slimbodyline.co.uk are a small beauty clinic based just off Oxford St in London. In just over 12-months I have turned their outdated and truly under performing website into a highly profitable lead and customer generating channel that has attracted over 60,000 page views and over 500 new customers.
In this article I will share some of the secrets to their website success and hopefully give you some ideas for your own.
1. Market Research – The key to any website is to fully understand your market and the markets you wish to compete in. For Slim Bodyline Clinic they provide a full range of beauty treatments, however the most profitable treatments involve slimming (body wraps etc). We decided early on, that slimming treatments were absolute priority, especially when it came to content and keyword targeting. In the past month alone nearly 500 different keywords and phrases that rank in positions 1-10 on Google have brought high value traffic to the website. The most popular pages are those involving slimming treatments.
In fact, the slimming pages get nearly three times the combine traffic than home page. This is a lesson to all beauty salon website owners – remember that visitors enter your website via different pages (and most do not come via the home page, nor pass this page). This means that you need to ensure that you have strong and relevant call to action statements on each page. More on call to action below.
2. Content – Most beauty websites really miss a trick when it comes to content. Google is simply a library, and the more pages (content) that we can get listed in their index, the greater chances of attracting potential customers to the website. With this in mind we avoided the pitfalls of listing most treatments on a single page, and we developed lots of pages for each treatment with good content. Where appropriate we created hubpages and then individual treatments pages off these. We then ensured that each treatment page linked back to the hub with a variety of anchor text phrases. Internal linking is very important when it comes to Google. Read more about internal linking for SEO success.
3. Unique page titles, meta descriptions and on-page content – every individual treatment page we created has unique page titles, descriptions and on-page content. This was vitally important, because if you want Google to list all your pages in its index, then each page must have this uniqueness. These are basic SEO on page elements that every individual who writes content for a beauty website should know about. Do not simply cut and paste manufacturers literature onto your website, this will not get your page in the Google index. Also, by having unique page titles, this avoid keyword cannibalisation (this is where two or more pages try and compete for the same keyword or phrase and Google decides which one to list in it’s index).
4. Keyword Targeting – Creating content is all well and good, but if you develop pages that feature keywords or phrases that no-body searches for, then the pages are useless. We made sure that every treatment page featured high quality words and phrases in the titles, descriptions and within the main content. For example, the Slimming Hubpage targets the phrase “Slimming Treatments London” which currently ranks in position 1 on Google.
Keyword rankings for ‘Slimming Treatments London’
Some other keywords that bring large volumes of traffic include:
- Slimming body wraps London
- Body wraps London
- Endermologie London
- Thermojet body wrap
- Eyebrow shaping London
5. Call to Action – With traffic coming to the website, it was now our responsibility to begin to capture visitor data for ongoing remarketing purposes. On the website we featured a “£10 off when you spend £60 or more” call to action statement. This offer was specifically reaching out to visitors interested in slimming treatments because most cost £60 or more. To date (Oct 2014) 371 customers have enrolled on this offer, generating over £20,000 just from this offer alone. It’s important to also remember, that these are 371 customers who came to the website from search engines and would never have heard about the business if it wasn’t for a highly visible website on Google.
6. The website is mobile and tablet responsive – 80 out of every 100 visitors to the Slim Bodyline website comes via mobile and tablet devices. Needless to say, their website is responsive and adapts accordingly. Is your website mobile and tablet responsive?
There are several reasons why your website should be responsive. Firstly, if consumers are using these devices to reach beauty websites, then our priority is to ensure that the content is in a user friendly format. Secondly, Google dislikes websites that are unresponsive, so if you want your website to be profitable it needs to be as visible as possible in Google. Websites that are unresponsive are less likely to be included in search results on mobile and tablet devices.
7. Online Booking – visitors come to the website for 3 purposes. 1. to raise their awareness 2. to help them consider which treatment is best 3. to book an appointment. There is very little point in having a website if you are not going to let customers buy from you online. Customers who use the internet are less likely to want to make a phone call. It absolutely amazes me how many beauty salon websites require a phone call to the salon in order to make a booking. Your website needs to allow online bookings, even if it’s just a form that they complete requesting an appointment and a call back.
8. Easily accessible contact and social icons. You only have to take a look at the mobile version above to see that the contact icons and social icons are very easily accessible. We are able to track click throughs, so we know that these icons have played a significant role in helping people contact the clinic. Email in particular is very popular. What I have found having looked at the best part of over 1000 beauty websites, is how few of them cater for email. I’m sure spam has played a part in deactivating such functionality, but the truth of the matter is, if you don’t make it easy for people to email you, then don’t expect those same individuals to become your customers. Less than 2 out of 10 visitors to your website will make a transaction in the first instance. They want information, and that often comes by asking questions via email.
By means this is not an exhaustive list of reasons why the website has attracted over 60,000 visitors. But the above have certainly played a major part in the website success. If you want to learn how your website can improve, why not request your free Inbound Marketing Report.
So how much do you think Slim Bodyline paid for our services? If I was to say this was all done for £500 would that be a surprise? Because I work alone and I don’t have lavish offices and staff to pay, I am able to offer my inbound marketing services at a fraction of the cost of any other inbound marketing agency in Birmingham.
What you should do now
If you are serious about having a great website, you should read my blog, it’s packed with ideas and suggestions to help improve your site.
If you’d like me to dramatically improve your website and bring you new customers, visit my website designs for small businesses in Birmingham and then contact me for more information.
And if you have any comments or questions about this article, contact me.
