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And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Herod the king, behold...

Sorry snow in April must be getting to me - but it has come to pass that real people are actually beginning to acknowledge that online marketing actively gets you business.

Service with a smile... an informative sign post.

Also known as a ‘call to action' (CTA) and ‘promo box’ these signposts are highlighted boxes or buttons to grab the users attention. A menu and navigation gives users all the options to choose from but the reason for sign posts is to take the choice away and guide them in the right direction.

The Homepage

Sorry! There is more to your content than just some well written words.

These words need to be carefully arranged to grab attention, put the point across, give short and easy to read bites of text, and not conclude. No this would be like a dead end.

They need to point you in the right direction. They need to jump out at you in exactly the right order drawing you in like a hypnotist.

The menu.

Main menu, secondary, tertiary and so forth.

It is a good idea to plan your sections and sub sections in advance when writing your content, this is often easiest to categorise by department, try not to have too many main menu sections. Make sure each sub section fits intuitively under the main menu, don’t force things.

A planner will order your menus to their best advantage, making sure that dynamic content such as register forms and account features are intuitively and fluidly positioned within the menu structure.

Until all websites have a sexy lady telling you exactly where to go, they need pre-planning.

However good your design and content is, if your site isn’t intuitive, easy to navigate, structurally designed and clearly signposted, then more likely than not your visitors will get lost... and cross, and may decide not to go there again.

....and how to make them work for you without having to work at them.

There is a misconception that writing a page about your area and then letting it be, is going to be helpful to your online marketing.

Well it would be if you constantly updated the text, as search engine visibility is all about ‘current’ content. But writing swathes on an area each week that you have already written as much as you can on becomes a chore and is then usually dropped.

Understanding the registration process of a property website isn't always as straight forward as it may seem. There are different types of registration on a property site that can sometimes cause confusion.

This is because it is important to ask visitors to register as an applicant or for a market appraisal so you can actively work on their behalf, but there is also registering for options on the website itself which, due to online data storage and laws, needs to be registered for as well.

Cookie Legislation and how it affects you.....and it really does!

As some of you may be aware a new EU legislation has come in about 'cookies' on your website in the last couple of days. See www.ico.gov.uk/

The average enquiry is made on the 5th to 12th visit. You need to have an ongoing relationship with your visitors, to encourage stickiness and return visits.

The question is how do you do this without taking up to much of your time?

Leads come from a variety of places; most commonly applicants come from portals but we need to think about repeat visits and increasing clients as well.

The new year is seeing us launch 3 exciting new features, our greatly anticipated Vendor & Landlord Portal with advanced statistics as well as our Area Guide Taxonomy, reinforcing local knowledge for both users and search engines and the Location Map feature showing schools, transport and amenities.