Featured Doodlekit Website: Vernon Chalmers - Online Marketing and HR Development Western Cape Website Owner's Name: Vernon Chalmers How Old Is Your Website: Two years

Description of company / website:

The purpose of the Vernon Chalmers website is to provide clients, students and visitors access to various categories of business, marketing and product information in order to meet their specific requirements.

In doing so, the website aims to:

• Frequently update business, course and subject information
• Maintain professional content and communication standards
• Continuously upgrade to meet new information specifications
• Provide an affordable range of premium branded IT products

How having a website has affected your business/objectives:

During the 2008 academic year, the website became an extension of my lecturing and classroom activities. As an independent lecturer on various campuses, students could now register and download their class notes immediately before or after a presentation. Not having an office on any campus also improved online interaction and communication between lecturer and student.

The website provided me a tremendous opportunity to learn and understand the web 2.0 platform offered by Doodlekit.  Very quickly during 2008 I started offering Internet Marketing courses and consultations mainly due to the knowledge and skills I mastered working with my Doodlekit website.

My online income from offering private courses, consultations and various IT products increased with 80% from the 2008 to the 2009 financial year. This was mainly due to an effective deployment of Doodlekit’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO), quality onsite tools and generous online support from Doodlekit.

Lessons learned and advice to others about building and operating their own website:

The website became an extension of my business, persona and service delivery standards and therefore required mindfulness in all content, news and product updates. 

Know your target audience before attempting to communicate content and news to them. This will assist in information that is more relevant to increase return visitors and sales conversions.  

 Any website should be developed on traditional business and marketing principles. Set key targets and regularly track visitor behaviour to enable a good understanding of the pages they visit. This in turn will assist in tweaking content to be even more effective.    

 Very important is to register a website with your own domain name – I suggest that free plan users (on the Doodlekit platform as well) should at least take a Simple Plan to take advantage of the custom domain offer. Allow three to six months of active search engine indexing and SEO to gain substantial momentum with keywords, blog posts and general content searches.  

A successful website takes time to develop and your site’s Internet Marketing and SEO is forever a work in progress.

Regularly update your website with new content, news and relevant advertising is mandatory for SEO and keeping visitors interested in returning to your website.

Comments about Doodlekit:

From day one Doodlekit very quickly became an important stakeholder in not just offering a functional and professional website, but an exceptional hub of continuous online support. What a pleasure to work with Ben and Heath – always answering a query or offering effective advice on how to do various front or back-end tasks. I am indeed looking forward to another year with Doodekit.  Thank you.