their funnel traffic at a particular page everytime!!! By looking at this page and pinpointing the problem we were able to almost double their sales!!!
Do you think there are any bottlenecks on your site? If not I'd recommend that you ask a third party to have a look for you as its amazing how easy things are when you know what you're doing!!!
Until next time.
Edward
Hopefully my time off from the blog has given you adequate time to consider the first two posts in the series.
On this post we're going to cover the planned progression of your site. In Part 1 we covered having a goal for your website and this lesson leads on from that on how we can lead our visitors into the desired outcome.
This may sound very complicated to some of you but it is something which goes on all the time, any high street shop you visit will have a carefully planned layout which is designed to squeeze the most money out of you - sweets at the counter ring a bell, do you think they're there because a series of shoppers thought it would be a good idea?!?!?!
As an example for this I'm going to use an Invitation company who has a site which enables customers to order online.
What is the goal for this site? Clearly if your site has an online store then your goal is to make a sale of a particular product or service so therefore we're looking to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to make their way through to the checkout and make a payment.
The best sites will minimise the number of steps to get to this outcome and will remove any potential barriers which could prompt a visitor to leave the site. What could these barriers be? Hard to find products, unclear layouts, not knowing what to do are all fairly major barriers which will more likely than not see your visitor find a site which they can use.
Don't think that I'm being picky on this, I worked with a company not so long ago who had a pretty good site and were experiencing fairly steady sales. They wanted to spend a lot of money making their site more visible through SEO and Adwords campaigns. I always like to make sure that things are working the way they should before I take on any project so I took a look at their site analytics. What it showed was that they were losing a massive 50% of their funnel traffic at a particular page everytime!!! By looking at this page and pinpointing the problem we were able to almost double their sales!!!
Do you think there are any bottlenecks on your site? If not I'd recommend that you ask a third party to have a look for you as its amazing how easy things are when you know what you're doing!!!
Until next time.
Edward
Friday, 7 March 2008
Websites That Work - Part 2
Good morning and welcome back to the Bride Booker Blog.
We're going to talk more about making your website work today, but before we start I'd like to let everyone know that today is the last day of the 50% launch discount on membership to the Evolution Programme. If you are interested in joining and receiving all the benefits of the programme, I'd highly recommend that you act now and save yourself £££s.
So on with the post.
Today we're going to talk about your home page, maximising its appeal and minimising the chance of people bouncing off.
First of all, take a look at your home page and analyse it from a brides point of view. How quickly does it load? How does it look? Can you see exactly what it is you are looking for? All these aspects are potential stumbling blocks and could mean that one of your valuable visitors leaves your site without actually looking at anything!!!
Make sure your landing page loads quickly by minimising the number of files and pictures on the page, ensure all pictures are the minimum file size to maintain the quality your desire. This is one of the sections that Flash sites fall down, many of them take in excess of a minute (simetimes even longer) to load, the site may look great once it has loaded, but I guarantee you'll lose a significant percentage of visitors before they have ever seen it!!!
Make sure you site looks clean, crisp and professional. I see sites every day that look awful and speak to their owners who say that web site enquiries are very rare but don't know why!!! Would you book the services of a company whose website looked amateurish? I know I wouldn't, I'd keep looking until I found a site that looked professional. Do you think a bride would risk it for her wedding day?
Your home page is the gateway to your site so not only should it be immediately obvious what it is you are all about, it should be easy for a visitor to be able to navigate quickly to the information they require, if they can't see it quickly - or even worse, can't find it at all - then be sure they will find a site where they can find it!!!
A big mistake a lot of people make on their sites is having their home page as an entry page with a picture and a click here to enter link - THIS IS A BIG MISTAKE! A page like this serves absolutely no purpose but to increase your bounce rate so if you have an entry page on your site make sure you get rid of it quick!!!
So thats it for today, hopefully you have enough information to go away and analyse your own home page and start directing more of your visitors to the real information on your site.
Before I leave, remember to take advantage of the last day of the Evolution Programme launch offer today!!!
Until next time.
Edward
We're going to talk more about making your website work today, but before we start I'd like to let everyone know that today is the last day of the 50% launch discount on membership to the Evolution Programme. If you are interested in joining and receiving all the benefits of the programme, I'd highly recommend that you act now and save yourself £££s.
So on with the post.
Today we're going to talk about your home page, maximising its appeal and minimising the chance of people bouncing off.
First of all, take a look at your home page and analyse it from a brides point of view. How quickly does it load? How does it look? Can you see exactly what it is you are looking for? All these aspects are potential stumbling blocks and could mean that one of your valuable visitors leaves your site without actually looking at anything!!!
Make sure your landing page loads quickly by minimising the number of files and pictures on the page, ensure all pictures are the minimum file size to maintain the quality your desire. This is one of the sections that Flash sites fall down, many of them take in excess of a minute (simetimes even longer) to load, the site may look great once it has loaded, but I guarantee you'll lose a significant percentage of visitors before they have ever seen it!!!
