The Latest News from Warrington School of Management

In this issue:  Students visit Everton FC | A final year student says | Work placements | Business speakers Email not displaying correctly? View in your browser Business Management Newsletter - February 2014 Thank you for your interest in Business Management at the University of Chester. Whilst you are considering your options we aim to give you a flavour of our programme and the approach that we, the teaching team, take in guiding and supporting students through the process of becoming successful graduates. We have some interesting stories and snippets below to start the journey. Don’t forget that you can visit us to find out more at one of our forthcoming Applicant Days. Book your place now Students enjoy a Premier start to Warrington stay Business Management students recently visited Everton Football Club to experience first-hand the importance of connecting business theory and business practice and how this is applied in a dynamic, exciting environment. Read more A Final Year Student Says... "The Business tutors are second to none. They make sure you know exactly what is expected and help you every step of the way.   "Doing a Business Management course at the University of Chester has really opened my eyes to the amount of possibilities there are when I graduate."   Kayleigh Miller Employers meet undergraduates and get involved in classes... Business lecturers have been collaborating with the Department of Careers and Employability to bring in external speakers from industry to provide a ‘real-life’ perspective to curriculum delivery.  Hearing from employers gives students the chance to enhance their commercial awareness by gaining a ‘real-world’ view of their subject and an understanding of the challenges faced and the strategies used within the workplace. Hearing from a range of companies can also help broaden students’ awareness of career options after they graduate. Catherine Rawcliffe, Talent Acquisition Specialist at Enterprise Rent-A-Car tells us: "It is important for students to network and learn best practice from the world of work. Enterprise Rent-A-Car spend a lot of time with students at the University's Chester and Warrington Campuses. Across the academic year we have helped students develop employability skills and commercial awareness, which is invaluable to the students and helps them prepare skills needed for their career search and future career development. Enterprise Rent-A-Car have enjoyed building relationships with both students and staff. It is a great opportunity for us to spot talent, keep the talent pipeline open and, in turn, select the best people for our Management Trainee roles." Work Based Learning All students have a work placement as an integral part of their programme of study. Nauman Wasif, tells us: "I had a great time working with Oxfam for my Work Based Learning, and not only did I get an opportunity to observe management in practice, but I also came out with influential contacts and priceless learning experiences. It's a great opportunity for students to network with prospective employers and share experiences with people who've been in the industry for a long time whilst establishing long term relationships." Read More about Work Based Learning Applicant Days Book your place for one of our Applicant Days now and see for yourself what makes Chester so unique. Book Now Follow the Warrington School of Management Facebook Twitter Blog Website Follow the University of Chester Facebook Twitter Website Get in Touch: Course Enquiries: Andrea Harper 01925 534325 a.harper@chester.ac.uk General Enquiries: 01244 512800 visitus@chester.ac.uk If you no longer want to receive emails from us you can unsubscribe.

5 Ways to Increase your Website Conversion Rates: Part Five

In the final part of our Digital Marketing series, Senior Lecturer Tanya Hemphill identifies the best tools and resources to help you monitor and evaluate your website's performance.

Test, test and test again

Every website is different and to find the most effective approach, tools such as Google Analytics and Crazy Egg (eye tracking/ heat maps) are needed to identify the most important parts of the site and then A/B testing should be used to identify what layout and content generates the most conversions.

A/B testing is when two versions of the same page are designed and 50% of visitors are taken to one page, with the other half visiting the other. Conversion rates can then be analysed to find out which page generates the best conversion. This can be done with the help of Google Analytics Content Experience API (see http:/
analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/helpingto-create-better-websites.html).

Further Reading: http://econsultancy.com/blog/10922- eight-user-testing-case-studies-that-achieved-amazing-results

Eisenberg, B., Quarto-vonTivadar, J. and Davis, L., 2008. A/B Always Be Testing. Wiley.

Goward, C., 2012. You Should Test That: Conversion Optimization for More Leads,
Sales and Profit or The Art and Science of Optimized Marketing.

This series has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Marketing and Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).

@DigitalTanya 

@WSofManagement

STOP PRESS:

The Warrington School of Management is launching an exciting new business service that will include networking events and ‘Master Classes’ to help small and medium sized businesses grow. If you are interested in registering for more information, please send your details to Beth Morris at b.morris@chester.ac.uk

5 Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rates: Part Four

Businesses spend a lot of money setting up their website and driving traffic to it. However, converting visitors into customers is an important part of a digital marketing strategy that often gets forgotten.  Day four of our five part series explores the power of online reviews and testimonials.

Using Psychology for Persuasion

Ratings, reviews and testimonials are not just acquisition tools - they also help increase conversion rates; research from Bazaar Voice showed that for one of its clients the use of reviews achieved 60% higher conversion and 82% more page views per visitor.

