These five web design tips tweets were aimed at helping website owners and website designers make the most out of their contact forms, so this is a shorter web design blog article but all regarding powering up your contact forms specifically.

Holding Personal Data? You Need a Website Privacy Policy

Web Design Tip 29: If you are going to ask for personal information via a sign up or contact form, then you need a privacy policy

Since I’m a web developer in Staffordshire and not a legal expert I can’t advise on the specifics of a website privacy policy. I can tell you that there are widely available boilerplate website privacy policy documents where you can ‘fill in the blanks’. We have one that is licensed to Rake Mark and for our clients and this is included in our legal document package in our web design packages.

Of course you could just find a website with a privacy policy and substitute pertinent information with your company details. The Google website privacy policy used to be very popular for this, I don’t know if it still is.

Required Fields Can Do More Harm Than Good

Web Design Tip 30: Keep contact and sign-up forms simple with the information you need. The same goes for required fields, try not to insist

Web Design Tip 31: On contact forms, required fields can annoy your website visitors. If you don’t absolutely need their phone number, ask but don’t insist

Required fields are the fields on a form that the website designer says you have to fill in and can be one of the most annoying things about contact forms. If you want a quick answer to a question about rabbit food then do you really need my address? Of course not. So if you would like the address then ask for it but don’t require that field on a contact form.

Your contact forms require a way for you to get in touch with the person asking the question (email usually but a phone number will also serve) and then the enquiry itself. That’s all. End of. A name is nice, but not needed, its not required.

Lots of required fields will increase your ‘abandon rate’ on forms, website visitors just won’t fill them in, they’ll leave your web page or website instead.

Website Form Validation: Handle with Care

Web Design Tip 32: Another contact forms tip, keep validation to a minimum. Not everyone will agree that a postcode has to have your exact format

Web Design Tip 33: Another contact forms tip, keep validation to a minimum. Some people want to put in brackets & spaces when entering their phone number

Web Form validation is using computerised rules to make sure that the information that a web visitor enters makes sense. So your web designer might say that the phone number box can only be filled with numbers or that a postcode box should be filled in a set format.

The issue with this can be that your visitors might not take the same view as you regarding a phone number only being numbers. I always enter my phone number with gaps, so the number for the web design staffordshire offices would be 01785 256 222. This isn’t just numbers (it has space characters in it) and would be rejected. The same would be true if I bracketed the area code.

Website Contact Forms: The Golden Rule is Keep It Simple

It is essential that you keep any web forms on your website as simple a possible. You want your visitors to fill these in to sign up to newsletters, to ask you questions and to engage. Requiring extra information and making them difficult to fill in with unnecessary validation will turn your web visitors off and send them running into the arms of your competitors.

Keep up to date with the Web Design Staffordshire team by following the Rake Mark Twitter Feed.

The design at the time was said to be “more nicely designed” and included the tile affect that was thought to make organization, archive and keeping up-to-date with friend recent activity even easier. Released at the same time was the “Cover” which in brief is the Large Image that you are given the opportunity to upload that is designed the assist in the individuality profile that Zuckerberg seems to be striving for.

Since then there has been much talk of likes, dislikes and quite a bit of reluctance to switch over so much so that I still know a few (and I mean 2 or 3 that’s all that is left) that have not been forced to the “Timeline Side”

Talking to our clients and friends we have found that some just simply don’t like change (what was wrong with the way it was before), some worry about the security and the mandatory, automatic ‘opt-in’ feature that the new Facebook Website Timeline has and some  don’t like the “re-jigging” and left/right column switches that goes on.

According to a Mashable survey done at the beginning of 2012 “79% of more than 1,500 voters wish that Facebook Timeline were optional.”

We think that this figure has most likely altered over the last few months, so we have decided to do our own survey and actually see what you guys think now.

We have popped a Facebook Poll up, go vote and let us know what you think, we’d love to know.

The tips are designed to provide a quick win for the website owner who can apply the principle in the tweet simply and in short measure. The follow up blog post or ‘wash-up’ as they are becoming known is designed to flesh out any information that was difficult to put into the 140 character twitter limit.

One final twist in the web design tips series is that I am trying to group tweets together into relevant web design groups so that readers get a number of web design tweets on managing content or using visual clues as a group, and then the washup will discuss that group of tweets.

This means that the number of web design tweets in each article won’t be the same for each one. Previously I had imagined that I would add the tweets into web design ‘wash-up’ articles in groups of ten, but this seems unnecessary. This article contains web design tweets 21 to 28

Tweets on Managing and Updating Content on your Website

Web Design Tip 21: Will you need to update your pages in the future? If you will find out the cost of this with your designer before you start your project.

Web Design Tip 22: If you need to update your own web pages regularly then a Content Managed Website will allow you to do this yourself

Web design Tip 23: Do you need to add new pages to your website? Again, there is a cost to this, so find out before you start off

Web Design Tip 24: Some content managed sites allow adding pages.