Make sure you site looks clean, crisp and professional. I see sites every day that look awful and speak to their owners who say that web site enquiries are very rare but don't know why!!! Would you book the services of a company whose website looked amateurish? I know I wouldn't, I'd keep looking until I found a site that looked professional. Do you think a bride would risk it for her wedding day?
Your home page is the gateway to your site so not only should it be immediately obvious what it is you are all about, it should be easy for a visitor to be able to navigate quickly to the information they require, if they can't see it quickly - or even worse, can't find it at all - then be sure they will find a site where they can find it!!!
A big mistake a lot of people make on their sites is having their home page as an entry page with a picture and a click here to enter link - THIS IS A BIG MISTAKE! A page like this serves absolutely no purpose but to increase your bounce rate so if you have an entry page on your site make sure you get rid of it quick!!!
So thats it for today, hopefully you have enough information to go away and analyse your own home page and start directing more of your visitors to the real information on your site.
Before I leave, remember to take advantage of the last day of the Evolution Programme launch offer today!!!
Until next time.
Edward
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
More Free Money
Don't say I never give you anything!!!
I've just uncovered a relatively straight forward grant for companies based in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and the Bourough of Milton Keynes.
The grant is only for a small amount - £250 - but requires little in the way of work on your behalf and can be gained quite easily (or so I've been told).
For more information visit the following page on the Evolution site and you can download an application form:
http://www.evolutionweddingservices.co.uk/specials/broadband_support_grant.html
Don't waste this opportunity as it won't be around for ever.
Until next time.
Edward
I've just uncovered a relatively straight forward grant for companies based in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and the Bourough of Milton Keynes.
The grant is only for a small amount - £250 - but requires little in the way of work on your behalf and can be gained quite easily (or so I've been told).
For more information visit the following page on the Evolution site and you can download an application form:
http://www.evolutionweddingservices.co.uk/specials/broadband_support_grant.html
Don't waste this opportunity as it won't be around for ever.
Until next time.
Edward
Monday, 3 March 2008
Websites That Work - Part 1
Hi everyone and welcome to not only a new week, but a new month!
for a lot of you February and March are the busiest months of the year for enquiries and bookings so at this point you are half way through!!!
I've spoken to a lot of people over the last week, but the single, and everyone seems to be interested in search engine optimisation and focused on getting more traffic through their site. This is obviously a good tactic and it makes sense, if you get twice as many brides through your site then statistics say you'll get twice as many bookings.
But is this possible? SEO is a real pain, not only is it complicated, but its time consuming and laborious, yes the benefits are very real, but what if you can get more enquiries without having to go through all the rigmarole?
That's where conversion comes in, if you can ensure you are converting as many of the brides that visit your site as possible, then you have a firm foundation to go away and get more, otherwise you're wasting your money!
Where do you start on conversion? As with all good stories you start at the beginning. To increase the conversion of your site, you need to first understand what you want your visitor sessions to convert into. This will be different for everyone, but for most it will be either a direct point of contact, request for more information or a sale in your online shop.
Do you know what your goal is? If not then I'll guarantee that you're not converting as many visiotrs as you could do.
Once you know what your goal is, you'll be able to see where the barriers are for visitors reaching that desired outcome and, more importantly, you'll be able to fix them!!!
On Thursday, we'll cover Part 2 of conversion and address some of the barriers that must be overcome to ensure your visitors delve further into your site from the home page.
Until then
Edward
for a lot of you February and March are the busiest months of the year for enquiries and bookings so at this point you are half way through!!!
I've spoken to a lot of people over the last week, but the single, and everyone seems to be interested in search engine optimisation and focused on getting more traffic through their site. This is obviously a good tactic and it makes sense, if you get twice as many brides through your site then statistics say you'll get twice as many bookings.
But is this possible? SEO is a real pain, not only is it complicated, but its time consuming and laborious, yes the benefits are very real, but what if you can get more enquiries without having to go through all the rigmarole?
That's where conversion comes in, if you can ensure you are converting as many of the brides that visit your site as possible, then you have a firm foundation to go away and get more, otherwise you're wasting your money!
Where do you start on conversion? As with all good stories you start at the beginning. To increase the conversion of your site, you need to first understand what you want your visitor sessions to convert into. This will be different for everyone, but for most it will be either a direct point of contact, request for more information or a sale in your online shop.
Do you know what your goal is? If not then I'll guarantee that you're not converting as many visiotrs as you could do.
Once you know what your goal is, you'll be able to see where the barriers are for visitors reaching that desired outcome and, more importantly, you'll be able to fix them!!!
On Thursday, we'll cover Part 2 of conversion and address some of the barriers that must be overcome to ensure your visitors delve further into your site from the home page.
Until then
Edward
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