We’re excited to announce that we’ve moved offices to Cullompton in Devon and launched our new website! You can now find us at Imaginal House 29 High Street, Cullompton, EX15 1AB.
Function28’s Managing Director, Russ Murch, has released an official statement about the office move:
“It has been an exciting time for Function 28 and the team with the move to Cullompton. With the anticipated growth of Cullompton and the money being put into regenerating the town, it felt like the right time to “come home”. The general public and business owners of the town have given us a very warm reception and we are hoping to repay that warmth with great offers for the local trades people and free workshops where people can come along and pick our brains about anything associated with digital marketing to get themselves noticed online. The one thing we all love about our business is that because of the very nature of what we do, we can be located in one of the most beautiful parts of the country, whilst working with companies up and down the UK as if we were next door neighbours, so if you need a friendly face as a virtual neighbour make sure you contact the team.” – Managing Director, Russ Murch.
Find us here:
New Website Launch
Since we are the creators of beautiful websites, it only makes sense that we have an aesthetic, responsive website ourselves! As you can see, we have created a bold and modern website that reflects our ethos and brand personality here at Function28. Find out more about our website design and development process here. You can find out a wide range of up-to-date information about Function28 and our full range of website design & development and Digital Marketing services.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your business grow, contact us on 01884 308091 or feel free to drop in to our new address as listed above.
What are the key things you should be considering before launching your new website? If you’ve recently had one developed, the site should tick a few boxes! If the developers don’t cater to the marketing requirements necessary to manage a website, contact us today. We are a Digital Marketing agency in Devon that will not only build a beautiful, seamless website for you, but our team are experienced Marketeers who will get your website off to a good start and ensure traffic continues to grow!
1. Visual Design
The visual design and layout of your new website should be aesthetically pleasing, whilst matching your company’s branding and industry. Your logo, fonts and colour schemes should all be clear and consistent across the whole site. The layout should also cater to the amount and style of content incorporated. For example, if you choose to have plenty of detailed information about your company and services/products, it is important to have a theme that utilises images and moving media effectively to create a balance for users. The use of white space is also an element to be considered before launching the site. Is the site too busy and you don’t know where to look? This is a sign that white space, areas with no text or images, should be used more effectively.
Little Oak Meadow
2. Content
If you’ve got this far on this blog post, then you will have definitely heard the “Content is King” Marketing phrase! The phrase really does ring true. Your content should not only answer your audience’s questions, but it should also be valuable to them. Websites are a great opportunity to tell your audience more about you as a company and share expertise in the form of a blog or news section.
Two key sub-elements with regards to content are call to actions (CTAs) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Do you have at least one CTA on each page? It is beneficial to include CTA’s throughout the text to encourage users to contact you or purchase your product if it’s an e-commerce site. Is the content tailored to benefit SEO? If your website doesn’t use keywords that your target audience are going to be searching for, your website will fall behind competitors in the rankings, decreasing traffic. For the long-term benefit of the website and for the initial push, an SEO strategy should be utilised and consistently reviewed.
3. Navigation
How easy is the website to use? Can users find the information they want quickly? You don’t want users to give up and click off the site because it’s too confusing. To ensure navigation is easy, it is useful to group pages under the navigation bars, which are usually located at the top of the website.
4. Credibility
If your audience doesn’t trust your company, they aren’t going to purchase your product or service. It is therefore important to build credibility and demonstrate that your website and company is legitimate. A way to do this is through link building with other credible organisations. Getting other companies to link users to your website and doing the same for them will improve your site’s credibility and SEO. Credibility can also be enhanced by stating your contact information, details about your company, testimonials and social media links. Your company should remain fully transparent to the user to maximise credibility and increase trust.
5. Responsiveness
Has your mobile or tablet site been developed properly? If the mobile or tablet site has poor navigation, images are incorrect sizes and buttons don’t work, the site will cause havoc to your users. In fact, they will just click off the site and go to a competitor that has a responsive website! Since mobile phones are the most popular device used to access the internet according to the Office for National Statistics, it is incredibly important that all companies have a good mobile site to avoid missing out on communication with mobile users.
If you’d like to get a responsive website built for your customers, get in touch with us today by calling 01884 308091 or via our contact form.
Have you ever sent a mailshot to your vast mail lists and barely anyone clicked or even opened it? Whether you’re sending out a newsletter, new offer, or a generic promotional email, there are certain practices you can apply when crafting the perfect mailshot.