Most websites grow over time. Your users will expect to see new content, perhaps blog articles or news stories. You may find your product range changes or grows. So decide with your web designer in the early stages of your web design project how you will add new pages and what the cost for this will be.

If you want to add lots of new pages for blog or news articles then you will probably need to add these yourself. Discuss different blogging software, ask for a demo and make sure you are happy using it.

Selecting Your Content Management System

Web Design Tip 25: Some Content Managed Websites (CMS) are easy to use. Some, not so much. Check you are happy using yours before you start the project.

Web Design Tip 26: Unsure about how easy your CMS website will be to use? Ask for a demo of the web design package before you start

There are so many content management systems on the market that it can be difficult to know which one to use. Some web designers only like to support their favourite CMS and not any others. The issue for you might be that the CMS they want you to use is great for web designers but overly complicated for you to use.

If you need to add or edit pages regularly then make sure that you can both do this in a cost effective way and on a simple content managed system that you can use easily.

Getting Your Web Content Where it will be Noticed

Web Design Tip 27: Important information needs to be ‘above the fold’ This is the area of the screen that you see without scrolling

re: Web Design Tip 27, ‘the fold’ is a newspaper term. Imagine your newspaper on your lap folded halfway. The top half is above the fold

re: re: Web Design Tip 27. In the newspaper, advertising ‘above the fold’ is more expensive than that below the fold because it is more prominent.

Web Design Tip 28: Information ‘above the fold’ on your monitor may be different to that of others. Check your website in resolution 1024×768

When a web page loads the area that is first displayed is known in marketing circles as the area that is ‘above the fold’. This information is viewed by the user without any further interaction by them and therefore the area information ‘above the fold’ is the most viewed area of a web page.

It naturally follows then that the area ‘above the fold’ should contain the most important information on the page. Don’t waste this valuable web real estate, make sure that the key benefits are there with a call to action for the user, don’t make them scroll down to find out why they should be contacting you or buying your products.

Follow the Web Design Tips Series

The Rake Mark web design tips series continues on the Rake Mark twitter feed. Follow Rake Mark and join the thousand odd others who get their web design tips daily at 10am. Our follower numbers are growing all the time, thanks to those who follow.

You can also find out more about the Rake Mark’s new Email Marketing product by following the Rake Mail twitter feed…

Right to start with every Facebook business page needs to be set up from a personal/individual account. Now this doesn’t have to be the account you post all you family pics too, if you already have an account that is, in fact we would recommend that it isn’t (remembering to keep private and business very separate) so set up an account using a different email address and password and use this as “the Business Facebook Account”. Go to www facebook.com and set up a new account.

Ok, so you have your new/separate account set up and you’re logged in. Go to the very bottom of the page and you will see along the base of the page a link that says “Create a Page”, click on the link and follow the wizard answering all the relevant questions (remembering to use your business details).
For now it’s probably best if you ‘skip’ adding details when prompted (we will do that later).

Adding a Profile Picture

Upload and Good Quality (not blurred) image that is easily recognisable in a few seconds. It should remain constant throughout you Social Media activity, Blogging, twitter etc. maybe a slight variant on your original logo if required or maybe your main logo but be consistent. The size should be approx. 200 x 185 pixels – the visible area is 176px wide so make sure you leave reasonable border around your image.

Adding a Cover Picture

The cover picture should be 815 x 315 pixels in size and should take into consideration the bottom left corner being the placement of your Facebook Profile picture (this sits on top of you cover picture) Don’t make it anything too busy, but memorable and informative with reassurance that your visitor has come to the correct page.

Add General Profile information

The more information that you can provide for your followers the better, Hover over the section that you wish to update and an “Edit” box will appear. Update your company information and times and then it just a matter of adding updates, photos, posts and of course now you have put so much effort into setting it up promoting your Facebook page to ensure you get plenty of “likes” and good feedback.

Good Luck and Happy Facebook-ing ….  Oh and don’t forget to pop along to Rake Mark’s Web Design Facebook page and click ”Like”

This blog is sort of a ‘Matters Arising’ from that news article being posted.

I recieved a message via the Rake Mark site that claimed to be from the man in the article, Stuart Howe. It said he was unhappy with the article due to “massive inaccuracies” and also said we would be hearing from his solicitor. So for the record let’s be clear on who Stuart Howe is and what he is reported to have done.

He is reported by a number of sources to be web designer who was convicted under the computer misuse act. According to these reports he resigned from his job and then after resigning, he used passwords he obtained during his work to alter and delete material for a sofa website his ex firm, Precision Print, was responsible for. They [Precision Print] also found that he’d altered Precision Print’s website as well.

One of the articles I read said,

“When police interviewed Howe he admitted six offences under the Computer Misuse Act saying he was ‘probably disgruntled’.

