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When you sit down to write content for your website, who exactly are you writing the content for?

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of writing your web content to please yourself as a business owner – or if you work for a larger company, to please your boss, or the person who’s going to sign off on the finished article.

STOP!

If you want your website to deliver results, your web content should be written to appeal directly to just one group of people: your site visitors.

Know your web audience

When you built your website your web designer / web development team will have spent time researching the online audience your site is designed to appeal to (or at least they should have). That information is just as crucial… if not more so… when it comes to writing effective content for your website.

Take a bit of time to re-acquaint yourself with your online audience. Work out who you want to reach out to online, and tailor your content accordingly.

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E-mail marketing is still a winner when it comes to selling products and services. Consumers prefer e-mail communications to direct mail, social media, in store promotions and text messages, according to the latest figures.

A recent survey of shoppers across Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina and Ohio by CrossView revealed that almost 4 in 10 of them would elect to receive promotional information via e-mail.

E-mail turned out to be the most popular promotional communications channel amongst US consumers, followed by direct mail (23%), Text Messaging (18%), in store advertising (11%), social media (9%) with newspaper, TV and other traditional channels bringing up the rear with a total of just 3% between them.

Those are pretty telling statistics, and suggest strongly that investing in building a solid opt-in e-mail list and delivering compelling e-mail marketing on a regular basis is still a fantastic way for businesses to connect with consumers.

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In a recent post we looked at how you can use web analytics tools already included in your LetsHost Complete Hosting Plan to analyse your website traffic and gain valuable insight into how your visitors use your site.

While these basic log file analysis tools are fine for giving you a general overview of activity on your site, they offer a very basic user interface and a pretty inflexible window on your logfile data.

Enterprise class analytics software for free

Enterprise class analytics software can (and does) cost many thousands of Euro, but thanks to Google many of the features you’d typically find in high end commercial analytics software are now available for free.

Welcome to Google Analytics.

Setting up Google Analytics on your website is easy. Once you have a Google account (if you don’t already have one you can sign up for a Google account here), just head over to the Google Analytics website.

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According to a study by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews around 50% of Internet users now routinely use the web to research products and services before deciding what to buy.

E-marketer reports that even when the customer buys offline, the web often plays a fundamental role in the purchasing decisions that they make. Respondents to the survey said that online research saved them time and made them more confident about the products and services they were buying.

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According to a report by The UK Online Measurement Company (part of the Nielsen group) UK internet users spent 65% more time online during April 2010 (some 884 million hours) than they did during the same period in 2007.

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Online video is a great way to deliver engaging, informative and truly valuable content to your website visitors. And people love it.

In April 2010 nearly 180 million American internet users watched a staggering 30.3 billion online videos between them (comScore). Now those are some impressive numbers!

What’s really great about video is the fact that the barriers to entry are so low… all you need is a decent webcam, or better yet, a digital SLR or dedicated camcorder with HD video recording capabilities, and a bit of imagination.

Here are just some online video options that could work for your business:

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E-mail marketing gets a lot of flack these days, due largely to the unprecedented volume of spam that lands in people’s inbox every day.

That’s a shame, because it tarnishes e-mail’s image as a legitimate business marketing tool.

Used properly e-mail is still one of the most effective ways for your business to engage meaningfully (and profitably) with a massive potential audience.

As high-profile Irish blogger and online marketing afficianado Damien Mulley puts it:

How many people have an email address, how many have a Facebook account?

While new kids on the online-marketing block – like Search Marketing, and Social Media – may have a more “sexy” image, behind the scenes e-mail marketing is quietly reaching out to more people, and doing a great job of converting them into customers.

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When it comes to making the most of your great value LetsHost Irish hosting and domain registration, crafting a quality website comes pretty high on the list.

No matter what your online project, getting your website right is a crucial element in its success. You need too find a great web designer to work on your website project. But where do you start?

Here are a few suggestions.

• Check out their website: the best place to start when assessing any web design company is with their own website. Does it look professional? Is it functional? How well does the site address the needs of its target audience (in this case, that’s you)?
• Check out their web design portfolio: examine the portfolio section of their website, but go beyond the designer’s site and click through to the websites themselves. Think about the client site’s goals, and how well the designer has addressed them.

That should help you whittle things down to a manageable shortlist… now dig a bit deeper.

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Content… it’s what everyone on the web is searching for.

Content is what’s compelling you to read this blog post right now. Content is the fuel that drives the web. Content is what adds value for your site visitors, and ultimately what will determine the success (or otherwise) of your online business.

And yet so many businesses neglect to invest properly in this most important element of their website.

It’s not all about design

Businesses happily pay thousands to designers and developers to create attractive aesthetics for their new site, but leave the content as practically an afterthought.

While design is important, and the look and feel of your site does a lot to make the visitor experience more attractive and compelling, remember it’s your content that does 90% of the work on your website.

• It’s your content that will get your pages ranked with major search engines like Google and Bing
• It’s your content that will attract incoming links that will drive more traffic, boost visibility and enhance your reputation and authority
• It’s your content that will deliver value once your visitors arrive, enticing them to stay for longer and convincing them that you’re a company they want to do business with.

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Social Media has been the darling of the digirati, online early adopters and web2.0 advocates for a while now, but 2009 was the year when explosive growth took social media into the mainstream.

Research by Nielson group for the year to May 2009 revealed the following statistics:

• An 82% increase in the total time spent on social networks and blogs in the year to May 2009.
• A 62% increase in the average time per web user spent on social networks and blogs in the year to May 2009
• Traffic on Twitter, the “poster-boy” of Social Media in 2009, grew by a staggering 1,448%

What does the rise of social media mean for you, your brand and your website?

If your peers, your customers and your prospects aren’t already using social media, chances are good that they soon will be. Getting involved in the same online social circles offers you the opportunity to engage in a meaningful dialogue with them.

There’s a global conversation going on, through blogs, social networks, forums, “micro-blogging” platforms and other social media platforms. Here are just a few ways you can harness the power of social media to benefit the online presence of your brand:

• Get and give help and advice: learn what peers and thought leaders in your industry are talking about, and gain insight that can help you in your business, and help others in return.
• Build a community around your brand: people like to feel a connection with the products and services they use, and to interact with the human beings behind the logo.
• Monitor, respond and influence: there’s a conversation going on out there, with or without you. Far better to engage and foster a positive perception of your brand from the outset than to sit on the sidelines.
• Foster ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships: it’s far easier and more profitable to retain existing customers than it is to chase new ones… social media tools can help you to build stronger relationships with a much wider network of people.
• Word of mouth: good news travels fast online… social media offers a wonderful opportunity for people to spread the love about your brand.

Exactly what opportunities social media can offer you depends very much on your business, where your customers congregate online and what you want to get out of it. The best way to find out is to dive in and start exploring… to get started why not try following @LetsHost on Twitter, or post a comment on this blog post?

We’re looking forward to hearing more from you and your business online!