In This Episode…

Growth means beefing up your marketing resources to increase your website’s revenue.

But growth can be expensive.

That’s where scaling comes in.

Scaling is about significantly increasing your website’s revenue with only small increases to your cost.

And we don’t know about you, but that sounds way cooler to us.

It might sound too good to be true, but it’s not. You just need to be smart about how you scale.

So, in today’s video and podcast, Tim explains how to do just that.

What to WATCH Next

What to LISTEN to Next

• How To Triple Your Traffic in 2024
• How SEO Works in 2024

What to READ Next

• How to Optimise Each Page of Your Website

The post How To Scale Your Websites Revenue in 2024 (#309) appeared first on Thinkplus.

In This Episode…

Choosing a web development agency is a risky business.

You want to make sure they’re being fair on price, producing good quality work and being transparent with you.

So what does a bad web dev agency look like?

We’re going to take a look at a few web dev horror stories, and how you can avoid them.

We want to give you the tools to choose the right web agency for you.

Is your marketing underperforming?

Request a free website and marketing review and our team will tell you how to improve your marketing.

Request a Free Review

Timestamps

00:00 — Intro
01:48 — What Makes a Good Website?
04:13 — Research
06:09 — Understanding Multiple Industries
09:34 — Platforms
11:30 — Branding
14:07 — Conversions and Functionality
15:20 — Planning

You May Also Enjoy…

• #231: How to Find Profitable Blog Post Ideas
• #229: SEO Competitor Analysis – Step by Step Guide
• #222: Shopify vs WooCommerce – Which Is The Best One for You?

The post #239: How to Avoid Bad Web Dev Agencies appeared first on Thinkplus.

In This Episode…

If you’ve spent any time researching eCommerce platforms, you would have heard of Shopify and WooCommerce, two of the biggest contenders in the eCommerce platform space.

But what’s the difference? And most importantly, which one will suit you and your eCommerce business best?

This video compares the 2 platforms based on;

• Ease of Use
• Marketing Tools and SEO
• Scalability and Growth
• Build Time and Maintenance
• Payment Providers
• Pricing and Fees

Timestamps

00:00 — Intro
02:57 — Ease of Use
07:56 — Marketing Tools and SEO
11:08 — Scalability and Growth
13:14 — Build Time and Maintenance
14:35 — Payment Providers
15:22 — Pricing and Fees
18:36 — The Verdict

Related Links

• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• WordPress
• Built With
• Theme Forest

You May Also Enjoy…

• Shopify SEO Optimisation (a Beginners Guide)
• 10 Ways to Increase Your eCommerce Conversion Rate
• The Future of eCommerce SEO

The post #222: Shopify vs WooCommerce – Which Is The Best One for You? appeared first on Thinkplus.

In This Episode…

Building a new website from scratch or thinking about refreshing your existing website? You’ve come to the right place!

But, where do you start?

(Hint – you don’t start with the design!)

Today, we talk you through 5 key steps to build the perfect foundation for your website;

• Website Structure
• Conversion
• SEO
• Content Planning
• Wireframing

Timestamps

00:00 — Intro
05:24 — Website Structure
12:35 — Conversion
17:02 — SEO
20:04 — Content Planning
23:41 — Wireframing
26:35 — Recap

Related Links

• House Buyer Bureau
• Master the Curriculum

You May Also Enjoy…

• 6 Tips & Tricks for Increasing Your Organic Traffic
• How To Create Landing Pages That Convert at 43%
• How to Create a Profitable Mobile-First Website from our Experts

The post #216: How to Plan a New Website in 2022 appeared first on Thinkplus.

Here at the Thinkplus Digital Marketing Podcast, we’re all about helping you generate more leads and sales for your website. But first, let’s go back a few steps and discuss how you can build a profitable website on time and on budget. Does your website look outdated? Is it mobile-friendly? And just what is mobile-first design, anyway?

If you’ve ever had a website built, you’ll know that the process can be painful, expensive and disappointing. But it needn’t be that way. With the right preparation, planning and a clear idea of your outcome, the website you have built can be a platform for your business’s growth for many years to come.

In today’s episode, Tim talks to our very own Head of Website Development, Brittany Stackhouse. Britt’s team of Web Designers, Developers and Project Managers is responsible for designing and building Thinkplus’s hundreds of bespoke and high-converting websites for our clients. They deliver high-quality websites and lead generation template websites for businesses of all sizes and budgets, so, naturally, Britt has a thing or two to say on how to make this happen in the most cost and time-effective way possible!