The reason this is known and not presumed or alleged is because this is reported from a court case at Swansea Crown Court and it is reported that Stuart Howe pleaded guilty. It seems that these articles are reporting facts in evidence.

So first up, the original article is edited and back up.

Second thing, I did want to explore what would happen to our Rake Mark Web Design customers if someone decided to be really spiteful and abuse our trust and attack one of our sites.

When I first read the article I wondered if this could happen at Rake Mark Web Design. We put a huge amount of trust into certain individuals and if one of them got the grumps at some slight, real or imagined, what kind of damage could they do?

We examined our security policy, process and procedures and found that there really wasn’t that much that an employee could do. Outside hackers can bring down Home Office and other government sites and if they are that determined then you have to accept that they could probably bring down your website too. But that is a highly skilled and highly motivated outside hacker, not a disgruntled employee.

According to the reports I read, Stuart Howe used passwords he was given when in the employ of Precision Print and then used those passwords to ‘attack’ the sites in question.

At Rake Mark web design we change passwords regularly and always when someone leaves (well, actually as soon as they give their notice). Further, passwords used during the development of a website are always different to the passwords used when the website is passed to the customer. Another good, sensible layer of security.

So Rake Mark have good processes in place for keeping important information secure and keeping customer property that we are entrusted with safe. But, what if there was a lapse and someone suddenly had the ability to delete an entire site and its database. You have to have a contingency and like all good professional web design companies, Rake Mark has such a contingency in place.

If an ex or existing employee managed to completely delete a website then we would use the daily backups of that site to simply restore it.

Changes made during that day would unfortunately be lost, but the site as a whole would be back up and running shortly after finding out about the loss and any work that had been completed during that day would have could be re-completed, but one days work is the absolutely the most that could be lost.

Its a simple process that is common in most professional IT firms that you take regular backups of files and data that you hold. Because of what we do we keep the developers who have access to passwords and the server techs separate, this protects the backup from the person who might want to delete or damage a site.

If you have concerns about your website’s security and would like Rake Mark web design to help you, contact us for a free, confidential and no obligation discussion.

All the best everyone,
Phil

Integrating your Social Media Skills into Business

First things First – As a business owner your current knowledge of blogging and user driven content is a solid place to start, but remember, the perhaps slightly flippant comment made on your mate’s wall after a few in the pub is NOT the content you want potential clients reading about the following Monday morning so keep personal and business in two completely different camps.

A few Practical Pointers

Start Small

Choose a single platform (Facebook, twitter or perhaps a blog) to start with and build a solid content level and reputation up with that first,  having several  “Non-Active” platforms is worse than having nothing at all.

Make your content worthy

Don’t waffle; make your updates and posts mean something to your followers/readers. That might be industry specific information or maybe a company update or even an offer that you are running but make it so it catches the eye and even if it not exactly what they are after makes them take a look anyway. Waffle content is out, they will drop you like a hot potato if you fill their wall or feed with “how you have bought a new kettle for the office”.

Interesting, Eye Catching, an Offer they just can’t refuse.

Keeping things regular

Once a month is pointless! Depending on which platform you have gone for kind of dictates the pace a bit.

Tweets are very limiting in character space so you should be looking to tweet at least once a day with maybe a few links of interest to keep things interesting.

Blog or News Articles once or twice a week with a min of 400-500 words if the topic warrants it but keep it regular and don’t forget your keywords.

Facebook, ideally you should be looking to drop in a status update about three times a week with offers, polls and images (perhaps new products or show cases). I wrote an article in 2010 on how status updates benefit a small business.

Hopefully that is enough to get you started on the road to what could be your best business marketing strategy yet.

Keep you eyes peeled as I shall be putting another article up on Social Media soon.

If you have been following the web design tips series either on our twitter feed or via the Rake Mark Blog then you will have found that

 Web Design Tip 11: Use a ‘Call to Action’ to make sure you actually ask for the business. Examples, ‘Call today for your free quote’

A simple web marketing tip that is important in all the marketing that you do. Your call to action, which could be as blatant as ‘call now for your free sample’, should be prominent on the page.

Web Design Tip 12: Use Signposts to direct your visitors quickly to the area of your site that interests them

When your website visitors land on your homepage they will often be there for a specific reason but may find that they can’t see where the information that they want is. This can be frustrating for your web site visitors but using a visual clue, like either an image or a large piece of text, which then links to the information they need, can be really powerful.

I’ve been talking about the power of web site signposts used in your web design for a while, a really good introduction is on the Rake Mark web design blog.

Web Design Tip 13: Weirdly, I’m a geek and I believe in science but I’m too superstitious to even think about putting a tip for 13.

‘Nuff Said!

