A painless makeover for outgrown websites

The last time you worked on – or had someone else work on – your website, you were probably thrilled for ages afterwards, and kept reloading it just to see how amazing it looked.

So fresh, well-designed, user-friendly and up to date.

What about now though? Do you fire up your homepage with the same small flutter of anticipation, or with a faint but perceptible heart-sink?

Don’t despair. This happens to the loveliest websites and the most conscientious business-owners. It’s just the way of the world: technology changes, the market changes and your customers change, but Unlocking Potential’s Digital Basecamp is here to help. It’s a fully-funded Digital Marketing series for businesses in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, so it’s free to you and runs for four sessions, two Tuesdays and two Thursdays from the 11^th to the 20^th of October.

There are plenty of reasons why it might be high time you took a long hard look at your website: what it’s for, what it can do, who it reaches and the insights it gives you. will help you ask the right questions and deal with the answers arising.

Perhaps, like a living-room you lovingly painted in on-trend colours five years ago, it’s starting to look a little tired. Maybe you feel you’ve outgrown (for example) Etsy or Amazon, and now want to sell direct. What about the customers-in-waiting: unreached as yet, but about to find you? And when they do all flock to your site, will they like what they find, and will your site manage to handle the numbers?

Much as we all wish this stuff would kind of just magically happen, it’s only by thinking hard, planning, talking to friendly experts and equipping yourself with the right tools that you’ll make that difference. Over these four sessions, that’s what’ll happen.

Google, search engines and digital design

The first one focuses on your website’s effectiveness and whether it’s making a success of getting found by the right customers. Business Development Manager (BDM) Sarah O’Dwyer not only has bags of experience with UP, but has also acquired many years of expertise in digital marketing; she will cover how search engines really work, why Google is king, and the importance of designing for various digital devices.

Find customers online & online behaviour

The second session’s focus will be less on you and more on your customers. Jaye Cowle, from multi-award-winning paid media agency Launch, will help you work out how to find them, how they can find you, and explain the concept of the ‘messy middle’ of the customer journey, to help you understand online buying behaviour.

UX & brilliant web design

Our third session will be delivered by Sara Pugh, expert in UX (user experience) and owner of one of Cornwall’s most successful marketing and design agencies, EightWire. If actually encouraging visitors to find your site is one challenge, another is the business of what they actually do once they get there. Sara will focus on how the best web design makes for a meaningful online experience, how to keep customers engaged, and the value of long-term conversations and investing in relationships. If you’re thinking of talking to a web developer about your site, this session will help inform that brief.

Helpful data and Google Analytics 4

In the fourth and final session, Sarah O’Dwyer’s back, with fellow BDM Graham Buckley, to talk all things data (no groaning at the back, please). GA4 is the newest version of Google Analytics; Sarah and Graham will show you how the information it yields helps measure a website’s performance and makes informed decisions possible to plan future campaigns. You can read about GA4 in more detail . This session ends with an Ask The Experts Q&A, time to complete an action plan, as well as an understanding of the skills needed to deliver it and a steer on how to get extra help you might need.

Participants of previous such events have spoken very positively about the experience, specifically: the usefulness of input not just from BDMs but from other businesses in different sectors, the value of extra insight which informs marketing strategy and budgeting and (practically) how the timing of the sessions means they don’t get in the way of actually running your business, but are frequent enough to mean that you’ve never forgotten content from the last one.

There might be any number of reasons why you can’t put off any longer a really good look at your website and everything your business does online. At UP, delivering programmes is what we do and have done for over 20 years, so these sessions are dynamic, fast-paced and practical, and will give you tangible ways to make a measurable difference to your website’s performance.

If this sounds like the kind of job you need to be getting on with, why not take the plunge now, and get on with it with us? Book your space: