My website has been up and running for over one year now, but, despite all the work that’s gone into it (and continues to on my side – e.g. the monthly comment), I’ve yet to have a single business enquiry from it. What do you think we’re doing wrong?

This is a big topic from such a simple question!

We need to start by analysing what role the website is playing for you.

1. Have you set it up to gain you new leads?
2. Or have you set it up to nurture existing contacts and give people you gain through other networking channels a chance to ‘check you out’.

Knowing the objectives means you can decide on how to track success.

If you are looking to generate leads you need (a) a good number of visits and (b) a reasonably high conversion rate from visitors to enquirers.  You’ve already stated you’ve had no enquiries via the website, so we know the conversions aren’t happening.
But are we getting the traffic in the first place?

When we work with clients who have set up their own Google Adwords accounts, we like to link ourselves to them.  This way we can log in and see their settings, reports and data for ourselves.

The trouble is, it’s not intuative as to how to go about creating this link.  In Google Analytics the site owner goes into their account and simply adds us as a User.  All they need to know to do this is our Google Account Login Name.

For Google Adwords, it’s the other way around.  We have to ask to be linked to them.  And the Login details are not what’s needed.  The Client ID is the key!

Problem: When I use the Site Overlay feature on our home page, the total percentage is only about 20%, not 100%, and almost every link has a 0% reading.

There are a couple of suggestions as to what may be the problem.

1. The site overlay takes all the links on the page – including those in the footer of your page and those within the text – and adds them up to 100%.  So, do be sure you’ve scanned every inch of the page for links!
2. If you have navigation along the top of the page, this may be hidden by the site overlay banner.  This is what happens on our site.  See the attached PDF showing you our screen shots.
3. In some circumstances only CERTAIN links are counted by Google Analytics. Here is a very technical document from Google’s Help Topics on why this might be, and I attach it here.  I find it a bit too technical for me, but it may mean something to you or your web developers.

I hope that one of these is the answer, or leads you to the answer!

Cat Young
STW
www.stw-online.net

For many years we’ve been able to provide hosted Exchange mailboxes.  But many people are still unaware of the benefits of this.  As we demand more and more flexibility in our electronic communication, Exchange mailboxes come into their own.

Any email account can be set to send a copy of the email to another location – eg. a phone. However, by doing this you can end up with duplicate emails (i.e. have them go to BOTH your computer and your phone) or you have to choose to direct email traffic to one place or the other.

Also, if you are part of a team who work remotely from each other you end up having to copy emails to one another all the time to keep communication going. This duplicates copies of emails and causes confusion when trying to identify who has actioned what! There is an easier way!

One of my business associates forwarded an email to me today that has been around for decades. It’s a SCAM and it’s pernicious. 

The message states:

Bill Gates is sharing his fortune…and in an effort to make sure that Internet Explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test.

When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it for a two weeks time period.

For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $245.00.
For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on, Microsoft will pay you $243.00
and for every third person that receives it, You will be paid $241.00.

Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a check.

What should you do if you get such an email?