Web Design Tip 14: Only use good quality images and flash animation on your website. Poor quality, badly taken or fuzzy photos make your site look unprofessional

Web Design Tip 15: Use images as visual clues to let your visitor know that they are in the right place and should read on and find out more

14 & 15: Images on your website provide vital clues in the crucial first few seconds of a visit to your website, so make sure you not only use an appropriate image to reinforce that your visitor is in the right place, but also make sure they are clear, crisp and professional. If you need to take them yourself, try to use a tripod, you’ll be amazed how much difference that can make.

Web Design Tip 16: Don’t Overdo the Images or Flash

Images or some flash animation on your website helps with both the visual appeal and the mind map for your visitors, but once you have made your point and drawn them in, additional images and flash become a turn off.

So make your point with images on your website, but don’t go overboard.

Web Design Tip 17: Make sure you can pause or stop video. Ideally video should be started by the user, not automatically on page load

Web Design Tip 18: Never Use Sound, background tracks or music. If you must offer sound let the user press the play button.

Videos and sounds can be really off putting when the just start off all by themselves, especially if you’re sitting in a quiet office with a bunch of co-workers. Video is making a huge impact to loads of businesses and websites, but let the user decide if they want to start them off, rather than making it auto-start.

The only sound on any website or web design that I was putting my name to would be a podcast, but as I have said before, I really don’t see the benefit in many cases of a podcast on your website.

Never use background music. Ever.

Web Design Tip 19: Strike a balance between text and images and flash. If you’re graphics heavy the search engines can struggle to judge relevancy of your site

Google loves text. It can understand and evaluate text. Maybe the day will come when Google can evaluate the pixels that make up an image and give you a ranking boost based on relevent images, but for now that doesn’t happen.

So an image heavy web page with little text can leave the search engines wondering a little bit. Make sure you put at least 300 to 500 words on each web page if you can.

Web Design Tip 20: Images and animation offer visual clues to your visitors but they increase the load time of the page.

Overdoing the images is something we’ve talked about earlier and this simply reinforces what we have already said. Another issue with lots of images on a page is this increases the time it takes to load. We are away from the world of dial-up now and very few people have those kinds of slow download speeds, but it still needs to be considered, especially if your website needs to be designed for mobile devices.

Phil Brassington, Web Design Staffordshire

Phil Brassington is a web designer who works and lives in Stafford, Staffordshire.

Rake Mark solutions provide web design services is currently number one for web design in Stafford and web design stafford on the Google search rankings. The goal is to be number one for web design in Staffordshire and across the West Midlands.

So the purpose of the blog follow up is to be able to fill in some of the gaps left.

The first web design tips article was expected to cover the first ten web design tweets but hit the word count max about half way through, so we’ll mop up the next five tweets here and then go to the ten tweets at a time format, with about two tweets per day and a web design blog about once per week.

So from your friendly neighbourhood Staffordshire web design firm, here’s the next five tweets

Web Design Tip 6: Consider the font and size of text on your web site. A common sans serif font works best, like Arial.

Web Design Tip 7: Check that your text scales well (view -> Text Size in Internet Explorer) Also Changing the text size and allowing page zoom makes your web page accessible and usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. It’s important that your web pages are available to all your users. Spending some time changing the text size and zooming to check what your web page looks like is time well spent. what does your page look like when it’s zoomed

Some web browsers allow both text resizing and zooming, others just zoom. To zoom the web pages on your website, press control (ctrl) and the plus key on your keyboard.

Web Design Considerations for Web Browsers

Web Design Tip 8: Check your website in a the most popular browsers. See how it looks in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla. Chrome is getting popular, so check this one too

Web Design Tip 9: Even though its a bit old now, Windows XP users are stuck with Internet Explorer 8, so make sure your website still works in IE8

Web Design Tip 10: You may not know this but a lot of government and NHS organisations are still using Internet Explorer 6. So you do still need to check your site works in this browser

Making sure your website works well in different browsers is called cross browser compatibility. At the start of last year there were only really two important web browsers you needed to worry about, Internet Explorer by Microsoft and Firefox by the Mozilla foundation.

Since then the Chrome web browser by Google has really taken off and is fast becoming a first choice for many users. Also, with the explosion of the iPad many more users are browsing with Apple’s web browser, Safari. At least looking at your website through these browsers might well be worth the time.

Once you are happy that your website design works well in the latest version of all the main web browsers you have to turn your attention to the legacy browsers. Most web browsers update incrementally and automatically. Microsoft Internet Explorer releases security packs but also has very distinct versions which will display your website differently from one version to the next. Windows XP users are not able to install any version of IE above version 8.

Many government institutions and the NHS still use Internet Explorer version 6 (IE6). The reasons for this come down to security and the costs of maintaining these very high levels of security in updated versions. Whether this is good or bad is up for debate, what you have to live with is that they are using these old browsers and your website needs to display properly in all of them.

