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How We Create a Professional Service-Based Website For You in 5 Steps

As a service provider trying hard to reach new consumers both online and offline, you know that the game right now is online audience. 

That’s where the market is, this is not 1956 where newspaper advertisement and word of mouth marketing were the deal, even though it still plays a role in today’s marketplace.

To reach the kind of paying consumers you want, you have to be positioned right for it.

A few years back surfing the internet was such a struggle both to you the business person and to the consumers

But, since then so many innovative features have been created to make life easy for everyone, and in 2021 it gets better.

That’s why at Ducehost we have curated these 5 easy steps on how we create professional service-based websites for our customers;

Which Include:

  1. Integrating a scheduling system
  2. Adding the right pages
  3. Promoting your services
  4. Branding your website
  5. Keeping your site up-to-date

INTEGRATE A SCHEDULE SYSTEM

For the sake of convenience and efficiency, most customers prefer to schedule a service through your website instead of calling or stopping by in person. 

In order to keep up with their expectations and maximize your sales, you’ll need an online scheduling software so that you can accept bookings and payments through your website.

Scheduled appointments can be automatically synced with both your business and customers’ calendars. 

You and your staff will receive real-time booking updates when a client schedules an appointment. 

ADD THE RIGHT PAGES

Think of all the content you want to add to your site and prioritize the important ones; 

Homepage

This is very important, it’s the first impression you give your prospects or anyone at all about your business, your homepage is more about branding than it is direct-marketing, so it must be fully utilized (sell your brand confidently on your homepage). 

Since the purpose of your site is to initiate bookings, you should also have a Book Now button placed above the fold. This gives users the option to book or schedule your services immediately upon arriving at your site.

The same goes for the booking page, about us, and any other page you see necessary for your website.

PROMOTE YOUR SERVICES

Once you’ve published your service website, promote it so that people learn about your brand. A great way to get started is by spreading the word on social media. For additional ways to build exposure and draw in customers.

BRAND YOUR WEBSITE

To maintain the brand identity your customers recognize and love, we make sure those elements are carried over onto your website. Your brand color, custom logo and domain name.

KEEP YOUR SITE UP-TO-DATE

To achieve the best possible results, keep your site fresh and up-to-date. This includes adapting to the latest trends and adding new blog content to build up your authority in your field.

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this post was helpful… Kindly leave a comment if so.

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5 SECRET FACTS GOOGLE SEARCH DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW

We all know that Google leads when it comes to search, but aside from this statistics, there is hardly any research out there about how internet users are actually using the top search engine.

Of course, Google will sometimes feed digital marketers with statistics and updates like, how many people in a location searched for a particular topic or how many videos were uploaded to YouTube including the stats for each video which is very helpful to Digital Marketers.

By having access to the daily searches, it makes it much easier for businesses and marketers to understand the changing landscape of search engines and how internet users are really using search engines to find information.

While Google doesn’t really provide this type of data, we have searched high and low to bring you some top-secret statistics on how consumers are using the power of the internet to search and find products.

By having access to this data, you can use it to help boost your SEO c

Here is what we found when it comes to how internet goers are using search engines like Google-

Secret Fact #1: The Average Person Conducts 5.5 Searches Every Single Day 

We discovered that the average person conducts around 5.5 searches every single day. That equates to around 2 trillion searches on Google alone just in Nigeria every single month. This is also not counting voice searches or searches using the Google app or Google Home.

What does this mean for your business? Your average customer is making at least 3-4 queries every single day, which means that you have very few chances for people to find your site.

This statistic really stresses the importance of SEO and having your website or landing pages rank well for your most desirable keywords.

SEO is important, but this statistic proves just how important it is to ensure that your customers know exactly where to find you.

Secret Fact #2: More users perform one or more searches on Social media platforms in a day 

Earlier we talked about how the average person searches for around 5.5 things every single day on Google. When looking a little closer, we found that really only 15 percent of people were performing one more than one search.

This means that the percentage of people searching for more than one thing per day on Google is extremely low.

While Google is definitely the most visited search engine in the world, it is clear that not many  people are solely relying on it for navigating around the web.

The reason for multiple search volumes being so low may also be contributed to the fact that social media is now a hot spot to find information.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter offer trending news sections and plenty of ads. With the average person spending at least 15 minutes on Facebook per day, it just goes to show that being present on this platform is a good way for clients and customers to find your brand.

Secret Fact #3: Only 3.4 percent of Adwords ads are clicked during a search 

If you are wondering what percentage of Adwords ads are clicked versus regular listings the answer is somewhere around 3-4 percent.

Adwords is known to be highly competitive and this just proves how competitive it can be. Out of 100 searches, only 3, maybe 4 people are clicking on an Adwords listing.

