The following are helpful questions and guidelines to prepare for working with a website developer or designer on a website project. Some projects might be more complex, or more simple, but the following are the typical minimum details to consider for a successful website.

Background & Overview

• Tell me about your business.
• Do you currently have a website?
  • What is the domain name (Website URL)?
• How would you briefly define your product or service offering?
• What problem do you solve for your customers?
• Describe your primary target audience (i.e. who are your clients?).
• Where is your business located?
  • List all locations, if applicable.
• Who are your direct competitors?
  • List their website domain names. if applicable.
  • What elements of these companies and/or their online activity would you like to model after in your redesign?
• What makes you different?

Objectives

• What is your number one objective in this project?
• Do you have any other objectives? Can you rank them by priority?
• Is there anything about your existing website that doesn’t work well?
• Is there anything about your existing website that does work well?
• Is there anything else you would like us to know about your business and this project?

Functionality

• Describe any functionality included in the scope of this project.
  • Including any wireframes, outline, etc. (or send as a separate document)

Project Constraints

• What is your desired date for go-live?
  • Note: Timeline for project completion depends largely on timely receipt of assets/content necessary for the project.

Content/Assets to Assemble

Where applicable. Files can be sent via email, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

• Project scope (depending on the specific project details and budget, we can work with you to create the project scope, wireframes, etc.)
• High resolution logo
• Brand or Style guide (i.e. color scheme, fonts, imagery, etc)
• Website page hierarchy (sitemap)
• Content for pages, articles, blog posts, etc.
• Images
• Testimonials
• Videos or other Media
• Other marketing collateral

Provide developer access to:

• Google Analytics
  • If you don’t currently have an account, we can create one for you. (How to share access?)
• Domain registrar
  • This would be the provider you registered your website domain name with. For example: Godaddy.com is a common domain registrar.
• Current website hosting account
  • Cpanel and/or FTP access, if applicable.

Providing sufficient information about your business and project goals helps to set proper expectations and will allow your website developer/designer to provide you with the results you are looking for.

The post Discovery questions for new website project appeared first on Black Lotus Web Dev.

Note: Your rating will show up when your site appears in Google search results, once you have enough reviews on Google. This helps to establish credibility for your business.

Business Review Websites

The most popular and most visible business reviews websites today are:

• Google
• Facebook
• Amazon
• Yelp
• Trip Advisor

How to Get Positive Reviews for Your Business

Ask for Reviews

It is okay to ask your customers for reviews. Many customers won’t go out of their way to leave business reviews but you might be surprised at how many of them will leave a review for you if you ask them to. I’ve had a lot of success with sending requests to my customers via email. It would be a good idea to ask your customer to write a review and post it online, if you feel like your customer had a good experience with you. Make it as easy as possible for them and provide a link to a few of your preferred online review websites. The easier it is, the more likely they will do it.

Natural/Organic Reviews

If you provide a quality service and good experience to your customers (or even a negative experience) some of them are naturally going to want to leave a review for you. The best type of review for you and your business are natural reviews. When people comment on their experience with you, without prompting, this is an indication that you’re doing something right (or wrong).

Review Apps/Services

There are multiple services available that help to automate the process of receiving positive reviews by sending your customers a request asking them about their experience. If the customer’s experience was negative they will see a form they can fill out that sends feedback to you to let you know how you can improve. If the customer indicated they had a positive experience they will be prompted to leave a review on Google, Facebook, etc. This type of customer engagement can be very useful for discovering what you are doing well and also ways you can improve.

What NOT To Do

Do not incentivize or solicit customer reviews.

Google cracked down on fake reviews a few years back. Google views soliciting reviews as “suspect behaviour”, also it’s not good for potential customers to be presented with a false view of your business only to discover that maybe your quality of service doesn’t match what they read about you online. It’s also potentially illegal in your state to solicit or incentivize reviews (i.e. paying or rewarding people to leave positive reviews). There are several ways to get reviews for your business without resorting to these frowned upon tactics.

