Sproutee Solutions

Pro Website Sale

Sproutee — Tue, 01 May 2012 09:36:07 +0000

The month of May is sale time at Sproutee! This month, we’re slashing the cost of our Pro Website Package by £100. For just £399 + VAT you’ll walk away with a professional, reliable, beautiful website for your business packed with features:

Quick contact forms on every page for strong lead-generation
7 pages of content (home, about, services, contact, privacy, terms, sitemap)
High res stock photos tailored to your business for use on your home page
Set up Google Apps for Business
Blog
Links with social networks
Search engine optimised
Use your logo (if you don’t have one, we can make one for you!*)
WordPress CMS-driven website that lets you easily add, update and delete pages and blog posts
HTML5-ready with backwards compatibility (works in the latest and older browsers)
Responsive design to shrink to fit smaller screens like tablets and mobile

How It Works

Choose Your Design! Pick the right design for your business from our Theme Gallery
Build Your Content! We collaborate with you and undertake keyword and competitor analyses to craft the most search- and user-friendly text for your pages. We take great care that your content and meta data are fully search optimised for your business’s keywords.
Install and Configure Your Site! We sort out hosting and install and configure your website so it is available to your customers. We also set up Google Apps for Business (free form Google for 10 or fewer email addresses) to easily, securely and professionally manage your company’s communications.

How To Qualify

A deal this good, can’t last, and our sale is set to end on 31 May 2012. To be eligible for this amazing deal, you’ll need to agree a contract for creation of your Pro Website before midnight on 31 May 2012. Contact us to learn more about how our Pro Package can help your business to grow online.

So, come on, let’s work together to take your business’s web presence to the next level!

* Logo design is costed separately from the Pro setup fee of £399.

Vintage Chic Retro Theme

Sproutee — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:54:05 +0000

home page top including slideshow

home page links to featured content, embedded video, and welcome message

fat footer with Twitter feed, blog feed, and contact information

about page with quick contact form and links to social networks

contact form

blog feed top

blog feed bottom

Our Vintage Chic theme is sophisticated, minimal, feminine and packed with contemporary design features. Vintage Chic is a flexible theme and a great choice of design for a range of business websites:

salons, spas and beauty professionals
florists
stylists and fashion designers

Or any business that’s looking for a sleek and glamourous-looking website!

When you choose Vintage Chic for use with our Pro Package, you’ll walk away with a professionally built, very reliable and super optimised website. We’ll create your home page, about and service pages, contact page and set up your blog feed. We’ll add privacy, terms and sitemap pages, as well. We’ll link up your site to your social networks and put in place a great foundation for search engine optimisation based on a keyword analysis for your business. Not to mention installing and configuring your WordPress website and setting up Google Apps for Business to manage your company email (free from Google for 10 or fewer email addresses). As a final gift to you, one year’s free hosting and domain registration if you choose Sproutee Hosting.

Theme Features

7 pages of content (home, about, services, contact, privacy, terms, sitemap)
Quick contact forms on every page for strong lead-generation
Stock images tailored to your business for use on your home page
Blog
Links with social networks
Search engine optimised
Use your logo (if you don’t have one, we can make one for you!)
HTML5-ready with backwards compatibility (works in the latest and older browsers)
Responsive design to shrink to fit smaller screens like tablets and mobile

Think Vintage Chic is right for you? Get in touch and let’s get your site launched!

Vintage Chic Pro Package Theme

NRGY Minimal WordPress Theme

Sproutee — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:08:33 +0000

home page top including slideshow

home page 'photo links' to featured content, embedded video, and welcome message

fat footer with Twitter feed, blog feed, and contact information

about page with quick contact form and links to social networks

contact page form

blog feed top

blog feed bottom with quick contact form and links to social networks

Our NRGY theme is bold, minimal and full of vim and vigour. NRGY is an adaptable theme and the perfect design for a range of business websites:

personal trainers and fitness professionals
events and party planners
DJs and musicians
dancers and martial artists

And many more!

When you choose NRGY for use with our Pro Package, you’ll walk away with a professionally built, very reliable and super optimised website. We’ll create your home page, about and service pages, contact page and set up your blog feed. We’ll add privacy, terms and sitemap pages, as well. We’ll link up your site to your social networks and put in place a great foundation for search engine optimisation based on a keyword analysis for your business. Not to mention installing and configuring your WordPress website and setting up Google Apps for Business to manage your company email (free from Google for 10 or fewer email addresses). As a final gift to you, one year’s free hosting and domain registration if you choose Sproutee Hosting.