While it may seem that hardly any Adwords ads are being clicked on a daily basis, it helps to remember that Google processes billions of searches every single day. When you look at it from this angle, there is a lot of potential to be had from using Adwords.

Adwords is definitely one of the premier CPC campaign platforms and every business should know the basics of how to run an effective Adwords campaign.

Secret Fact #4: 18 percent of users click on the change search query suggestions at the bottom of search results

We have all seen the alternative search terms located at the very bottom of search results. It’s been discovered that a whopping 18 percent of users were clicking on these alternative suggestions.

In order to use this to your advantage, type in your most common keywords and see what alternative suggestions are offered. Try catering to these suggestions through your copy and headlines.

These alternative search queries are often a result of a lot of data collected by Google over the years and what the most popular search terms based on the keyword you are looking for.These alternative suggestions are therefore extremely valuable to your SEO strategy and for funnelling more traffic your way.

Secret Fact #5: 8 percent of search queries are asked as Questions

Through a research, It was found that 8 percent of search queries were questions; this means that 8 out of 100 searches started with the words- who, what, where, when, why and how.

Using questions as keywords may be something you want to experiment with based on these findings.

You may even want to write more questions in the headlines of your ad copy or on your blog posts to see if you can capitalize from this trend.

Conclusion

So there you have it-  5 secret facts about Google that should help to support your SEO efforts, copy and the keywords you should choose to focus on.

Download a Free Blog Audit to improve your SEO Performance and Boost your sales

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HOW TO USE YOUR BLOG TO PROMOTE YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES.

Having a company blog is one of the key ways to indirectly promote your business online, but what about using your blog to directly promote your products and services?

While it may not be “blogging best practice” to promote your products and services directly on your blog, we are going to show you how it can be done in a tactful and clever way.

There are many advantages to having a company blog, but the two most important things that your blog helps to establish is:

  1. Traffic to your website (which hopefully converts into sales)
  2. Your reputation as an expert and thought-leader in your field.

This means that your blog needs to first and foremost be perceived by your audience as extremely valuable and helpful to supporting their needs. This is truly the first step and if your company blog is not yet here, it may be best to not proceed any further.

While you never want your blogs to simply be about all the cool things your company does or all the products you have for sale, there is some merit in sharing some of the services and products your company provides.

The trick with doing this successfully is to absolutely avoid the 3 No’s which are-

NO to being salesy

NO to being pushy

NO to being obvious

Blogging is very different from advertising, and your company’s sole intention should never be to use blogging as a direct marketing tool.

Establishing a solid blog following and earning the trust of your readers there may be a small window of opportunity to directly promote your products and services.

Here is how to go about it in a clever and tactful way-

Ask Yourself- Is the product or service I am promoting on my blog useful?

If your brand made it or owns it, chances are you are going to think it’s useful, but go a little deeper. Your products and services may cater to a specific audience but chances are there is an even more specific market that is interested in your blog.

Ensure whatever product you choose to promote offers direct and clear cut value to your readers and not just your overall demographic. This is going to help your promotion to be more successful and better accepted by your readers.

What Am I Promoting and Why? 

After you have selected the best product to promote to your readers it is important to establish why you are promoting it. This is going to help you not only formulate a solid blog post but it is also going to help  you set the intention of what you are trying to achieve.

Speaking of intention, mentioning a product or service in your blog posts doesn’t always have to be about getting a sale. It can be about simply educating your customers or learning what your customer’s reaction is to the product or service.

Formulate your intention and then assess the product you have chosen by asking yourself- why?

In order to determine the best product to choose, take a moment to browse through your reader comments or questions. You may find a common theme in what they are asking, or you may discover a product or service that could be most helpful.

Popular or trending topics on your blog may also provide a clue as to what products or services can be seamlessly promoted.

Let the Benefits Become the Pitch

The benefits of your products or services should be the theme of your blog post and not the product or services themselves.

This helps to gently suggest your products or services to your readers rather than pushing it or forcing it on them. It also helps to ensure that your blog post is offering greater value than just a sales pitch.

In order to formulate the pitch or the heart of your promotion, it is important to focus on the benefits that your product or service is going to offer and then use that as your foundation.

Here is a 4 step guide to help you with this process –

  1. Select Your Product or Service (eg. water bottle)
  2. List the Top 3 Benefits (eg. staying hydrated, beautiful design, BPA free)
  3. Pick a Benefit to Write Your Content About (eg. Why It’s So Important Your Water Bottle is BPA free)
  4. Integrate pitching your product as a solution (eg. we offer BPA free water bottles…)

Offer More Than One Solution

It is important to offer more than just your product or service as a solution to the “problem” or “hurdle” raised in your blog post.

When you only provide your product or service as the solution it can cause your readers to become skeptical and can make them feel hesitant in trusting you or taking action.

