Free corporate fax 2 email !!

IDS includes another great business tool to its range of communication products, its fax 2 email with a difference.

Should you need a single instant fax 2 email number one at a time click here, BUT to those whose needs are more, read on!!

Corporate FAX 2 EMAIL

IDS will set up an account and login facility for you,  contact us. From the admin area you can add departments and set up logins for each deparment to be run on a department basis so that each member has their own fax 2 email number which can be edited at any time.

• upload your employees in bulk via spreadsheet
• change/update email address as employees leave
• add new employees to departments as you grow
• forward faxes to other emails to cover for absence
• view/download reports of receipt
• change passwords
• Should an employee leave or be promoted, you have a choice of the fax 2 email number staying at the ‘desk’ or going with the employee.

A well structured fax 2 email system within a corporate/business environment linked to each member can only benefit your organisation and put you one foot ahead of the rest with direct client communication in place.

The cost is free to you and only a few cents more per fax for your clients to send information to you versus the conventional land line, but a huge saving in paper and the environment.

Business Forum

Our previous email stressed the importance of getting your business name and services out on the Internet, especially before the wave of new internet users in South Africa. We have seen a substantial increase in visitors to the IDS Business Forum.

The current stats. are 3200 visitors for the last rolling month, the projection is between 4000 and 5000 users visiting the IDS Forum site next month.

So why this email if there is such a huge increase in traffic?

There is a great opportunity here to introduce your company and create an interest in your business sector. Also you can to take a look around to see what the community can offer you via contacts, leads, ideas etc.

The IDS forum is part of the small picture, the big picture is whatever you say on the forum is picked up by the major search engines such as Google, so that when others anywhere in the world search for a service or product of yours or ask a question, you could have answered it already, and they might click on your link, email you .. and you could have a new customer or contact … there are many ways in which such a forum can benefit you.

For a few minutes invested, the returns can be huge, even if it is one ‘drop’ at a time .. soon it will form a trickle and then a river.

Shortcode Notification/Advertising

IDS Online via its sister company IDS SMS has been approached to offer a Shortcode facility.

We (IDS) purchase a short code, say 34123, and you in turn purchase one or more keywords and manage it via IDS SMS. When a potential client sees your advert on your shop window, vehicle, flyer, invoice etc … (eg: SMS REMAX to 34123) they can SMS your Keyword to the number 34123, and you will be notified immediately via email and or cell phone and you can call them back. This form of contacting business is catching on fast, dont be left behind.

Should the demand be big enough amongst the IDS clients we will go ahead with a Shortcode facility. The cost per keyword will be in the region of R1500 per year. Unfortunately the short code purchase is quite costly and we need quite a few keyword purchases to cover our expenses. We look forward to your feedback.

IDS Online, All South African Business Directory is now a completely FREE!

So what, you might say, its always been free?

Yes its been free for the business listing which only allowed very limited contact information, but now we have merged the Free listing with the Premium listing to arrive at the Free Premium Listing!

There are many more feaures for free like:

• Website
• Fax number
• Cell number
• Unlimited keywords
• Detailed information (can be html formatted)
• Images
• Contact Person
• Email address (not seen by members)
• Be contacted via an email form
• and of course much more …….

So why should I even bother with this directory you might say?

Many of your clients find you via our business directory using search engines, which in turn directs them to your listing page, an example of a listing page.

Here is a live scenario search: a client has just typed in on Google SA:
‘bossa nova durbanville’, why not do it and see what the result is or click this link and we will do it for you. The result is: this link, check it out. The result is a listing page from IDS at the top of the Google results. The result is a bit bland but it could get the required result, but now that you get it all for free, your link could look like this and you will definntely hold your clients attention.

Business Forum:

We are getting a large amount of overseas business searching IDS Business Directory, this we monitor on a day to day basis via our online support facility. So the more you are in their faces the better the chances of them seeing you and of course local business & public seeing you as well, depending on your market.

We recommend you get stuck into the Business forum, stake your claim to a piece of internet realty, and be seen, every link, every work linking back to your IDS listing or web site is another drop in the bucket, eventually it will fill up and even overflow… but its starts one drop at a time!

These business forums are very successful overseas, take a look at this big one in the UK, we need to see these tools, and start making use of them. Its free, so if you get one lead for 5 minutes work, its worth it.

So how does IDS Business Directory make a living?

We rely on advertising, this is mainly via Google, and as we grow and you see us as a value adding resource, we believe you will approach us even more to place adverts
online.

So what are our traffic stats like?

We enjoy between 200 and 400 unique visitors on our site per day, that converts to 5000 to 7000 people a month and 16 to 20 000 pages seen a month, for an all SA
business directory its not bad, and the traffic is constantly on the increase.

