2008 has been a fantastic year for The Franchise Shop and the year that The Franchise Shop started to gain ground in
the Internet search engines and an industry presence. Here are my top ten moments for us over
the year.
1. Taking on Marian as our full time web developer. Marian has been
invaluable to us and with him on board we have been able to constantly
expand and improve our site.
2. The launch of our Franchise Marketplace. With this new site area
we have leaped into the world of Web 2.0 and offer user based content
creation from all our clients. It takes a lot of effort writing new
site content and having the functionality for users to contribute
really drives our pages through the search engines and in turn traffic
through the site.
3. The launch of NetFrog. Although NetFrog is still in it's infancy it
has proved to be a great asset and fantastic platform for industry
discussion. With some great experts on board to answer franchise
related questions it can only grow and grow to become to UK's most
popular franchise forum, and soon it will be launched across the world!
4. Top 10 rankings for important key phrases. Having a great site is
useless unless you feature highly in the search engines and we now
feature in the top 10 and top 3 for virtually every single important
franchise key phrase, driving search engine traffic to our site from
not only the UK but from across the world.
5. The launch of our Franchise Information sections. We now have an
extensive base of articles and press releases and can accommodate user
based article submissions, further adding to our site content and
driving even more traffic to us from the search engines. Our Franchise
Information section has proved to be the single biggest website traffic
generator for the site.
6. Reaching the following levels of website visitors:
Hitting over 500 website visitors per day.
Hitting over 600 website visitors per day.
Hitting over 800 website visitors per day in November!
6.1. Reaching a global Alexa ranking of 200,000 and a UK ranking of 12,000. Meaning we are the most visited franchise site in the UK. Here is how we compare with our competitors. The following numbers are how we rank with all UK websites, example: We are th 12,916th most visited site in the UK.
- The Franchise Shop 12,916
- The UK Franchise Directory 16,622
- Franchise Direct 22,382
- Franchise Expo 76,901
- Select Your Franchise 90,811
- Franchise Sales 100,388
7. Launching Franchise Australia. Still in it's infancy we have just
launched Franchise Shop Australia and with the launch comes a new face,
Michael Tunstill. Michael is a great guy with plenty of web and
franchise experience and will be managed all our Australian clients.
Since the launch we have been inundated with enquiries and are looking
forward to getting all those franchisors who have enquiries up and
running in January 2009.
8. Reaching 50 clients, reaching 100 clients, reaching 150 clients,
reaching 180 clients! With more to come in 2009 we hope to have one of
the largest lists of franchises for sale in the UK. After all, we are
a franchise directory and we hope to become comprehensive. :-)
9. New partnership with franchise-net.com. 2008 ended with a bang with
us forging a new partnership with Europe's largest franchise network,
franchise-net. This partnership gives us a lot to look forward too in
2009 and we are looking forward to really making them welcome and
having a mutually beneficial relationshiop.
10. All the partnerships and great people we have come to know this
year. Including:
Sarah from Coconut Creatives, Fiona from ARC Media, John from ORCA, Jeremy and Andy franchise consultants, Joel the Franchise King! Alex & Detlaf from franchise-net, Michael from Every Franchise, Dugan from Franchise Recruitment Services and last but not least, all our clients whom we have begun to know on first name terms. Thanks to all of you and all the best for 2009! :)