To test websites web designers use emulators to see what the web page will look like in the older versions of the web browser, or sometimes we keep old machines and use them purely for their old versions of web browsers. The emulators can be found and downloaded easily enough.

Another consideration is of course making sure that your website displays well on mobile devices, but this is another area to cover and would probably need to be a web design blog in its own right.

Quick 5 Web Design Tips, More Design Tips to Follow

A shorter article this time around, but fear not as the tweets on the web design Staffordshire twitter feed will be running for this week and next at the very least with more web design blogs to flush them out.

So until the next web design tips blog, this is web design staffordshire signing off.

The web design tips series of tweets was one of the ideas that we thought of and one we have started with. Everyone loves a quick win, and a quick win that can increase your website’s effectiveness and your profits is good for everyone.

Although twitter is perfect for quick web design tips popped out through the day, it is easy to miss one, so here is a summary of the first ten web design tips, with a bit more information to help you get the most out of your website.

Web Design Tip 1: Always allow at least 250 words of text on the homepage in your design. Google Loves Text & your readers want info

This is primarily an SEO tip, if you have very little text on the homepage of your website then there is less for Google to crawl and index. The other side to this coin is that your visitors came for a reason and if they can’t find the answer to their query in a few minutes then they will leave. You can’t really give them much of a reason to stay in less than 250 words.

Web Design Tip 2: Make your phone number prominent on your homepage. Customers gain confidence, even if they don’t need you now.

There’s nothing worse than visiting a business, loving the website design and wanting to contact the business in question and having to search for their contact details. Even if your visitors aren’t trying to get in touch right now, your landline in a prominent position on your website will give confidence that you are a legitimate enterprise and here to stay.

Web Design Tip 3: Make sure you have a bold, unique logo that expresses your brand. Your logo is one of the most visible images associated with your business and your website.

Having a memorable logo will help casual observers remember your business and your website over your competitors. Firstly people will associate the image with your business, but ideally in time they will associate your logo with your industry. If you consider the Michelin Man, when you see that prominent logo, either the full detail or just an outline, you probably think tyres before you think of the brand.

Web Design Tip 4: Take your logo and make a ‘favicon’ from it. Your favicon is the little logo that is seen in the web browser when visitors are browsing your site.

The teeny logo that is shown on the web browser when someone visits your webpage is just another string to your branding bow. They can be tricky to design, but Rake Mark or your web designer should be able to help you out.

Web Design Tip 5: If possible, trademark your business name and your logo. It’s not as complicated as you might think.

Rake Mark Web Design trademarked our business name and logo a couple of years ago to protect our brand. It isn’t really a specific web design tip, but it is a good design and branding tip and the process really wasn’t all that difficult. We filled in all the papers ourselves and filed them with the modest fee.

More Web Design Tip And Web Design Tweets to Come

So that’s the first 5 tweets and I’ve also hit my self imposed ‘approaching boredom’ word count. The web design tip tweets are ongoing on a daily basis, so follow along by joining twitter and following the Rake Mark web design twitter feed.

‘Design Once Display Everywhere’ Web Design

With a raft of new devices hitting the market every year all with different screen sizes and abilities to display a web page, it’s important that the design of your web page can handle all the different mobile devices that might be displayed on it.

This type of ‘Design Once Display Everywhere’ Web Design is being referred to as Responsive web design, creating a fully fluid website, with layouts and images adapted to the size of the screen the page is being viewed on.

Sarah Brassington of Rake Mark, Web Design Staffordshire said, “Mobile users are making a bigger part of everyone’s visitor numbers and the number of mobile users is only going to go up”

Some form of mobile strategy needs to be on place for your business website. You can look for a ‘responsive web design’ strategy or look for a mainstream / mobile site strategy. Which you go for depends on your budget.

Clean / Minimalist Web Design Technique

Simplicity is the key. Effective uses of whitespace, strip things back to what you need and no more.

With the 50 millisecond rule more businesses are moving away from overly complex designs and crowded pages, simpler cleaner designs are being requested more and more. This doesn’t mean cutting back on anything other than items that are unnecessary. Images, animation and other design elements to give the required visual clues and add impact are still there, only anything that doesn’t add to the page is being removed.

Sarah believes that the clean & Minimalist web design is becoming popular due to faster loading times and increased visitor usability.

With the web page weight down pages load faster and users can find the information they are looking for more easily” she said. ,

With less clutter on the page, finding the information you need becomes a simpler task.

Using Infographics to Display Data on the Web

An infographic is a way to visually share information. The graphical display gives more information than if the data were simply provided.

Sarah Brassington said “The infographic made its way onto the web last year and is gaining in popularity. With new design packages available, creating infographics will become as simple as creating Excel Charts.

Many argue that then humble graph or chart is a primitive inforgraphic, other that digital charts and graphs were simply the forerunner. Whatever your point of view these visually stunning images that help us to visualise information like never before are set to become more popular through 2012 and beyond.

