UK business targeting the US or other countries

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Andy Routledge

Thankfully this is not as technical as it sounds and just following a few simple steps with Google Places you can benefit from improved search rankings from another country.

First and foremost, it is important that your website contains the correct keywords and search phrases that are native to the country you are targeting,  in my example the word “bespoke”  was not used in North American instead we replaced with “Tailored”.

Assuming your website content is native, this may mean having your website translated into another language beforehand,  then the next steps are as follows :

  1. Ensure you have a registered office address and local telephone number for your business in the country, if you do not have this then subscribe to a virtual office.
  2. Completing the above will qualify you to register your presence with Google Places and create a full business profile listing containing all the necessary details about your business to a potential foreign customer.
  3. Ensure your Keywords and Search phrases are native to the country you are targetting to maximise all possible chances of being found.
  4. If you are publishing prices make sure you show native currency.
  5. Contact Page – easily missed by many agencies, very simply make sure your website contact page clearly displays the address, email and contact numbers of the countries you cater.It’s important in the eyes of a foreign customer it is clear they can contact you despite being based in the UK. Google will also favour this correction.
  6. Create some listings within some business directories and industry related websites that are based in the country you are targetting.Just a few good listings that are relevant will help Google to identify how relevant your website will be to a search listing. I have a great article here explaining this further for you – How to Optimise your Website Content.

 

Other helpful points

Hosting

Despite what you may read, if you are wanting to focus your website presence in another country then it does make sense to have the website hosted in that country.  It will certainly benefit your website,  it’s access speeds and should improve your search ranking.

Many will claim it’s not important, the way to look at it is;  every little bit helps so if you have the opportunity to move your hosting and have a deep desire to have strong listings in a foreign search engine then this is a positive step.

 

 

Posted in eCommerce, Marketing and Emails, Radio Topics, Search Engines | Leave a comment

Scammed or Spammed, How can I tell?

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Andy Routledge

Spam emails, online scams or phishing sites are becoming all too common place to the average Internet user. You cannot stop it from happening,  it’s just one of those things you have to live with.

However by being mindful of spam emails and online scams you will be surprised how much grief you can save yourself, especially regarding your IT. Below is a list of classic symptons that can help you diagnose a suspicious email or website.

1. Golden Rule : Significant majority of Spam will follow recent events to deliberately lure users into opening and reading the messages.

These messages can be surrounding a natural disater e.g. Hiati Earthquake, Japan Tsnuami or in Britain the unreset of increased Student fees and taxes.

Be aware of subject headings and “from addresses” that are not from your regular contacts. Also take note of the use of poor Grammar and Capitalisation.

2. If the message appears from a genuine organisation check the email has a disclaimer and that it reads understandable English. Real company email footers will formally acknowledge you as an intended recipient along with alternative details should the email have been received in error.

Quite often Spam emails will not cover this ground very clearly and certainly will not offer alternative details.

3. If the email sounds too good to be true or looks suspicious do not click the links inside the text! Instead browse for the website manually and search for the information that way.

4. You can check if a link is genuine by hovering your mouse cursor over the link (but do not click),  and this will display the link path.

In the case of the Student Loans Company scam the email link was a foreign, unreadable link.

5. If you do click a link and you are presented with a form asking for your details, no matter what logo is displayed at the top of your screen, do not enter anything and close the site down!

6. Attachments – do not open them, in particular avoid any email with .zip, .exe and .bat file extensions.  In principle this is not always that easy so safer attachments would be pictures like .jpg or text files .txt

Remember that scams are designed to lure you, be wary of the following classic spam / scam email scenarios :

  • Circulate virus warnings
  • Charity appeal to a disaster or similar circumstance
  • Work from home, easy money offers
  • Online Bank Failure messages or failed login attempts to your account.
  • Claim free money such as tax rebate
  • Free software to scan and fix your computer of spyware, malware and virus’
  • Online pharmaceutical claims to improve your health and being.
  • Social network alerts requesting you must watch or visit a site.
  • Offers for Free Web Hosting, be wary and go to the main site first.

 

The extent of Spam and Scams consistently fluctuate, companies such as Symantec publish regular updates of Spam and Scam/Phishing activity over the Internet. During August 2010 Symantec published a report showing Spam traffic to be falling from 200 billion to approximately 50 billion emails by early 2011.