Theme Features

HTML5-ready with backwards compatibility (works in the latest and older browsers)
Responsive design to shrink to fit smaller screens like tablets and mobile
Quick contact forms on every page for strong lead-generation
7 pages of content (home, about, services, contact, privacy, terms, sitemap)
Stock images tailored to your business for use on your home page
Blog
Links with social networks
Search engine optimised
Use your logo (if you don’t have one, we can make one for you!)

Think our NRGY theme is right for you? Get in touch and let’s get your site launched!

NRGY Pro Package Theme

Business Zen Minimal WordPress Theme

Sproutee — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:32:37 +0000

home page top with slideshow

home page middle with bold photo links to featured content

home page bottom with embedded video and welcome message

page content top (e.g. about, services...)

page content sidebar with quick contact form (e.g. about, services...)

contact page form

contact page sidebar with links to social networks

blog feed top

blog feed bottom

Our Business Zen theme is minimal, sleek and fresh with a business-like feel. A versatile theme that can be great for a range of business websites such as:

accounting services
business services
legal services
manufacturing and heavy industry
technology services

And much much more!

When you choose Business Zen for use with our Pro Package, you’ll walk away with a professionally built, very reliable and super optimised website. We’ll create your home page, about and service pages, contact page and set up your blog feed. We’ll add privacy, terms and sitemap pages, as well. We’ll link up your site to your social networks and put in place a great foundation for search engine optimisation based on a keyword analysis for your business. Not to mention installing and configuring your WordPress website and setting up Google Apps for Business to manage your company email (free from Google for 10 or fewer email addresses). As a final gift to you, one year’s free hosting and domain registration if you choose Sproutee Hosting.

Theme Features

HTML5-ready with backwards compatibility (works in the latest and older browsers)
Responsive design to shrink to fit smaller screens like tablets and mobile
Quick contact forms on every page for strong lead-generation
7 pages of content (home, about, services, contact, privacy, terms, sitemap)
Stock images tailored to your business for use on your home page
Blog
Links with social networks
Search engine optimised
Use your logo (if you don’t have one, we can make one for you!)

Think our Business Zen theme is right for you? Get in touch and let’s get your site launched!

Businesses Using This Theme!

Check out how other businesses have used this theme to build their businesses online.

The Electronic Cottage

Business Zen Pro Package Theme

How to Add an Email Address in Google Apps

Sproutee — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 09:14:13 +0000

Google Apps offers a great way to manage you company’s emails and other communications. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add email accounts through the Google Apps Dashboard. To add an email address in Google Apps follow these steps or watch the screen cast below:

Login to your Google Apps Dashboard https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain.com/ where you replace ‘yourdomain.com’ with your website’s address.
Click the ‘Organization & users’ tab
Click the ‘Create a new user’ button
Fill in the form fields as appropriate and click ‘Create new user’
Click ‘Done’

Our Professional and Premium website and ecommerce packages include set up of Google Apps. When we create your website or shop we create an Admin user and an admin@ email address and up to 5 other email addresses that you require. If you wish to have additional email addresses configured, then, once you take possession of your site, you will need to log in to your Google Apps Dashboard and add new Users with the email addresses you wish to configure. For more on getting started with Google Apps check out Google’s learning centre. Subscribe to our free feed and never miss out on great tutorials for using your site’s software!

26th Business Startup Exhibition

Meg Smitley — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 18:39:36 +0000

Attended the Business Startup Exhibition at Earl’s Court, today. This is one of the UK’s leading business startup events and includes over 140 seminars, more than 200 exhibitors and opportunities for advice and networking for those building a new business. The exhibition hall at Earls Court Two was packed with exhibitors representing many different providers to help get a business off the ground such as marketing firms, accounting and bookkeeping solutions, website and ecommerce providers, alongside many different seminar strands covering a range of topics including intellectual property, business finance, social media, women in business and online retail.

Networking can inspire and motivate

While the economic climate may not be ideal, there are opportunities for SMEs right now in the UK. Small and medium sized enterprises are integral to the economy and account for nearly half of all revenue generated by the UK private sector. In light of the need for UK private sector growth to generate revenues for the treasury to reduce the national debt while creating opportunities for those jobs shed by the shrinking public sector, there is a clear need to support new and existing SMEs. The government has released £95 million in funding for SMEs to help to stimulate the economy, which may be welcome news for those seeking finance for their endeavour, though a business will need to qualify for a commercial loan before having access to these monies. BStartup was full of vibrant young people interested in entrepreneurship, service and product providers focussed on supporting the work of small and medium sized businesses and professionals not content to be ground down by gloomy economic forecasts. Yes, there are some serious challenges, especially around finance, facing SMEs in Britain today, but equally there are many paths to increasing business revenue with a modest outlay, especially growing your business through online channels. We most enjoyed Joe White’s talk on ecommerce solutions. Joe, CFO/COO and co-founder of Moonfruit, a design-led website builder solution, presented a really interesting take on online brand building and the evolution of his own business. We loved what Joe had to say and as fellow web technologists and husband-and-wife SME team, we felt inspired and just a bit of kinship with the Moonfruit founder. It was clear from Joe’s talk that Moonfruit really ‘gets’ the current state of the web and they’ve taken a completely different tack on ecommerce; they are all about facilitating multi-channel selling. This approach fundamentally understands the state of Internet comms, it is about many devices, it is about many online venues and it is about social. Out of the box, Moonfruit shops are:

optimised for mobile devices
easily integrated into ebay, Amazon and Facebook portals
PayPal-ready
lightweight and quick to set up

While Moonfruit systems may not be as full-featured as more traditional ecommerce systems nor offer the fine-grained customisation controls of conventional systems, they are forward-thinking, rapidly developing and offer a range of contemporary templates for customisation. This could be the system for a newer business to start on, prove the concept of their business and port away to a more full-featured system as the business matures. Keep in touch with developments in UK ecommerce and subscribe to our free feed!

Content Marketing for Small Business Growth Part II

Meg Smitley — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:56:39 +0000

In Part I of our discussion we introduced three core concepts that can underpin an online marketing strategy to deliver customers to businesses like yours:

Content marketing
Web design for lead generation
Web development for content management

There are many pieces to the SEO puzzle

In Part II we’ll offer a look at a real-life use case based on the work we’ve undertaken with one of our clients. Our client, Simply Sanding, runs a floor sanding and wooden floor restoration business in London, Essex, Suffolk and the Southeast. In the first quarter of 2011, we worked with Simply to launch a new, full featured and purpose built website. We’ve since delivered two quarterly reports as per our search optimisation packageand while there was no pre-2011 data to compare against, two things are clear from the evidence:

Baseline metrics indicating website ‘health’ rose significantly after creation of the new site
Search and lead generation metrics demonstrated the effectiveness of the marketing applied to Simply’s site

Finding the Baseline: Website Analyser

To determine a baseline of a site’s ‘effectiveness’, we evaluate a variety of metrics.

Metric	Description
Indexed Pages	Search engines love content. The more unique content on a site, the better because Google is better able to ‘learn’ what a site is about.
URL Structure	The URL is the web address for a web page. URLs are very important to search engines when they are determining what your site is about. So, your site’s URLs should be descriptive, keyword-rich and human-readable.
Meta Descriptions	Meta descriptions are the short blurbs of text displayed under a link in search engine results. Engaging meta descriptions can encourage clicks from search results through to your site.
Headings	Headings are one of the top things search engines ‘look’ at when figuring out what your site is about, so keyword-rich headings are a must for your search!
Image alt Attributes	Alternative text describes your images so they can appear in Google image search results.
Page Titles	The title tag is one of the most important elements on an HTML page that can signal to search engines (and humans!) what a page is about.
Text:HTML Ratio	Your site needs a ratio of at least 15%. Higher ratios boost search by increasing keyword density.
Robots.txt	A robots.txt file can restrict the access of search engine robots that crawl the web, and it can prevent these robots from accessing specific areas. It also specifies where the XML sitemap file is located.
XML Sitemap	A sitemap lists URLs that are available for crawling and can include additional information like last update, frequency of changes, and importance. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.
W3C Validation	Technical errors in your site’s HTML code can harm your search rankings.
RSS Feeds	These are streams of content from your site that your customers can subscribe to.
Shares on Social Networks	The number of times your site has been linked to on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere.
Listing in DMOZ	Getting your site listed in the DMOZ directory can be difficult, but it is generally thought to have a major impact on search rankings.

These key performance indicators give a baseline measure of effectiveness for any site, even one you don’t manage yourself; anyone can collect this information by looking carefully at a public website or using online tools like our Website Analyser. However, if you have access to install analytics software (e.g. Google Analytics), you can obtain much more detailed data which can be used to track and improve your site. Google Analytics in particular gives access to an overwhelming amount of detail, but for this client we identified a collection of key metrics.