Whilst not impacting the design of the website itself, the Infographic is set to revolutionize the way we view and consume information.

Having harnessed a lot of popularity throughout 2011, the Infographic is a bright, enticing and uniquely user-friendly way to communicate information to the end consumer.

In this example of an infographic comparing the Titanic sinking to that of the Concordia, the fact it is written in Portuguese has little effect on the understanding.

 Web Design into 2012 and Beyond

Director and head of design at Rake Mark Web Design in Staffordshire, Sarah Brassington has seen a number of design fads come and go, but these new trends are being driven by required function rather than fashion.

“For example, the adapting designs for mobile devices is born out of a need to satisfy the growing army of mobile browsers, rather than a fad that will fade in time.” She said

Whether these web design trends will become new forces in the world of web design remains to be seen.

Your web designer will keep banging on about how you have 8 seconds to grab their attention. This isn’t necessarily true, according to some studies it’s less than this!

In order to grab their attention it’s important that your web design provides visual clues. I discussed this in the previous article. In short by ‘visual clues’ I’m talking about anything you can see gives a visual indication of what the page is about. This could be (among others) images, animation, bold text or a headline.

Headlines are important, as we’ve discussed, but headlines come in different styles. Here are three different headline styles that will help you grab your web visitors attention and encourage your readers to read on.

The ‘How to’ Headline

The how to headline is great for articles that offer a single piece of exciting information, like ‘How to increase your sales by 200%’, or ‘How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days’

These headline types have great s success on the web, especially if the page has the ‘how to’ headline as the page title as well. The searcher finds your ‘how to’ article in Google, clicks the link and sees the headline straight away. They know they’re in the right place and they’ll read on.

DO: Put an important part of the ‘how to’ in the first paragraph else these types of visitors will bounce straight off your web page.

DON’T: Use this technique to often or else your website does start to sound like an American cheesy TV infomercial.

The ‘Question’ Headline

The question headline works well when your article solves a problem. Your headline can then ask the reader how great it would be if only they could solve that problem. This headline technique can work with similar articles that the ‘how to’ headline works with.

For example you could ask, ‘Wouldn’t you like to lose 10 pounds in 10 days?’ or ‘Isn’t there an easier way to lose weight quickly?’

Marketers will always tell you to consider the inherent drama of your product or service. Why is your product being made and bought and sold? Identify the drama within your product and work it into your piece.

Stick to the inherent drama of your piece and the question headline will work a treat, but again, you can end up sounding like an infomercial if you overuse the technique.

The Command Headline

Your command headline zeros in on the key benefit that your product offers. The inherent drama is about the feelings and emotions that are brought to the surface when your product is discussed, but the command headline focuses on that single undeniable benefit that your product carry’s.

A couple of examples might be “Get the manageable hair you deserve” or “Don’t Worry About Breakdowns, Get Roadside Assist Today!”

It could be that your product guarantees great results, better looking hair or trouble free motoring, whatever the benefit is, identify it and work it into your next headline.

About the Web Designer

Phil Brassington is a Staffordshire Web Designer who is a director at Rake Mark Solutions, a Staffordshire Web Design company. He graduated from Staffordshire University with a first class honors degree in Computing Science, the first member of his family to earn a university degree.

He lives in Stafford with his wife, three kids and a rabbit named Flopsy.

Rake Mark Web Design has been providing web design in Staffordshire and across the UK for over five years.

Your headline is powerful and because of this should be given some time and consideration. When I’m writing blogs I don’t usually put a huge amount of effort into the title (which subsequently becomes the headline), I spend a bit more time when I’m writing an article for wider distribution and I tend to agonise over headlines when its being incorporated into a web design.

Given the subject I did a couple of different versions of the headline for this article. What do you think?

Incorporating Visual Clues into your Web Design

This first ‘web design’ impression is so important that, although it’s a bit off message, it’s well worth a two minute re-cap. By ‘visual clues’ I’m talking about anything you can see gives a visual indication of what the page is about.

So if its a page about making meatloaf, then a nice picture of a completed meatloaf above the fold would help. This could (or should?) be accompanied by a text rich headline. In this case it could be anything as simple as ‘Meatloaf Recipe’

Power Up Your Website’s Headlines

My ‘Meatloaf Recipe’ headline would give you the right idea, namely telling your visitor that they’re on a web page that contains a meatloaf recipe, but would it grab the readers attention? Would it build any genuine desire to find out more.

How about, ‘Five Simple Steps to the Tastiest Meatloaf’ or ‘Quick and Simple Meatloaf Recipe’. This headline, in tandem with your main image, would give the visitor a clear idea of what the page is about. Now assuming that the image is of a lovely tasty meatloaf, then they are going to be almost able to taste it.

Use powerful descriptive language so that the reader can visualise what the web page is about from the headline. Build a mental picture that draws them in, use descriptive words in all of your headlines.