Offering more than one solution is therefore recommended to avoid your blog post coming across as pushy or salesy.

Set Up Tracking for Analytics 

Once your blog post is written you will want to be sure you can track your audience and how many people click and follow through with purchasing your product or service.

This will help you to determine the effectiveness of your post and whether promoting through your blog is helping or hindering your business.

To do this you can set up a conversion pixel on your post or use a special shortened URL that can be tracked and monitored to see how many people are clicking over to the checkout page.

Promoting the Post 

Stay away from using headlines to promote your post such as- “Check out all the great things our product or service can do for you.” Instead, focus on promoting the benefits without even mentioning your product or service.

Remember, the art with this is to be tactful and to stay away from obvious promotion.

Sticking with the drink bottle example, your headline for your blog promotion can simply be- “Why BPA is dangerous for your health…” or “Why your water bottle may be bad for your health.”

Again, this headline or promotion sticks to dealing with the benefits. This will also make your blog post promotion seem far less salesy which may help to earn you more clicks and conversions.

Measure Your Blog’s Performance 

After publishing and promoting your blog post you have to track the results and see how your blog post is converting into sales, and whether it is having any adverse effects on your readership.

Through analysing you can determine what is working and what may need to be changed or tweaked.

It may also be interesting to compare the performance of promoting in your blog posts with promoting on other mediums or channels.

If you have been tactful enough and truly provide content of value on a regular basis, you may find that your blog promotions earn you a nice handful of sales. Just be sure that you don’t abuse your blog promotion skills however, as readers can very quickly become desensitised.

Conclusion

Your company’s blog is one of the most valuable marketing tools you have. It’s valuable because it is not centered around making sales and instead is centered around offering your readers and potential customers value. This helps your brand to appear worthy and credible and conveys a powerful message- that you care about your customers.

If you abuse your blog, it can have the reverse effects and can make readers see your brand as pushy, unworthy or not to be trusted. It can also cause your readership to go elsewhere, which over time can negatively impact on your conversion rates and sales.

DOWNLOAD THE DUCEHOST BLOGPOST AUDIT HERE to optimize your Blog Performance. This is worth 20000. Try it and experience a boost in your Blog performance and in turn a boost in Sales of your Your products and Services.

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5 Shocking reasons why every business needs a website

In this 21st century, it is unrealistic to run a business effectively without a website. With the advent of the internet, not being ‘Tech savvy’ or ‘Lack of funds’ or even ‘I don’t have enough time’ is no longer an excuse for not getting a professional website for your business. Not having a website is actually costing you a fortune financially including your time and energy.

This is a bit of statistics that might give an insight to how important a website is to you, 81% of people research a business or service on the internet prior to making a purchase decision. That’s 25.92 million people searching for businesses online. Yet a huge percentage of business owners listed on business directories like vconnect don’t see the need for a website. We’re not statisticians, but we can see that there’s a glaring disconnect here.

Still unsure if your business needs a website? Keep reading

A Website attracts new customers which in turn generates more income for your Business

An insight to the statistics of 81% of prospects researching your business before making a purchase online is that people check your website an average of 5 times before buying from you. If you don’t have a website, you are losing money on the table.

Your website can be available 24/7/365 even when you’re not. A website acts as your “always-on” business advocate during and outside of office hours.

A Website builds instant trust for your business and service

First impressions count, and websites allow you to make a very strong impression with a well-designed introduction for your business.

A website can help showcase your expertise and better position your business to the customers you want. A website can be your number one tool for standing out in a crowd.

A Website is not as expensive as you think

The initial fear of starting your website development process is totally unnecessary. Most web hosting companies like ducehost also offer web design as an added service for clients. This makes your signup process quick and painless.

A Website offers a better return on investment than any other form of advertising. If you’re planning to market your business, a website should be your first priority.

Over time the relatively low investment of getting a business website will payoff for your company by driving you new customers and building your brand.

A Website keeps you in control of your Brand

Do you know that you can be reviewed as a business with your website? Sometimes unknowingly and/or negatively. How does this affect you? 79% of users who read online reviews believe them and this in turn influences the brand.

A website shapes the perception of your business in a way that social media channels cannot provide. Having a website helps you position yourself in the market to get the exact type of customers you’re looking for

A Website will save you time

Whether you’re trading emails, taking calls, or sending out proposals – communicating with potential customers takes time. Your website can save you that time by providing answers to common customer questions and inquiries. What does this mean for you? You can spend your time doing more valuable things.

There’s a very small and inexpensive barrier to entry, and there is a massive opportunity to help grow your business.

If you’re going to do one thing today to help your business be more successful, it’s to make getting a website your top priority.

It’s easy to be a better business. Get a website.