Metric	Description
Search Rank	A site’s rank for desired keywords in Google, Yahoo!, AOL and Bing.
Visitors	The total number of visitors
Conversions	Possibly the most important performance indicator; of all the visitors to a site, how many actually converted to leads?
Top 3 Keywords	For the visitors who arrived through search, what were the top 3 keywords which accounted for this traffic.
Visitors Through Search	Of all the visitors, the number who found the site through a search engine.
Direct Visitors	Those who typed your URL into their browser to find your site.
Referred Visitors	Came to your site from another (e.g. from a link posted on Facebook).
Top Content	Your site’s most viewed pages.
Absolute Unique Visitors	Number of visitors who have never visited your site before.
Pages per Visit	The average number of pages per visit.
Average Time on Site	The average amount of time a visitor spends on the site.
Bounce Rate	Measures the number of visitors who view only one page for a short time before leaving a site.
New Visits	How many of the visits were from previously unseen visitors.

A driving principle we aim to employ for all our clients (and one you should follow if you manage your own site), is to be proactive. In other words, it is not enough just to collect statistics; you need to act on them. One way to achieve this is by compiling your stats into quarterly reports, we find this to be a hugely useful tool for our clients, which not only measures improvement on one or more key metrics from one quarter to the next, it can also signal a set of actions to develop the site. For instance, by looking at your top content as chosen by your visitors you might develop a strategy to create further content related to your most popular topic. In this way, you can plan and track continual and measurable improvements to your web presence.

Making Progress: The Case of Simply Sanding

Simply Sanding has been using our search optimisation services since the launch of their new website, including monthly blog posts and weekly Twitter and Facebook activity. This has had demonstrable results over the course of the year including:

Search rankings within the top 10 on Google, Yahoo!, AOL and Bing throughout Q2 and Q3
A conversion rate of nearly 4% by the end of Q3 (derived from the number of visitors and the number of request for quote emails submitted). This is well above the expected industry average of around 2% for most websites.
Steady rises in Absolute Unique Visitors and New Visitors throughout Q2 and Q3

Navigate to Success with Real Data

This was achieved through a unified strategy of content marketing, web design and web development geared towards delivering customers to Simply Sanding. Firstly, by creating a WordPress-based website for Simply, we are able to benefit from the software’s native support for search optimisted content and we extend this functionality with selected SEO plugins. Secondly, lead-generation was made central to Simply’s new site; the brief was for a very ‘simple’ and pared down site. We fulfilled this with a crisp, fresh design that included a prominent persistent request for quote contact form; The Most Important Action for this site is for the visitor to submit a request for quote and thereby create a new lead for the business. Finally, the site’s search rankings are maintained at high levels due to the regular creation of topical, keyword-rich content. Want to discover more ways to get the Internet working for your business? Subscribe to our free feed!

Content Marketing for Small Business Growth Part I

Meg Smitley — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:41:39 +0000

SEO encapsulates a range of concerns

Small and medium sized businesses, from sole traders to limited companies, are looking to the Internet to help drive growth. For many businesses, this translates into a focus on search engine optimisation to boost their website’s search rankings. Businesses often work with SEO agencies to meet this goal and while many businesses can benefit from the different sorts of work undertaken by these agencies, our work with clients indicates that businesses often aren’t getting the most from their money in terms of search optimisation nor is this work integrated into an overall a strategy to deliver customers. Ranking well on search engines (and maintaining that rank) is one matter and generating leads from the visitors who find your site is another matter all together. We’ve unified these aims into a strong marketing strategy that includes search visibility. We offer a range of search optimisation and marketing packages to our clients.

What are the goals?

Drive visitors to your site
Encourage visitors to take an action which results in a lead for your business

How can these goals be achieved?

Content marketing for search engine optimisation
Web design with lead-generation in mind
Web development with content creation at its heart

We’ve had such excellent success in managing small business search and lead development that we thought we’d share the approach we’ve applied to one of our clients, a sole trader offering floor restoration services. In Part I we’ll outline the concepts behind our strategy and in Part II we’ll explain how that strategy has been effectively applied to one of our customers (including a look at the data we’ve collected to prove that success). You can be the judge if this strategy could work for you business; use this as a guide for your DIY marketing or get in touch to see how we could deliver you customers.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing refers to the collection of marketing techniques which focus on the creation of informative and ‘shareable’ content for the purposes of attracting new leads, converting leads into customers and engaging with existing customers. In other words, by creating high-quality, interesting and keyword-rich content it is possible to engage with your business’s community, i.e. that community of prospects and customers searching for goods and services related to your business’s niche. Content marketing fits well with developments in Google’s algorithm, as well as the assumptions and premises embedded in the algorithms of other search engines, in particular search engine’s ‘freshness filter’. Google is seeking to continually refine its search results and more recent changes to its algorithm demonstrate a strong recognition of the motivations behind people’s use of social media. On the one hand, Internet users want to read about what is going on right now, at this moment. This is clear from the links that get shared around Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere; the content that gets shared is highly relevant to a topic, rich in information and reflect the latest developments and trends in a topic. On the other hand, search engines count the number of times a piece of content is shared on social networks and factor this in to calculating the ‘freshness’ of a piece of content. The techniques associated with content marketing fit with this search bias for the latest, most interesting and high quality content by emphasising the creation of exciting, topical content that is appropriate for sharing on social networks.