You’ve now grabbed their attention and a genuine desire to find out more about your great meatloaf recipe (or about your fab range of bathroom suites or even web design or whatever service and products that you sell)

I’m sure you could come up with some even better headlines for your website than the ones I’ve come up with and this is an exercise that could vastly improve your web site effectiveness and conversion.

I would whole heartily recommend that you take ten minutes per page and consider if your headline is really doing the job you want it to.

Don’t Compromise Your Web Design for the SEO Consultant

Your headline will typically be placed inside ‘header tags’ and because important information goes into your header tags then Google also places a high value on what goes into your header tags. For this reason your Search engine optimisation consultant will have some specific ideas about what he wants in there.

If it isn’t going to sell, then resist them.

It’s their job to get you up the Google Rankings. It’s your job to sell the product once they land on your web page.

There are tips and tricks (white hat techniques that Google is happy with) that you can employ on the web page to make everyone happy, but that’s another topic for another day. The important thing in this sidebar is that your headline is one of your key weapons to increase dwell time on them page and to then convert that visitor into a customer (and subsequently into profits)

Fulfilling the Promise of the Headline

Once you’ve written your headline then you have to make sure that the rest of the web page lives up the fantastic headline your written.

You’ve worked hard to grab their attention and now they’re interested in what you have to say, so make sure that it gets said in a style that matches the headline.

Although I really don’t think that I’ve done this myself yet in this article, I’m at my own self imposed word count and will continue in a part two, which I’ll publish over the weekend.

Until then, budding web designers, be creative with your headlines.

Web Design in Stafford

Phil Brassington is a director at Rake Mark Solutions a company that provides web design in Stafford.

He graduated from Staffordshire University with a first class honors degree in Computing Science, the first member of his family to graduate university. He lives in Stafford with his wife, three kids and a rabbit named Flopsy. Rake Mark Web Design have been providing web design across Staffordshire for over five years.

Podcasting

Podcasting: Dead or Alive?

Podcasting is not something that comes up very often in a web design requirements meeting with a new client. Even though adding a podcast channel to a customers site is simple and inexpensive and making podcasts can be quick , fun and within the capabilities of a lot of website owners it isn’t often that customers ask for them.

This might be because not many small business website owners are aware of the potential of podcasting or it might be because they are just not very popular so if you don’t listen to them yourself then will anyone want to listen to yours.

In this article I want to explore whether podcasting is a viable option for small business website owners and their marketing efforts or is it just a big waste of time?

Essentially, we’ll ask the question,

‘Podcasting: Dead or Alive?

A Podcast Defined

In case your unsure of what a podcast is, it is defined as

‘A multimedia digital file made available on the Internet for downloading to a portable media player, computer, etc.’

In simple language what we are really talking about is an audio file (an mp3 for example) that is available to download. The piece of audio can be spoken word, musical or any mix of whatever you wanted. The definition allows for video but to qualify the video file would need to be downloadable rather than streamed (so not just available on YouTube). I really think that video is another category and another topic, so in this blog I am talking exlusively about audio podcasts.

The name comes from a blend of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’ although Apple aren’t themselves responsible for this.

The word ‘Podcast’ was named word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary on 3 December 2005.

The Pros and Cons

With just a microphone plugged into your computer, it is easy and fun to make a quick podcast. Quicker than writing a blog article (I can’t seem to write a blog that I’m happy to publish in less than 2 hours). If you have a concept that you don’t need a script for, then you can create a two minute podcast in… well, only two minutes. A few minutes to upload and link and your done (you’ll actually need about 15 to 20 minutes, start to finish. once you are used to it).

Interesting, different and catchy podcasts can go viral and give you massive exposure that you wouldn’t normally get, but writing a catchy and interesting podcast can be tricky, especially if your clientele would be offended if you suddenly became a bit zany.

The real down side is that to receive that information from a podcast I need to sit there and listen to it. I can’t skip to the bit I want to hear (until I’ve heard it I don’t know where that bit is), I can’t skim over the whole podcast and zone in on the bits that have value to me. I have to sit there and listen and hope it has what I want in there somewhere.

Most business podcasts use spoken voice and that can be quite boring. Nothing worse than listening to a nervous business owner reading a badly written script that actually doesn’t interest me that much. Actors are expensive, you’ll have to do this yourself. If your launching a music or radio career then your podcasts can go viral and spell success, but if your giving an introduction to social media marketing… well, snore.

So from a web design and business website owners point of view the main draw back with podcasts is no one really bothers listen to them, especially ones that have to be streamed and can’t be downloaded. If they are listened to then its for a (really) short space of time.

Podcast Web Design (Staffordshire) Rules

1. Create a written introduction so your Podcast. Visitors to your website are more likely to listen to your podcast if they know what its about.

