First Encounters logo
 
First Encounters Ultrasound is a company that provides private pregnancy scans for expectant parents. They have state-of-the-art clinics in Bristol, Cardiff, and Swindon, and are among the UK's leading experts on 3D/4D ultrasound technology.
 
While First Encounters offer a variety of different scan packages, the company specialise in 4D ultrasound scans, which allow you to get a detailed look at your unborn baby:

 
We recently designed a new website for First Encounters Ultrasound, and since then, they've seen a major boost in traffic and enquiries. The new and improved version of their website (www.firstencounters.co.uk) went live on the 2nd of June 2015; the following thirty-day period saw an 18.79% increase in organic Google traffic. That's almost 800 extra visitors over the course of just one month!
 
Traffic stats from Google Analytics.
 
This additional traffic comes thanks to some superb organic rankings. At the time of writing this post, the website now appears on the first page* of Google results for a number of relevant keywords, including 4d scan, 4d pregnancy scan, and gender scan (*please note that Google results may vary based on your location).

Responsive Design & Mobile Traffic

One of the biggest driving factors behind the decision to redesign the First Encounters website was the continuing swing away from desktop computers and towards mobile browsing. The First Encounters team wanted a site that would look good and function well on smartphones and tablets (as well as on larger devices), and our web design specialists rose to the challenge as usual, creating a responsive, user-friendly website that adapts to any screen size:

 
 
We are very proud of the website that we created for First Encounters, and sure enough, our efforts to make the site 'mobile-friendly' yielded great results. After the new site went live, First Encounters saw a 66% increase in mobile traffic, and a 27% increase in traffic from tablets:
 
Stats from Google Analytics.
 

PPC Advertising: Google AdWords

Once we had completed the new First Encounters website, our PPC specialists were asked to take over the company's Google AdWords account. Within thirty days, we had increased the site's AdWords traffic by a spectacular 90% (roughly 1,160 extra visitors) - and all without any change to the company's AdWords budget!
 
 
First Encounters received a total of 315 bookings in June 2015 - their highest monthly total to date! Here's what Warren Boulton, the company's Commercial Director, had to say about this outcome:
 
"As a company targeting a particular audience within a specific demographic, our website is the foundation of our marketing strategy. However, in recent times, it had become increasingly evident that our continued growth and development in both existing and new territories would require an online presence that reflected the changes in SEO criteria, combined with compatibility across the multitude of devices from which our site is accessed.
 
"In response to these demands, Designer Websites have developed a fully responsible website that provides clear functionality across all platforms, particularly the mobile and tablet devices that our clients commonly use. The search engine optimisation used in conjunction with this design has enabled us to achieve the #1 in many Google organic listings within one month, and their continued support with social media and news blogging further assists with this cause.
 
"The Designer Websites team are friendly, professional, and extremely knowledgeable, delivering results in a timely manner and providing a highly commendable service from an extremely trustworthy organisation."
 
Can we help your company to succeed online? Would you like us to create a mobile-friendly website for you, or manage your AdWords accounts? Whatever you need, you can get a quote here.
What is PPC?

PPC simply stands for Pay Per Click, a form of internet marketing that you only pay for when one of your ads is clicked. It's a great way of attracting potential customers or service users to your website instead of waiting to be found amongst the millions of organic search engine results.

There are many different types of PPC around these days. It is most commonly seen on large search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo; however, it has more recently spread to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. While social media PPC takes a different format, the fundamentals are the same: you only pay for the ad when somebody clicks on it.

For the purpose of this blog post, we're going to look at the basics of search engine PPC. Search engine pay-per-click advertising essentially allows you to bid for your ads to appear at the top of Google's results page so that, when someone types in a search query that is relevant to your service or products, your ads will be triggered.

For example, if you need to buy a sash for your friend's hen night, you might head to google.co.uk and enter the phrase hen night sash.

After entering the search query, you will be taken to the search results page, and this is where you will find adverts and organic listings for companies who are trying to solve your problem. As you can see from above, the first three listings (framed in red) are adverts, with Google Shopping results on the top right and more adverts underneath them.

Note: The results framed in green are Google's organic listings - this is where our SEO team will help you to appear!

At this point, you spot an advert from a company (Henstuff) selling Hen Night Sashes from £0.75. When you click on this advert, you will be taken to that company's website, and they will have to pay a small charge to Google.

A lot goes into building a successful AdWords campaign. First, you must research the keywords that are most relevant to your business; then, you must select the right keywords for your campaign (ideally, you want to target cheap keywords that will attract lots of customers to the right stage of the buying process). After that, you must organise these keywords into relevant ad groups and create landing pages on your website that are properly optimised to drive conversions. If done properly, all of this work won't go unrewarded - a carefully-targeted campaign will see you pay less every time your adverts are clicked, meaning higher profits for your company.

Would you like to try pay-per-click advertising for your company? Here at Designer Websites, we have a team of PPC experts who will help you to get the best possible results from Google AdWords and other platforms. Get in touch today!