Web Design for Lead Generation

Work with web professionals to realise your business vision

Attracting visitors to your site isn’t a trivial endeavour. It is so important that your site provides clear direction for your visitor to do *something* that creates a lead from that visit, or so much of that effort to create and promote high quality content in order to get that visitor onto your site has been wasted. What a pity! It is vital that you define for yourself and for your business what you most want your visitor to do. Once you know the most important action for your visitor to take when s/he hits your site, you can then work with your web designer to develop a hierarchy of ‘calls to action’ with your most important action at the top of that hierarchy. In this way, your web design can incorporate The Most Important Action and elevate access to that action above all else in your site design. While some more complicated sites may have different most important actions for different pages or areas of the site, less complicated sites may have a single purpose and available action. For example, on a less complicated site, the goal may simply be to collect phone numbers/emails through a request for quote form while on a more complicated ecommerce site the goal on the product page may be to hit the ‘Buy’ button while the home page is more concerned to drive clicks on the latest products or sale items. When developing a website to grow your business online, it is essential that you understand and communicate The Most Important Action to your web design and development team, then they are able to offer design and technology solutions to ensure easy and prominent access to that action at the heart of your site.

Web Development for Content Creation

The way a website looks should be a separate concern from what a website does; best practices in web design and development assert that the look of a site should not have dependencies on the functionality of a site. This is one of the main reasons why we build websites using WordPress and Catalyst; WordPress provides excellent native content management functionality and a wealth of plugins to extend that functionality, while an off the shelf or customised Catalyst Theme governs the look and feel of the site. Importantly for this discussion, WordPress is a purpose built, full featured content management software that can be used to power your website while offering the ability to create and update content through a superb back office interface. By using WordPress as the software behind your business’s website, you position yourself or your agents to create and maintain a ever growing body of search-friendly content. Want to learn more about putting these concepts to work for real businesses? Read Part II or subscribe to our free feed!

How To Set a Thumbnail on Your WordPress Post

Sproutee — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:34:23 +0000

Attractive images can encourage clicks!

WordPress allows you to set a featured image on Posts and Pages. The ‘featured image’ in WordPress terms is the thumbnail that will appear in your post listings, such as your blog feed, search results or categories archives. Using a featured image can add colour and interest to your blog feed, while an engaging image can encourage visitors to click through to your post. You can set a featured image by in your WordPress Back Office:

Go to your Posts > All Posts (or Add New)
Click the title of your Post to edit (or create your new Post)
Click the ‘Set featured image’ link in your sidebar
Browse to the image you wish to use
Click the ‘Use as featured image’ link
Update (or publish) your Post

You’ve now set your featured image. Go to your blog feed and refresh your browser (Ctrl+F5 for Windows and Cmd+R for Mac) and your thumbnail will be loaded. Check out our screen cast for step by step instructions. Want to learn more about how you can make the most of your WordPress website? Subscribe to our free feed!

How To Update Your Post URL in WordPress

Sproutee — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:19:49 +0000

WordPress is an excellent content management system for powering your small or medium sized business website. WordPress is reliable and full-featured software with excellent support for the creation of content. Creating regular content, such as in a blog, is integral to any business’s search optimisation strategy. When this content is created, it is important to consider your Post’s (or Page’s) URL – also known as the web address, permalink or link – and ensure that it is both human-readable and keyword-rich. Search engines and your users prefer friendly URLs which are concise, logical descriptions of your Post or Page. URLs should be keyword-rich and human readable, in other words, URLs that read like a normal phrase or sentence. In this way, search engines and visitors will have a clear indication from your URL what your Post or Page is about. When you create a WordPress Post or Page, a permalink is generated based on the title that you enter. But what if you change your title, or the generated permalink isn’t concise enough or what if you want an amusing title but a more practical and search-friendly URL? WordPress lets you preview the permalink and update your permalink using the ‘Edit’ button next to the preview. Check out our screencast for a quick tutorial on how to update your Post’s permalink in WordPress. Keep in mind that once you’ve published and shared your Post or Page you may not wish to update the permalink, as the older URL will not direct your readers to the newly addressed page. You can use a redirect in your htaccess file to deal with this issue, but it is preferable to make the definition of an attractive and informative URL an integral part of your content-creating process. Want to learn more about using WordPress for search optimised content creation? Subscribe to our free feed!