1. It all starts with a great headline
Make the purpose and benefit of your email clear in the subject line. Hopefully you are promoting something they are interested in, and if they don’t open it then at least you’ve been transparent. You don’t want to frustrate your audience with a misleading or vague headline that results in them getting annoyed when they find out you’re not actually promoting something they are interested in. It is important to write a headline in such a way that engages your audience. For example, “It’s Snack Time! Get 40% Off Snacks Now” or “Losing Motivation? 5 Tips for Staying Focused at the Gym.”
2. Avoid the fluff, get to the point.
If there is too much to read, the chances are that none of it will get read. It is important to make sure you get to the point of your email in the first paragraph. Inform readers exactly why you are emailing and the benefit of the aspect being mentioned in the first paragraph as well as the subject line. For example, if you’re promoting a new product or offer, make it clear from the beginning. If you’re promoting an area of expertise or sharing knowledge, make it obvious what you are talking about. Then, explain why this area is beneficial to your audience. For example, “Streamline your Marketing processes with our advanced new Marketing Automation System.”
3. Don’t be a robot
Don’t use language that your audience can’t relate to. Businesses are usually experts in their field, but your audience isn’t, so don’t expect them to understand all the lingo associated with your industry. Talk to them in a way that best reflects your brand personality and avoid being too robotic with your communication. Although you are representing a business, you are still a human talking to another human.
4. Be engaging
If your reader has opened the email and have read the first two lines, don’t lose their interest by not being engaging enough. If they have read the first two lines, then they are interested in what you have to say and what is on offer to purchase, much more so than whoever deleted the email without reading it. If you’re sending your audience an email promoting your thought leadership blog, ask them questions that will resonate with them such as, “Do your cleaning efforts go into hibernation over Winter? Read our top tips on how to keep your house clean this Winter.”
5. Provide value
It’s important that every email you send out provides value for your audience. They have to find the content useful in some way, whether you’re providing an offer, tips, or updating them on changes to your services. Using email as another way to say, “Look at our products” is not going to be valuable enough to your customers and they aren’t going to click through to your website.
To find out about our email services, give us a call on 01884 308091 or send an enquiry via our contact page.
If you have a website, you need to be aware of how to improve SEO across your site to avoid falling behind your competitors on search engine results pages (SERPs). The better your SEO relative to your competitors, the higher you will rank on search engines such as Google.
1. Optimise Your Content
Search engines are ever-improving how they filter out relevant information for users, ensuring that the top results are the most valuable. There are ways you can optimise your website and content to move higher up the rankings. Google has updated its algorithm to incorporate E-A-T guidelines when ranking results. The closer your website adheres to the E-A-T guidelines, the better your chances are of ranking higher.
E-A-T, which stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness, are each elements used to determine the quality of the website. It is important to optimise your content to share expertise about your industry. This can be done in the form of a blog or by frequently adding new information.
To build authority, it is useful to cite sources and research, helping you to remain transparent when providing information. Link building with reputable organisations is also a good way to build authority.
Trustworthiness can also be improved by creating content that has a purpose and is valuable to your audience. Share content that would be useful and interesting to them, not content that tries to fool algorithms. Another way to increase trustworthiness is to make your website safe and secure by including an SSL certificate on the site. The SSL certificate ensures that any personal and financial information is secure when using the website.
2. Ensure Your Mobile Site Is up to Scratch
Over the last couple of years, Google has placed much higher importance on the usability of mobile sites to inform webite ranking, due to an ever-growing number of people using mobile phones to research information. If you’re on your phone and want to find out information about a product or service, but the mobile website is impossible to navigate and you can’t find what you want, Google’s credibility decreases and has effectively failed to do its job. Google’s focus is to ensure that users can find the information they need quickly and efficiently, thus failing to optimise your mobile website will result in your website getting left behind in the ranking.
If your mobile site needs optimising, give us a call on 01884 308091 to find out how we can help.
3. Increase Security
Users get an alert when a website is not secure and will consequently go back to the results page and visit a website that is secure. Failing to secure your website will therefore result in higher bounce rates and lower rankings. Having poor security also puts your business’ private information at risk from hacking too. Maintaining an up-to-date SSL certificate is the best thing your business can do to increase security for you and your users, reducing bounce rates and improving rankings.
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
