Welcome to our January newsletter, this issue focuses on improving web lead quality and tracking leads through your website. If you find this newsletter useful please pass it on to friends and colleagues or encourage them to subscribe.

Creating the right Environment
A skillfully formulated website can be a magnet for the right sort of leads. You should think about the information displayed on your website and who it will be likely to attract.

The contents can be slanted to appeal to your ideal customer – or if there are different customer-groups to whom you need to appeal, then it will be necessary to ensure that each one of the groups is catered for on your website.

If you receive poor quality leads, then the contents of your website need to be adjusted. Your web presence can be an extremely efficient screening tool, and the majority of leads should be of high quality.

How to Generate High Quality Leads
Firstly you need to define what a good quality lead is for your business. For some businesses in a highly competitive, commodity industry a price enquiry is not a good lead. In other industry sectors a price enquiry can be a signal that the buyer is almost ready to commit.

Once you have established the type of lead you want you should make sure your content encourages that kind of lead. The right content can also help qualify leads and prevent you from responding to poor quality or low value enquiries.

For example if you want to attract or serve customers in a particular geographic area your website must reflects this? A business only selling their services in the UK for example needs to make this clear at the outset to prevent wasted time and effort responding to leads they cannot fulfil.

If you are selling products within a certain price range your website should also make this clear. A site selling high quality furniture for example doesn’t want to attract lots of enquiries from people looking for bargain basement prices.

Building credibility
Of course the quality of the design and functionality of your website will have a significant impact on the number and quality of leads you receive. If your website looks amateurish, out-dated or incomplete potential customers will either be put off completely or create fixed views on the type of company you are and the quality or otherwise of your product.

Your website can help raise your profile and will be a demonstration of your professionalism to prospective customers and prospective partners. Irrespective of whether you have 1 or 100 employees, a professionally designed website will give you credibility and enable you to pitch for work with much larger businesses.

Tracking Leads
A good website package will allow you to monitor the visitors to your website. As well as considering how many visitors you get and how they find your website (by monitoring referring URLs and domain names and looking at the keywords they typed in to search engines to find your site), you need to be able to track which pages they view and most importantly which pages visitors exit from.

If you discover that lots of people leave from your home page chances are you have a problem and you are not ‘grabbing’ them quickly enough and convincing them that you have something they need. Equally if you lose people from the shopping cart before they complete their transactions there could be a problem with your purchasing process which is turning people off right at the last moment.

Study your website statistics carefully – if necessary ask for advice in interpreting them from your web developer – but do act on what you learn.

By reviewing and monitoring the keyword searches alone you can start to build a picture of what people are looking for to find your site – which can in itself help you to optimise your site further and also select which keywords to buy when using pay per click advertising like Google adwords.

Managing Leads
Generating high quality leads is only half the story; managing them is the other and it is important to realise that a website cannot operate in isolation. All parts of the business must work together so that the website can play an important role within the organisation.

It is also important to realise that systems must be securely in place to fulfil the enquiries and orders generated through the website. Otherwise, your web presence will have a detrimental effect on your business’ reputation. Therefore, although your web solution can play an important role in your sales process, it cannot replace your sales process. If you establish a robust process however, it may well be that much of it can be automated using web technology.

Zarr has developed a comprehensive statistics package, presenting information in an easy to use format, clients can see where visitors arrive from, track their progress through the website and even determine the keywords they are using in search engines to find the site in the first place.

To discuss how your website could be improved as a lead generating machine contact Zarr on 01788 820900.

Raising a glass to new technology Wine experts in Coventry are toasting the launch of a new-look website in an effort to expand their online operation. Bablake Wines in Kingfield Road, Coventry, which also has depots in Gloucester and Bristol, is using the latest internet technology to reach new markets both nationally and globally. The wine shipper and drinks wholesaler has flourished since its beginnings in 1929, when butcher’s son Ronald Vincent Wyles started selling wines from a small off-licence in Coventry. Now operating from purpose-built headquarters with a 100-strong workforce, the company is working with Rugby-based web specialists Zarr to expand its website operation. More than 700 wines from all corners of the globe now make their way to the family-owned company’s depots, along with a fast-growing selection of beers, soft drinks and spirits. On the eve of the millennium, Bablake Wines held a delivery catchment of about one-third of the UK. Bablake Wines’ managing director Martin Wyles said: “We are one of the largest independent drinks wholesalers in the country and see our website as a vital tool to the continuing success of the company. “Working with Zarr has enabled us to reassess our online operation and improve the showcasing of our services and new products to our customers on the internet.” If you have an innovative business idea you’d like to take online contact Zarr.

Contact Zarr
If you are interested in finding out how your business can benefit from the latest web technology or if you need help with your online business strategy contact Zarr on 01788 820900.

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