This type of content is powerful because of social validation - according Susan Weinschenk (see recommend books) products with recommendations generate 20% more sales than items without them. This tool not only helps with the buying decision-making process but can also help with Google pay-per-click advertising
conversion rates. Research by Google Inside Adwords in 2011, showed that adverts with ‘seller ratings’ get a 17% higher click through rate (CTR) than the same adverts without ratings. However, a website needs at
least 30 reviews from the last 12 months to add Seller Ratings (see Trustpilot.co.uk).

Further Reading:
Weinschenk, S. M.,2009. Neuro Web Design: What Makes them Click?
Nahai, N., 2012. Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Marketing and Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).

 @DigitalTanya 

@WSofManagement

STOP PRESS:

The Warrington School of Management is launching an exciting new business service that will include networking events and ‘Master Classes’ to help small and medium sized businesses grow. If you are interested in registering for more information, please send your details to Beth Morris at b.morris@chester.ac.uk

5 Ways to Increase Your Website Conversion Rates: Part Three

Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, Tanya Hemphill outlines the benefits of maintaining regular email contact with your customers and the time-saving tools that will help you achieve this.

Nurture your leads via email

Many businesses take a lot of time and effort to build a database of email addresses but once they have it, it’s often under-utilised. According to the digital marketing advice website Smart Insights, 72% of companies rate email as ‘excellent’ in terms of ROI.

There are a lot of inexpensive and easy to use email systems such as www.constantcontact.com/uk and www.mailchimp.com. A more recent development that offers exciting potential for businesses is the growing number of marketing automation systems available. As a former business-owner myself, I know that one of the biggest issues that stops a company from growing (via marketing lead-generation) is time. Most business owners know what they should be doing but never seem to have the time to do it.

A marketing automation system will send emails ‘triggered’ by a certain action and, if an email hasn’t been opened within a certain period, it will automatically send another with a different subject line. Emails can also be set up to go out at key buying periods, etc. This is ideal for businesses with a product that is usually used within a particular period of time, so that you can remind customers that their product needs replacing soon (and offer them a discount for buying it within a certain time-frame). The possibilities are endless - some systems even link to a customers’ / potential customers’ social media account!

Although time is needed at the beginning to set everything up (i.e. mapping customer journeys/ touch points and compiling emails with the right messages for each stage), the medium to long term benefits of having regular email communications running, however busy you are, are clear.

Critical success factors for this type of conversion tool are: having enough opt-in email addresses to start with, making sure customer journeys are carefully mapped, finding the right software provider with a scalable system and allocating a long-term budget to this tool. Recommended providers include: Act-On, Hubspot, Pardot, Marketo and Eloqua.

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Marketing and Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).

@DigitalTanya 

@WSofManagement

STOP PRESS:

The Warrington School of Management is launching an exciting new business service that will include networking events and ‘Master Classes’ to help small and medium sized businesses grow. If you are interested in registering for more information, please send your details to Beth Morris at b.morris@chester.ac.uk

5 Ways to Increase your Website Conversion Rates: Part Two

Businesses spend a lot of money setting up their website and driving traffic to it. However, converting visitors into customers is an important part of a digital marketing strategy that often gets forgotten.  In day two of our five day series Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing, Tanya Hemphill discusses how to optimise your website to suit your potential customers' browsing behaviour.

Make your website 'mobile friendly'

More people are now browsing on mobile devices such as mobile phones and iPads, instead of using traditional desktop computers. The majority of websites have not been mobile optimised, which means

that navigating around a site on a mobile device is difficult and some content /design disappears from the screen. Even large brands fall into this trap.

To check how your website appears on different screen resolutions, I highly recommend the free testing tool at http://mattkersley.com/responsive. Before you think about allocating budget either to change your website into one with a responsive design (i.e. it adapts to the device you are viewing it on) or to create a separate mobile site, it’s important to check what your ‘actual’visitors are using. 

This is where the free software tool Google Analytics (www.google.com/analytics) can help - it will tell you what devices your visitors are using to access your website. I’ve found that most consumer orientated

sites generally have a 50/50 spilt between mobile and desktop devices. Recent research suggests that brands can increase their mobile conversion rate by 19%-100% with responsive design.

It can therefore be argued that the ROI against the cost of implementation is potentially high. If you do have a mobile optimised website, think about using ‘click-to-call’ buttons instead of asking visitors to complete data fields for email addresses, etc. which can be ‘fiddly’ on a small hand-held device. Try to make the user experience as simple and easy as possible.

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Marketing and Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).
@DigitalTanya 
@WSofManagement

STOP PRESS:

The Warrington School of Management is launching an exciting new business service that will include networking events and ‘Master Classes’ to help small and medium sized businesses grow. If you are interested in registering for more information, please send your details to Beth Morris at b.morris@chester.ac.uk