Action Items

1. I would encourage you to make a list of the customers you have worked with in the past few years, that had a positive experience with you, and reach out to ask them to write a review for you. Be sure to include a link to a few websites where they can post the review.
2. Consider what you can add to your daily business processes to prompt more customers to leave reviews for you in the future. The request could be something as simple as asking for a review in a follow up thank you email or a thank you note included with the customer’s receipt. If you don’t have access to your customers email addresses this can be a good opportunity to start building up an email marketing list. Not only could this help you get more business reviews but it can also be a good way to get repeat business from your customers.

The post Three Easy Ways to Get Positive Reviews for Your Business appeared first on Black Lotus Web Dev.

Each event will feature information about specific types of tools and strategies to help you grow your business. You will hear from industry experts on internet marketing, branding, social media, lead generation, business strategy and more.

This educational series is designed to empower you with information and action items that you can implement to be more effective and to grow your business.

There will also be an opportunity to network with other business owners and entrepreneurs in attendance at the event.

Date:
November 28, 2017
11:30am to 1:00pm

Location:
Chubby’s in Pleasant Grove
336 S Main St, Pleasant Grove, UT
(Map link)

Topics for the November event:

A Modern Data Dilemma – Which is better: accurate digital marketing data or honest digital marketing data?

Learn the difference between the two as well as how to set up a system inside your organization that focuses on transparency and business growth.

The post “Grow Your Business”: A Monthly Networking Workshop Series appeared first on Black Lotus Web Dev.

• Landing Page With A Call To Action
• SEO Campaign
• Lead Generation Campaign
• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing

Landing Page With A Call To Action

When a visitor arrives at your website there should be a clear message and specific calls to action based on what you want the visitor to do as a result of viewing your website or landing page. If you are a dentist, for example, and your goal is to receive phone calls from people interested in your services, make sure your phone number is visible at the top of the page. You would also want to have a “request appointment” and/or “contact us” button visible at the top of the page. Putting a contact form directly on the page can also be beneficial.

For businesses with a physical address, if you want customers to come to your location, make the address easy to find.

Always consider what action you want people to take and make that a priority in how your website is designed and laid out. In some cases it will also be beneficial to create landing pages for specific campaigns, such as for a new product launch or a special you are offering to new customers.

SEO Campaign

Search Engine Optimization is essential if you want people to easily find your website via a Google search. If you want to be found on page one of those results, you’re likely going have to put in a lot of effort to get there (depending on how competitive your industry is). An SEO campaign would typically involve making sure your website content is optimized for the keywords you want to target, writing unique content, creating citations, and sometimes link-building. The specific strategy would vary for each business.

Lead Generation Campaign

Online advertising, such as via Google Adwords or Facebook ads, can contribute to an effective lead generation campaign. Lead generation campaigns are a more focused and targeted approach to generating leads, building an email marketing list, or to sale a product. This would typically involve sending people to a landing page designed specifically for achieving the goal of your campaign. A dentist might use this approach to get new patients, a law firm might use this to get qualified leads, a business consultant could use it as a way to build their marketing list.

Social Media Marketing

A lot of people are using social media, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. For some businesses it makes sense to use social media marketing, especially if your target market includes the type of person already spending a lot of time on those platforms. Facebook, for example, makes it easy to target a specific audience with their Ad Manager. This increases the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. Social media marketing isn’t a good fit for all businesses but for some it’s a must.

Email Marketing

If you’re not building an email list you’re missing out on a lot of potential customers and sales. Often times people might be interested in your product or service but just not ready yet to purchase. People are especially willing to be on your mailing list if you provide useful information. This is also a way to bring awareness to other products and service you offer that they might not have known about.

The strategies mentioned in this article are just some of the ways you can leverage the internet to grow your business. Please contact us today to discuss a specific marketing strategy for your business.

The post 5 Ways To Get More Leads, More Sales and More Customers appeared first on Black Lotus Web Dev.