Driving real results with a new and engaging website
When you’re operating in a competitive marketplace, it’s important that you make a good impression from the outset – unless it’s love at first click so to speak, the chances are you will miss out to your competition.
For businesses and services which people usually seek out online, it’s vital that your website ranks highly, looks great and engages potential customers straight away.
Homers Driving School contacted Cocoonfxmedia for our expert web design services because they were experiencing problems in all the above areas. Their issues included blacklisting by Google, an extremely high bounce rate and a lack of enquiries.
With our help, 94% of users are now actively engaged with Homers Driving School. Read on to find out how we did it.
Taking control of a poorly performing website
There’s no point spending hundreds of pounds on a website that just sits in the ether, not functioning for you and not generating leads.
This is often the case with websites built several years ago using outdated systems and SEO tactics which are now defunct. Google has become much more savvy in recent times and gone are the days where backlinks, keyword stuffing and microsites lead to improved Google ranking - and in fact these will now have the opposite effect.
When Homers Driving School came to us, they were facing a number of issues resulting from outdated techniques and processes.
These included:
- A main website built using BT website services
- More than eight microsites
- Blacklisted by Google for unnatural links and old black hat SEO
- An extremely high bounce rate
As a franchise, Homers Driving School needed to promote the instructors but was powerless while the blacklisting was in place.
Removing barriers to improved Google ranking
The first thing we did was to review and tackle the Google blacklisting. We also removed all of the microsites and focused instead on creating one all-encompassing, engaging website at Homers Driving School.
While microsites can be useful for specific promotions or affiliated companies, several sites created for the sole purpose of providing backlinks to the main site, or any other SEO purpose, is now frowned upon by Google.
We sat down with our client and spent time understanding the business and its aims, which was then mapped out into clear channels on the new central website.
Improving the user experience
On the few occasions potential customers did make it to the Homers Driving School site, they were quickly clicking away again, so we next set out to enhance the user experience from all angles.
This included:
- Introducing bright colours and clear navigation through the site
- Ensuring the website was mobile responsive
- Rebranding the company’s Facebook and Twitter profiles to ensure brand consistency across all channels
- Managing a successful launch of the new website
- Google Adwords Management to drive traffic to the website for key locations
- Content marketing, including rewriting much of the website’s content and devising a new content marketing strategy
- Managing a Facebook campaign to build up likes and drive traffic to the new website
- Introducing very clear ‘calls to action’
Enquiries have gone through the roof
As a result of the Cocoonfxmedia strategy, Homers Driving School now has a high performing website that is successfully generating new business. The company reports that enquiries have significantly increased and new instructors have been employed as a result.
The website now boasts an enviable bounce rate of between 5% and 6% per month, which means 95% of users are staying and engaging.
Homers Driving School has an improved Google ranking on all the target keywords and the Google Adwords management was switched off after two months due to a desired level of increased demand being hit.
If you need to stand out from the crowd, but feel your website is not really paying its way, get in touch today and let our experts look into it for you.
