Wednesday 11 February 2009

Well, for those of you who were wondering, I think it's now fair to say that the Internet is King - cartainly when it comes to drumming up business for UK based companies.  As I have written previously, the old, dated and hard to use Yellow Pages seem to be dead and buried with Google and Yell bringing more enquiries than the paper directories ever have done.

How do I know this?  Well, the statistics that we generate for our customers tell us so.  More and more of my clients are learning that their website is the key to a long and successful business.  If - and it's a big if - it's appealing, attractive and gripping enough for their customers with rich content and calls to action.

Understandably, UK businesses have been a little slow to harness the power of the Internet with many adopting the "I have a web page" mentality, without fully appreciating that just having a website is no longer sufficient.  You may have a website, but so do your competitors and if theirs is better looking, has richer content or is easier to find then you lose.  Surprisingly, whilst many busineses will happily plow thousands of pounds into Yellow Pages advertsing, they seem to make little or no investment in their websites - and this is proving to be madness.  

For those clients where we have monitored call traffic, justification of investing into a quality website with killer web copy, great graphics and a fabulous build is quite easy.  Many have found that whereas they would get 10 calls from 'traditional' advertising, their website is bringing them 100 calls.  A 10:1 ratio is not uncommon and many of my customers are getting 20 or even 30:1.  One client has reeived over 4,000 calls (yes, calls - people wanting to speak to them on the telephone) from their website alone.  A website that cost them just £3,000.  Compare that to an investment of £2,850 in Yellow Pages that has so far brought them just 72 calls.  Where would you invest your money if you had that information at your finger tips?