In this economic climate we need to think of new ways to make yourself visible, especially now when the new overseas optic cables will be commissioned soon and thousands more will be on the more affordable local internet … position yourself beforethe internet wave hits SA.

Website:  Grand Taps

Today we bring you a case study with an international flavour. It is an ecommerce site targeting the UK market. Their main product is household taps. They sell a variety of bathroom and kitchen taps to the UK and European markets.

We are going to show you how website design can affect bounce rate.
Bounce rates on the Home Page before the design changes:

• - Paid traffic: 49%
• - Non-paid traffic: 33%
• - Referral traffic: 50%
• - Overall: 46%

Bounce rates on the Home Page after the design changes:

• - Paid traffic: 13%
• - Non-paid traffic: 11%
• - Referral traffic: 29%
• - Overall: 14%

Below is a graph of the overall bounce rate. You can see a noticeable drop on the 24th February when the new design was implemented.

In the image below we have a before and an after image. The original design had a long list of every product offered shown on the home page. We changed this from products to categories. The photos were changed from a plain photo of the tap to one of the product being used in real life. The goal was to make the product more appealing to the visitor.

Why a low bounce rate is good?

1. 1) It is good for Google optimisation because Google compares websites within the same industry. So if website A has a lower bounce rate than website B, website A will have a better chance of achieving higher rankings than website B (however a low bounce rate alone will not get a website to #1 for a particular keyword/phrase, the bounce rate is just one of many factors influencing SEO).
2. 2) A website increases the chance of a conversion, be it an online sale or just an email.

All websites need to be managed and continuously tested to increase it’s chances of creating a sale, especially now in an economic downturn. There are many tools one can use, in this case study we only used two. They were Google Analytics and a Heatmap. Another very good tool is Google Website Optimizer.

If you have any questions regarding Conversion Marketing please drop the IDS team an email.

- Post brought to you in association with WebGrowth

We bring you our first case study of 2009, we uncover the processes needed to increase Organic traffic and conversion rates, which increase a website’s return on investment (ROI).Website: www.christiandating.co.za. The search engine optimisation and conversion marketing campaign ran for 6 months. When we first began the Pay per Click (PPC) campaign, it had a low Return On investment (ROI).

l        66% of the traffic with a bounce rate of 54%.

l        Direct traffic was 21%.

l        Organic traffic (achieving incoming links naturally) was only 7%.

The goal was to decrease Pay per Click (lower costs) and increase organic traffic, subsequently increasing the Return on Investment on the marketing budget.

How did we do this?  We focused on on-site optimisation and user experience.

On-site optimisation was all about:

l        Choosing the correct keywords in the title tag,

l        meta description and,

l        alt tags

They were inserted into the correct positions so as to get the correct keyword density, focusing on the highly competitive keywords but also not forgetting about the less competitive, long tail keywords.

We changed the domain name from www.bornagaindating.co.za to www.christiandating.co.za to target the appropriate keywords.  To pass on the link juice a 301 redirect was used for bornagaindating.co.za, which gave a slight boost in page strength to christiandating.co.za.  The 301 redirect forwarded both traffic and search  bots to christiandating.co.za.

The original design template was blue colour-based.  However, we made a bold move to a red template.  For an online dating website to become successful it needs to be filled with love so naturally we chose to use red, the colour of love.  The new warmer, less busy, slick lined template encouraged visitors to come back.

l        The percentage of new visitors to the site dropped from 65% to 26%.
This may be recognised as a poor ratio but in a niche market it showed that people now wanted to come back for a revisit.

l        Returning visitors grew from 35% to 74%.

l        The average time spent on website went from 6.5min to 10.1min.

l        The average amount of pages per visit went from 8.3 pages per visit to 13.2 pages per visit.

l        Organic traffic increased from 7% to 46%.

l        Pay per Click traffic decreased from 66% to 2%.

l        Direct traffic increased from 21% to 45%, which showed that people were remembering the URL and revisiting the website.

l        Overall bounce rate decreased from 42% to 11%.

l        Overall traffic decreased by 31%

With the bounce rate decreasing from 42% to 11% the traffic level was maintained, even though overall traffic decreased by 31%.  So, why are we happy with this decrease?  Despite the fact that there was a decrease in traffic, the quality of visitors increased. This can be seen with the overall page views, which increased by 9% despite the decrease in traffic.

In maintaining the traffic levels and decreasing the percentage of new visitors, as well as flipping the percentages around for Organic vs Pay per Click traffic, we have succeeded in increasing the Return on Investment for Christiandating’s online marketing campaign.  We have achieved a #1 in Google for “christian dating” searches.

We did this all without having a link building campaign but by relying instead on people wanting to link to you, this is Organic Linking.  In SEO there is much talk about having a link building campaign but if you focus more on on-site optimisation and user experience, Google will still reward you.

If you have any questions regarding how you can increase your website traffic and conversions please contact IDS.