Listen as she runs through the entire website building process. Learn about each crucial piece of the puzzle and find out what really goes on behind the scenes during a typical website build:

• The website design exercise that prevents your new website from under-performing
• The secret to never going over-budget
• The time-saving and stress-eliminating tools to use to make giving feedback on your new website design as easy as a couple of clicks
• The questions your website design company SHOULD be asking before they lift a finger
• How to avoid your new website being a total dud

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What’s Next?

Need a new website? Request your FREE website plan now and one of our expert marketing strategists will record a custom video reviewing your market and requirements, and plan out your new site for you. They’ll also give you a step-by-step plan to increase your traffic and sales from Google and social media. The service is completely free and comes with no obligation to work with us afterwards. All Thinkplus websites are designed to be mobile-first, SEO-optimised and conversion optimised.[/vc_column_text]

The post #115: How to Create a Profitable Mobile-First Website from our Experts appeared first on Thinkplus.

Listen on iTunes | Stitcher or Libsyn

Imagine launching a company with a single tweet. No investment. No inventory. Then, imagine seeing it take off and go viral within a day, and making over $700K in sales in the first year. Sounds like a dream that’s too good to be true?

This week on the Thinkplus Digital Marketing Podcast, we meet with the founder of Picture This Clothing, Jaimee Newberry,‏ who tells us how she and her team of skilled designers did exactly that.

The inception of Picture This Clothing is quite humble: “One Winter break not long ago, I made a dress for my daughter Zia, based off of a drawing she had done. She loved this dress and it has since been a big hit with everyone that’s seen it.” Leading with her product design and development background, Jaimee teamed up with two more designers to found the company, and the rest is successful history. Within hours from her original tweet, Picture This Clothing was featured on TechCrunch, within days on ProductHunt, Disney’s Babble.com, Bored Panda, Insider, Huffington Post and more. Jaimee credits their success primarily to great design.

Indeed, design is a lot more than “making it pretty” — it’s also how people interact with and understand the product. Getting our heads around these aspects allows us to truly know why somebody wants a product. Some key aspects that led Picture This Clothing to instant success are the simplicity and clarity of its website, as well as the great synergy the partners created amongst themselves.

Ready to be inspired by Jaimee’s story to kickstart your own amazing zero-investment project? Listen on for more tips and tricks!

What’s next?

Want to supercharge your online presence with trackable results? Request a FREE website and marketing review now from Thinkplus. One of our expert Marketing Consultants will analyse your website, digital marketing and competitors, and map you out a bespoke plan to follow to reach your sales goals. The service is completely free and comes with no obligation.

The post Podcast #89 How To Use Kickass Design To Make $759k In Sales in Year 1 appeared first on Thinkplus.

Listen on iTunes | Stitcher | Libsyn

Ever spent an insane amount of money on a new website only to find out that it’s not bringing you any business? The planning phase of any new website is crucial, as this is where the marketing thought goes in. What does your new website need to do? What are the most important elements that every new website should contain? How should it be structured? What should the design look like?

In this episode, Tim, Lozz and Head of Development at Thinkplus Brittany discuss how to plan the perfect website. From the pages to include to the design to use, hear it straight from the people who have built and analysed hundreds of websites in every market. This episode could well save you tens of thousands, and a LOT of stress!

How Do I Know If I Need A New Website?

The clearest signal that a redesign is necessary is that the site looks out of date. Your website is all that people online have to judge the quality of your business by, so if it’s out of date or looks amateur, that affects their perception of your business.

If your website is non-mobile-friendly, then typically you’re not making the most of the 50+% of visitors coming from mobile devices. Either your site will have significantly reduced visibility in search, or its conversion rate will be far too low. Either way, there’s money being left on the table which a responsive redesign could help you pick up.

We hear all the time from companies who have spent a small fortune on their websites but they just aren’t bringing in business. If targeted visitors are hitting your site but not turning into customers, then it’s a clear indication that something about your website is putting them off.

If it’s tough to edit your site, add products, blog posts and edit the text on the pages, this is another signal that you might have outgrown it. To do a good job of SEO and content marketing, you need to be able to add content without having to use a web developer. Any barriers to getting fresh content on your site are to be removed, so if your site is built on an old or proprietary CMS that you don’t have access to, it could be time to ditch that sucker and discover the joys of WordPress.

Basically, if you’re not PROUD to send people to your website, then chances are that it’s not reflecting your business as well as it should be.

How Do I Start Planning My Website?

The first step is to identify your website’s goals. This sounds obvious, but many business owners make the mistake of thinking that their website doesn’t have a direct sales or lead generation goal. The reason this mistake is so deadly is that your goal has to be absolutely central to every page. A website that leaves anyone in any doubt what they are supposed to be is destined to struggle.

Which Pages Do I Need On My Website?

The next step is to plan the structure of your site and the pages that you’ll need. You’ll obviously have a homepage, but where do you go from here?

The best way to think of your website structure is to imagine taking your visitor step-by-step through the decision-making process when they are deciding to do business with you. We usually order a website’s page structure as a bulleted list, which helps to see the order and structure:

• Homepage
• Accountancy Services
  • Tax Returns
  • VAT
  • Bookkeeping
• Testimonials
• About
• Blog
• Contact Us

The first step (the homepage) is there to introduce the business and show your potential customers that you a) cater to their needs and b) are clearly different to your competitors.

The next page in your menu will typically be more detail about the products or services you offer. If you’re a services company, typically you’ll want to have a Services drop down menu which links to each of your individual service pages, with each one optimised to rank and act as a landing page for that service. If you’re an eCommerce company, after your homepage you’ll typically have your top-level product categories. The goal of this page or section in your menu is to show your audience that you have exactly what they need.

So the next step on your site is to reassure visitors that you not only have what they need but that you are the right company to do business with. This typically takes the form of a Testimonials or Case Studies page or section, where you build social proof by showing how other customers of yours have been happy with their choice to use you.

Next, you might have an About page. This is one of the most overrated pages on a website and is typically the one that gets the least traffic. You should be demonstrating credibility and authority throughout your site, making this page somewhat redundant, but if you do choose to include it then don’t fall into the trap of talking about your company endlessly. Remember that the goal of this About page is to sell, just as it is on any other page. So your About page too should be focussed on communicating the benefits of doing business with you, your past successes and what makes you different from your competition.

Your site absolutely needs a blog, and this will often come next.

Once you have confirmed that you are a good fit for your customers, demonstrated credibility, and answered their top questions, what happens next?

Time to ask for the sale. You can do this through your Contact page (which you should always have, even if just to collect softer enquiries from people who aren’t ready to buy right now), but you might also choose to have a dedicated page for your lead generation bait, such as a free consultation page, or an offers page on eCommerce.

How Should My Website Be Designed?

Design and development are separate because the skillsets are opposite. So if you have found someone who claims to do both, beware. Start with design and have the developers build what it needs to be. Don’t be constrained by development, but find developers who can build your vision.

Although it’s important that your website looks good, it’s primary goal is to maximise sales. Pretty and effective are not always the same thing.

All design should be focused on making it easy for the visitor to complete their goals. Calls to Action should usually be the most visible element on the page (as long as it makes sense in the visitor flow) and should be given a contrasting colour so that they stand out. 

And don’t sacrifice text for big images – particularly if those images aren’t of your product. For every apple.com there are a thousand eCommerce sites that have tried to copy the principles but don’t have the brand currency that Apple needs to pull it off, and are struggling as a result.

We worked on SEO for an award winning site designed by a pure web design agency. It looked stunning. Fantastic animations, sparse layout with text appearing from all angles. Really creative.

The only trouble was that it was a dead loser. People couldn’t figure it out! The menu didn’t look like a menu and the site didn’t use headlines so it wasn’t clear what the pages were about. This was a very traditional and straight-edge business, so not a design company or anyone that would earn merit points for having a fancy website. With a lot of work, we got it ranking but it still struggled to convert. We had to tell the designers to undo a bunch of the fancy stuff that they’d put in and it didn’t go down well. If your site is winning design awards, it’s unlikely to be making you any money.

Basically, if your site is winning design awards, it’s unlikely to be making you any money.

Next Steps

If you’re considering a new website, we’d love to help you plan it out and see if we can help you build and promote it. Request a free marketing review today, and we’ll perform an analysis of your market and make recommendations about what your new site needs to include. If you like the recommendations, we’ll be happy to send some prices and begin to spec out the site.

The post EN Podcast #10: How To Plan The Perfect Website appeared first on Thinkplus.