The headline of this post grabbed our attention too, but it was found tucked away in the Mail On Sunday ‘Enterprise Zone’ edition (28/2/2010) at the foot of the page. OnlineXcellence were curious, would such an initiative bring the level of expectation that is being offered to business owners who are not yet online with a website?.

The people behind OnlineXcellence have been helping businesses launch websites since 1998. Over the years we have seen a number of funded campaigns launched to help the UK business owner be ‘trading online’. The headlines and marketing messages offered by such campaigns were all too familiar, ‘Be Online in 5 days’ or ‘Set up a Website in One Day’. It is known that in the past such schemes have been doomed to failure as successful websites need proper planning if they are to survive.

Get British Business Online was launched in April 2010 to help create an internet presence for 100,000 firms. It is a partnership between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, BT, the British Library Business and IP centre, Google and a number of support partners UK wide.

The Getting British Business Online initiative will allow firms that sign up to be given a free web site which will be registered in Google’s search engine. And here is the interesting part, a tool to help businesses create a website in 20 minutes.

Can this really be done? Without doubt if you have sufficient web design skills and have an idea about best practice website design you probalby can build a website in this time frame. But, what was important to us was how many novice business owners who never set out to build their own website, could do this task in 20 minutes and months later find out they had built a website that has not really worked for them.

BT offers free telephone support, but admittedly its limited support.

So, this was a reason OnlineXcellence became a support partner in Scotland for businesses who want to begin by having a GBBO website.

Our website training courses hand hold the business owner to achieve having a successful website, whether its a starter website offered via the GBBO scheme, or you want to create a more complex website.

OnlineXcellence training courses provide important advice and guidance through a number of workshops that starts by helping the business owner understand search engine marketing, best practice website design, and the best approach towards website marketing that includes Search Engine Optimisation, so you end up with a successful websites.

It is excellent that Google is involved, because when you build a website and launch it you do need to ensure that Google can start building relationships with your website domain name.

To get your FREE website Google provides a domain name address.

It would still be recommended once your website is built you go to Google and ‘ADD YOUR URL’.

The Getting British Business Online website has an area that provides details on other Google products.

An important product you need to put in place is a Google Account.

Once you have signed up to a Google Account you need to ‘import’ other important Google tools needed to support your website;s marketing strategy.

These tools contribute to ‘search engine optimise’ your website.

How much time do we need to train the people to use these tools effectively?

We have devised 8 training modules to assist businesses in Scotland who have either signed up to a GBBO website or already have another website platform type in place, and need to improve the websites performance.

We cover all sorts of topics in the marketing training courses from Search Engine Optimisation to where to host your website.

You would be amazed the amount of businesses who thought there website was hosted in the UK only to find there website was on a cheap hosting solution in Minnesota or some other off-shore location.

OnlineXcellence has carried out a number of website audits for businesses and we can include this when you attend an OnlineXcellence marketing training course. 

You can learn more about Google tools such as a tool that helps you do ‘Geo Specific Targeting’ with your website. We can teach you how effective this tool is.

In order to deliver our website marketing training courses hailed by business owners as excellent we regular attend the Search Engine Strategies Conferences the next being in London during Feb 21-25 2011, where all the industry thought leaders and real world practitioners in the world of search gather once a year.

Here we meet and exchange information with some of the best online marketing people in the world and bring this valuable marketing tips back to business owners in Scotland via our well attended courses.

Paypal are also participating in this ‘Getting British Business Online’ campaign. This means you can turn the free ’20 minute website’ on offer into an e-commerce website.

Be in no doubt that this ecommerce add-on comes with some limitations. You can learn from attending our workshops what these are and whether adding this ecommerce module will be right for your business.

If you need a  more complex website, we can introduce you to a number of website design companies in Scotland that build successful ecommerce websites

A website project cost can vary from, £2k to £12k to £24k or more.

We can guide you through this price minefield to ensure your budget meets its objective. Why this service is important? Well take a quote that crossed our desk recently indicating it would be around £92k for a website. That included the website platform and all associated marketing for this new website where the company’s brand was not yet known across the UK. Don’t fall into this trap, come and do our training courses.

The government backed GET BRITISH BUSINESS ONLINE initiative will deliver a series of activities run throughout the country by partners such as OnlineXcellence. These events will promote the benefits to business owners why they should have an online presence and why they should go a step further and gain further marketing skills and learn more about making use of Google products.

The presenters are knowledgeable at internet marketing and best practice website design.
At times well known search engine marketing professionals will come to Scotland and give incredible insight into website marketing.
Our workshop presenters have a track record of showing they have helped businesses to be profitable from either having a brochure website or an ecommerce website.

The OnlineXcellence program launched in Scotland helps small businesses be successful online with the aid of a website. The training program will help your business achieve putting place competent staff members to manage your website towards achieving ROI for the business.

Larger websites can take longer to plan, build and launch.

The OnlineXcellence program helps and trains either a new start business or one that is already established, with a website presence that not only provides a fit for purpose website platform being put in place, but more importantly providing the necessary skills to manage the website day in day out. This day to day website managing task is always seriously overlooked, and yet its the most important to both the website owner and the person who is given this very important task to do. That person is who we up skill and then becomes known as the website author or champion.

Having a website is one thing but understanding search marketing and knowing what to do in order for the website to achieve getting visitors and sales, well that is at the heart of having a successful online presence.

‘Getting British Business Online’ , aims to provide positive results and meet with business owners expectations. We hope the scheme is successful and that is why we have become a partner to help deliver  your business expectations.

GBBO is just about 1 year old. If you want to us to review your website, then get in contact with us through this website.

We would also welcome any comments about whether you think the GBBO scheme can or is working with you.

We would particularly like to hear from website owners who are actively in the thick of things trying to keep their website ahead of the competitor curve everyday.