Webcraft Webmaster Services

There's little point investing time and money in a website if you don't know how well it's performing. Fortunately, there's now a huge range of both free and paid-for tools which can analyse how your site is performing. They're often designed with ordinary users in mind, and show graphics and breakdowns to make the data easier to understand and use. * Measure traffic sources. Knowing where visitors are coming from means you can tell how social networking is performing for your business, how well your email campaigns are working, and help you decide on calls to action. * Measure conversion rates. Converting visitors into leads or business is the goal of online marketing so you need to know which calls to action or pieces of content are persuading visitors to take that final step. * Check your results often. Google Analytics presents your data clearly but you should still check your results frequently and drill down into the data to make sur...

South Africans worth following on Twitter So you may have just joined this thing called Twitter, or you've become completely bored with your friends talking about their pets and kids. Looking for some interesting people to talk to on Twitter? We've compiled a list of 10 top South African personalities you should be following on Twitter, and why we think they're worth it: Helen Zille: @helenzille "Aunty Helen" is the Premier of the Western Cape and the leader of the Democratic Alliance, South Africa's official opposition party. One of the country's top prolific tweeters, she often interacts with her followers, helps people resolve issues in their community or puts them in their place. Michael Jordaan: @michaeljordaan As the CEO of First National Bank, Michael Jordaan has made a tremendous impact on the way we see and use our banks. Even if you don't bank with FNB, you'll find the other banks are following his exam...

When you think about online visibility for your local business it's so easy to get wrapped up and overloaded with what you should be doing on the internet to promote your website. Yet, small changes to your every day business routine can make a big difference. Often, business owners think about being visible online as a way of reaching people whom you have had no contact with at all. That's true in many cases. Sometimes, online visibility is as simple as making sure that people you interact with (even briefly) as part of your usual business routines are aware of your online presence. Not everyone wants to pick up the phone or call in to your premises to find out basic information like your opening hours or who to contact. Sometimes people just want to find out a bit more about you and your company. In this day and age of always being plugged in to the Internet, your website is the first p...

Time Management as a Marketer Information overload can lead to us moving around from one thing to another and feel like we are getting nowhere, or at least achieving the tool for the time we have spent. It is easy to fall into the trap of trying to do e-mails, writing articles, talking on social media sites and whatever else all at once. This jumping from one thing to another is a time destroyer. If you want to help yourself as a marketer, learn to turn off the e-mails, the social media and whatever else is distracting new from your goal. Be reasonable with the plan and goals you set because this way they will be achieved. Here are my tips – Make a plan that works for you, be reasonable and realistic Focus on one thing at a time and stick to it. When writing, or doing any task, turn everything else off, including a busy phone. You can read your e-mails, Facebook etc. at the end of your day. Set deadlines. Don't stop until the task is done. If you can...

Maximize the Power of Your About Us Your About Us page has the distinct purpose of letting people get to know your company, which will help build the foundation of trust and respect that is needed for a successful online business. For certain businesses, the About Us page can also be used for recruiting new employees, sales reps, etc. So, take some time, look over your About Us page and see if it utilizes any or all of the ten features listed below. 1. Company History – Give a brief history of your company and how you got started. Explain how long you've been in business, the purpose of your business and your experience. This is also a good place to add your mission statement. 2. Focus on Benefits - Be sure to focus on the benefits your company will provide the customer. Your potential customers want to know what you can do for them, not how you do it. 3. Introduce Yourself and Crew – Be sure to give your name and the names of those who work wit...

Beef Up the Content on Your Site When you first get your website up and running, your first thought may be to implement some article marketing strategies to get the traffic pouring into your site. Your sole thought may be to do something "out there" in order to produce the results that you want on your site. There is one step that should happen prior to that though, and it's one that a lot of site owners overlook. Before anything, you need to develop the content on your website. You see, in order to attract readers, you need to have some reason for them to be at your website. What sort of information are you providing? What problems are you solving? How are you helping your readers? You may attract readers when you submit articles, but if you don't have any "stickiness" on your site, then the increased viewers don't do you much good. They just show up at your site and immediately click away because they haven't fou...

Know Your SEO Is Working How do you know if your SEO is working? Here are five stages outlined below to give you a better idea and measure the results. It doesn't matter if you call it Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or any other fancy acronym, what matters are results. Fortunately results are quantitative and measurable so you can deduce which tactics are effective and which are a waste of time.Relevance is a moving target, it is completely molded by the individual referencing the query, which means that positioning relies a great deal on your ability to read the market and forecast trends and buzzwords with traffic attached. Aside from picking keywords, writing content and building links, you need to know which guideposts to assess to determine if your optimization is falling on deaf ears or in fact pulling its own weight. The bottom line, how do you know your SEO is working? Stage 1 Post relevance "Exact Match...