Despite reported this fall, Phishing activity has risen by 38.56% since 2011 (website that pretend to be other websites) in particular automated toolkits websites that offer to fix your computer.  Further to this beliefs are that spam and scam email efforts are being targetting within Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Overall – as part of your computer hygeine, be aware of Spam email and simply do not click it.  If the email is that important then the person or organisation will find other means to contact you.

Recommend links :

http://www.symantec.com/spam website certainly worth a visit once a month to keep abreast of global trends.

 

 

 

 

Posted in General Web, Marketing and Emails, Radio Topics | Leave a comment

While Leading Brands dominate the High Street, does being online offer a fairer playground for other Business to compete?

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Andy Routledge

What can I do to inspire consumer confidence in my website to complete with the bigger names?

The key here is Confidence! With reference to J.Conrad Levingson’s Guerrilla Marketing identified that the number one factor behind a purchasing decision was confidence.

Surprisingly in fifth place was price.  People at the end of the day will buy from you if they feel confident, in getting what they want, trusting your business, fairness and receiving the best service.

Translating this to your website, simply ask yourself “do I feel confident buying from my company’s website?”

A study carried out just before November 2010 proved that websites that had broken links discouraged over 60% of consumers from completing a purchase subsequently seeking an alternative.  Imagine it like this, walking up to a shop in the high street and as you walk in, the door falls off its hinges.   Doesn’t exactly, inspire confidence.

The same principle applies to your website – you need to implement all the sorts of things that inspire confidence to your website users. If you need to prove this, why not ask your customers to complete a survey using surveymonkey.com and see how confident they feel; buying from you again, referring a friend and recommending what improvements they would like to see.

It sounds logical, yet many businesses do not do this. Below is a list of good tips you can try with your website, to inspire confidence.

  • Do not hide away from being contacted – by all means have the necessary support material such as frequently asked questions and contact form facility but do not hide your telephone number.  Allow people to contact you – you can always redirect them back to the website help sections, if you are worried about losing time with low-level phone queries  (see also Live Assistance)
  • Terms and Conditions, Returns – read plain English. Often content is not easy to follow so why not offer links to your FAQ section.
  • Guarantees – have a promise, something your customers can hold you to. Stick your neck out and guarantee that if they are not happy with your service, they can get their money back in 30 days.  The point is confidence!
  • Awards and Accreditations – accreditations are the easiest to acquire but cost money, so do your research to know what it best recognised in your market and determine if the cost outweighs the benefit.  Awards, don’t be afraid to enter awards – this a great wake-up call to look at what your business does best and remind you why people buy from you in the first place. Once you know this…   do not shy away and communicate it in all of your collateral.
  • Live Assistance / Chat – this is quite handy and a useful tool to alleviate time spent servicing queries over the telephone. There are many free services and depending on how busy your website is and the staff you have available to deal with your customers, will depend on the right solution for you.
  • Testimonials – an obvious call though more often than not, are they real?  The best way to start is to actually get them from your customers and publish in all their honesty.  Secondly do not make the cardinal sin of sticking your testimonials in a set place on your website!  Integrate them within your content and information and actually have them amongst the paragraphs most relevant to the products and services you offer.  By doing this you are inherently improving their effectiveness to your audience.
  • Picture Quality – you would be surprised but having poor images on your website is like walking into a shop that has not been cleaned in years. Picture quality is essential, it does not necessarily have to be professional but high enough quality to see the detail and feel like you are looking at the item in real life.
  • Page loading times – similar argument to the dead link report, a fast loading website will yield a greater response by its visitors than by one which partially loads its pages.  Check this with your website developer and start working on ways to ensure your visitors are always receiving suitable feedback. Videos do take a while to load, so use a “please wait” message or loader animation in place.
  • Quality of Grammar – second to high quality images is good English and correct use of grammar.  You are bolstering your overall image and quality by just making sure you do not have spelling mistakes and your product and service descriptions make sense.
  • Product Reviews and Star ratings (inc. video) – a review will have far more influence in the purchasing decision than an advertisement, therefore start by making sure your best selling products have reviews.
  • Video – in an age where broadband is common place, video is a great medium to reassure the more visual and auditory website visitors. Walk-on-web can be an effective way to introduce your company, a well presented video will show passion to help your customers.
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