We handle
email marketing for quite a few clients here at Designer Websites - this involves designing each individual campaign and, once the client has signed off on our design, converting and sending the mailer to that client's customer base.
Having done this every week for several years, we now have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Here are some top tips from our professional web design team:
- Keep your prime content above the fold. People get a lot of emails nowadays, and if your customers have to scroll down to find out why you're emailing them...well, they won't. They'll delete your message and move on to the next one. That doesn't mean you can't put anything under the fold, but you should definitely put the 'meat' of your mailer right at the top if possible.
- Brand strongly and consistently. You want to make sure that the recipients of your email know who it's coming from. You also want to make sure that, if they click through to your site, the transition from email to web page is as smooth as possible. Consistent branding is essential for both of these goals - make sure your company name and logo are exactly the same in your mailers as on your website, and make sure that they're prominently displayed in both places too.
- Use your best images. If you're promoting products in your mailer, make sure you've got decent photos of them. Images are what make people click, and the better your images are, the better your CTR (click-through rate) will be.
- Don't go overboard. There's always the temptation to cram as many different products and offers into a mailer as possible, but with this sort of thing, less is almost always more. A single clearly-stated, well-presented promotion will elicit a better response from your customers than a confusing, overcrowded jumble.
- Check your landing pages. What page(s) are you linking to from your mailer? Is the content of your email campaign an accurate reflection of the corresponding content on your website? If not, you'll probably see a lot of people clicking through to your site and then leaving right away because they couldn't find what the email promised them.
- Put some thought into your subject line. The subject line is the single most important element of any email marketing campaign - after all, if nobody's interested in your subject line, they won't even bother to open your email and see what you've sent them. Do your best to write something that will grab the attention of your customers without looking too much like spam. Oh, and be sure to triple-check your spelling - nothing will kill the recipient's trust more quickly than a typo in the subject line!
Would you like our professional web design team to handle your email campaigns for you? Click here to request a quote, or give us a call on 01446 339050!
First Encounters Ultrasound is a company that provides private pregnancy scans for expectant parents. They have a state-of-the-art clinic in Cardiff, 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.
Back in 2013, we created a website called PorcelainPaving.co.uk. Owned by outdoor specialists Greensquares, this site was specifically designed to show off the company's stylish range of porcelain tiles and paving slabs to potential customers.
PorcelainPaving.co.uk has proven extremely successful indeed, receiving a very healthy amount of traffic and allowing Greensquares to make these paving products a much larger element of their overall business. In fact, their porcelain range now has a brand name of its own: PrimaPorcelain.
Of course, a new brand calls for a new design, and we have recently been working hard to turn the old porcelain paving website into the new PrimaPorcelain website.
This doesn't just mean that we've been changing a few bits of text - the site has been given a complete overhaul, and PrimaPorcelain.co.uk now has an elegant responsive design and an intuitive new 'Product Selector' tool that allows customers to filter PrimaPorcelain's range (which has grown exponentially since 2013!) by colour, texture, and indoor/outdoor use.
The new PrimaPorcelain website is a big step up for the brand, and we hope that it will be even more successful now than it was in its old guise. Click here to visit PrimaPorcelain.co.uk.
If you've ever felt like quitting your job and starting a completely new career, our latest project may well be of interest to you. We've been putting together a brochure website for Training Courses Wales, a company who specialise (as their name would suggest) in vocational training courses. The site went live yesterday, which means that budding plumbers, electricians, gas engineers and construction workers can now book onto relevant training courses right here in Wales.
The local factor is a big part of what Training Courses Wales are all about. They realised that many, many more people would be willing to train for a job in the trade industry if they didn't have to travel so far; catching trains, booking accommodation, and going days without seeing one's family are all big obstacles on the path to a new career. Would-be electricians in Swansea, for example, may previously have chosen not to undertake professional training because they couldn't make it to London or Manchester for a good quality course.
That's where this new website comes in. Training Courses Wales provide vocational training courses throughout South Wales, allowing a lot of people to start the career that they always wanted to have. The TCW site contains details on all of the different qualifications that you can gain from their courses, along with a slick enquiry form that interested parties can use to get in touch. If you want to see what exciting new occupations are at your feet, or if you just want to see an example of our handiwork, pop over to www.trainingcourseswales.co.uk now.
You may notice that the Designer Websites site looks a little different today, and that’s because our new and improved website design has just gone live! We’ve wanted to revamp the site for some time now, but with so many client websites to work on, it’s been slow progress.
But the new design is finally finished, and now it’s up for all to see! Aside from the stylish new look, we’ve also updated our About Us page, beefed up our collection of Case Studies (well worth a read!), and generally done our best to improve the website in any way possible.
So have a browse of our new site, and see what you think of the work we’ve done. We hope you like it!
