Quality Website Developers

Quality website developers – time to up your game

I get really mad when low quality website developers over-specify for marketing websites.  Is this

Quality Website Developers

Quality Website Developers

something you have seen?

Part of the expertise of a high quality web developer is to recommend the right tool for the job and I find it ridiculously easy to spot website developers who are not skilful.  But it still makes me angry.

Marketing suppliers like Creative Agency Secrets lead the industry because we “decode” marketing for our clients, we find high quality suppliers and engage them for our clients as sub-contractors with us managing the job.  Trust is essential to maintain reputation and high quality marketing services delivery.

I cannot hire you if you set out to exploit the ill-informed client.

Which CMS is right for you?

We are handling a small website for a client which needs to become responsive.  It’s a brochure-ware site and needs to rank well in local search.  That’s it.

So why, oh why does their existing developer recommend a CMS that scores highly for:

  1. Sell E-commerce: The core installation comes with a very nice E-commerce module
  2. Offer Exclusive Content: There is a membership module installed right out of the box
  3. Want Flexibility and Growth: Each website is built from the ground up. Another great feature is the multiple site manager
  4. Care About Security and Stability: there hasn’t been a major security breach in over 10 years.

I did some research comparing two CMS products and found this and Quora answers.   Which confirmed my own views of mis-alignment between client need and tools proposed.

Quality website developers don’t do this

It’s lazy and over-engineered for the requirements and will be costly for the client.

Game over for that potential relationship.

I do not see it as my job to specify the website build and design – that is what an expert web developer should be doing.  As marketing experts, we specify the functionality and features needed and let the experts propose appropriate solutions.

If you know a good web developer who would like to quote on this job – send them this link to the job description.

Alexa rank for Creative Agency Secrets

How to compare my website with a competitors’

Sitting with a client, he brought up a competitors website and asked me how much traffic they got in comparison to his site.

Top 3 ways to compare websites

There are several free tools you can use to compare your public website statistics with other websites.  Remember things like Google Analytics only work if you are authorised to see them – so they’re no good for competitors.

Alexa

The top non-Google site for appraising the popularity of websites on a worldwide scale.  I use the Chrome Alexa extension to get this screen grab for our website showing incoming links, global ranking and local country ranking.  We are the 405, 597th most popular website on the planet.

Alexa rank for Creative Agency Secrets

Alexa rank for Creative Agency Secrets

SimilarWeb

A cute comparison for two sites that shows more information than Alexa.  This gets different data from Alexa but adds in some nice additional features like traffic volumes (in thousands), bounce rate, time on site, page views, countries, traffic sources (direct, referrals, social, email, display), Audience interests and similar sites.  Then you can add in a competitor site URL and get a direct comparison.  Very cute.

Similarweb for Creative Agency Secrets

Similarweb for Creative Agency Secrets

SEMRush

The digital marketers best friend for detailed data comparison, SEM Rush is the big daddy here.  It dives deeper than the others into keywords, comparing paid and organic traffic, main competitors, branded search vs non-branded (helpful for marketing).  Plus you can choose from 26 country search engines to use (Google.com or your local google.com.au for example).

SEM Rush for Creative Agency Secrets

SEM Rush for Creative Agency Secrets

This article first published in Marketing Online Magazine Issue 4

Doing a comparison of your website with your competitors is a useful exercise.  It’s all part of Getting your website working hard for your business [there’s a free ebook telling you how].

That’s what Creative Agency Secrets specialises in.  Give us a call or email for an appraisal of your site, your business marketing and how to improve.

Read more blog posts about Analysis and Profile Raising by clicking the icons below. Each is a step in our 8 Step Methodology 8 Analysis & Feedback icon4 Profile raising icon

The best approach to get leads for a B2B solution

I got this question on Clarity.fm where I’m a registered consultant and so decided to share my answer here as well.

  • Firstly, get some testimonials and case studies for the product.
  • Build a website and pay to have it SEOed professionally.
  • Plan a blog writing year of articles.
  • Get public speaking opportunities to showcase your expertise and if you can, mention the B2B solution.
  • Buy a mailing list (or build your own) and use direct mail to educate the audience in your area of expertise. Later mention the B2B solution and build a landing page on the website to capture inbound enquiries.
  • Seek referrals and word of mouth from happy customers.

In order to do these things you will need the following marketing assets: Website, brochure collateral, marketing automation software, CRM database, SEO and strong copywriting.

Happy to help with more detail if you arrange a 20 minute phone call with me personally. I can either tutor you in how to do it yourself, or my team can do it with/for you.