2. Never make a Podcast (or any other sound file for that matter) start automatically. Nothing makes me leave a website faster that sound suddenly coming out of my speakers. Its annoying and its intrusive. Never, Ever Do It!

3. Always allow Podcasts to be downloadable. Have the podcast accessible and streaming on your website if you want to, that’s all good. But allow website visitors to be able to download your podcast to listen on their phone or iPod later. They be interested but just may not want to listen to it right now. On that long commute the next morning, it might just make it onto the play list.

My final point is more of an editorial point Rather than a consideration and is namely this: Say something to hook your listener in the first 10 – 15 seconds (something really useful). Get your main points across in the first 30 seconds and if you can keep the whole thing under 2 minutes all the better.

Funny and lighthearted podcasts usually work better than one that sounds like a lecture series.

Re: Web Design (Staffordshire). Our SEO Expert loves that word Staffordshire and when I slip in a Staffordshire or a web design staffordshire into an artice in some cookey kind of way it makes him smile, so forgive an old web developer his Friday Fun. Google doesn’t look at punctuation so the brackets are ignored.

Conclusion: Dead or Alive?

My very real negativity to small business podcasting comes from me finding small business podcasts dull and dreary. As I have said, from a web design perspective its quite inexpensive for you to implement podcasting on your small business website. So until I see a small business utilise podcasts in a way that makes me want to buy their product or become their customer then podcasting is very dead to me.

Of course, Radio 1 has a series of hugely successful daily and weekly podcasts that get downloaded in the thousands and tens of thousands. Ricky Gervais still produces highly popular podcasts (and video podcasts) to support his stand up work and TV shows. If you go to iTunes you’ll find loads of interesting podcasts amongst the thousands that will send you to sleep.

So dead or alive depends on your opinion and your business. For me it all boils down to return on effort, or return on investment. If you have a zany business where odd things going viral can be of help then podcasting is a real possibility. But if you want to do a lecture series on tips for social media marketing or ten top feeds for your dwarf rabbit, then I don’t think you’ll win many customers by using podcasts.

Facebook Social Search

A top Facebook Executive, Ethan Beard, has said that web search must go social and that Google and other search engines are failing to provide the results that users want, according an interview given to The Telegraph.

Ethan Beard argues that search needs to go social to create an improved product discovery mechanism. He claims that in the pre Internet era you would ask your friends for a recommendation.

“Before the Internet you would ask your friends for all your recommendations” he told The Telegraph

The basis for this point of view is that on mass e-commerce sites like Amazon this social element doesn’t exist and so the recommendation is missing. Mr Beard tells of wanting new luggage but not being able to find the luggage he wants or a recommendation in search.

According to The Telegraph he said that, “search needed to go social so that people could get really good product recommendations from their most trusted sources, their friends”

This layered approach is something that Google appear to be trialing with Google+ and the +1 button. In the future it may be the case that your connections in Google+ and their recommendations, or +1′s, will influence your search engine results.

Although Facebook only has a site search and no web search facility Mr Beard told The Telegraph, “I think search will go social.” He continued, “…friend referrals are a really powerful way to discover information and search is another way of discovering information and layering the two together seems like its going to be a significant improvement over keep them apart.”

Facebook, Social Search and Social Commerce

The true measure of success for any given search engine will always be directly linked to its ability to provide relevant results. For as long as current Google users find what their looking for by searching on Google they will keep using Google and there’s little that Facebook, for all its bluster, can do about it.

Social search, where your current search engine results would be altered according to the likes of friends, is only in its infancy. How much that would improve the search experience is open to debate. Many people have a wide and ever growing scope of Internet ‘friends’. Random acquaintances, old school friends and family members often make up the ‘friends list’ and how the recommendations of this group can improve your search experience remains to be seen.

Within e-commerce, recommendations from the community at large is nothing new, most products on Amazon have some reviews. Reviews from friends, with presumably some kind of weighting, is a newer concept. How this would actually work in reality, especially for anyone but the largest retailers is something else. If you permit reviews on an e-commerce site and no one reviews the products it can often be counter productive, giving the appearance of a shop that is rarely visited.

Search will become more social, Facebooks’ success has ensured that all things social remain at the top of the agenda, but what is unclear is how this will improve the search experience and the web as a whole.

To the absolute horror of SEO experts around the world, Google has implemented “auto encrypted browsing” and removed Google Analytics keyword data.

In layman terms this means that if a user is logged into their Google account when they search, the keyword that they searched on will be encrypted and will no longer be available in Google Analytics for you to analyse your conversion rate against.

For example, ‘Mr Smith’ wants a new website for his business; he enters ‘web design Staffordshire ’ into the Search Engine Google, follows a link in the Search Engine Results Pages and then clicks on a buy button on the resulting website. We, as website owners, will know that we have a sale or conversion from this keyword search. In the future we will know we got the conversion from a Google search but not the keywords that gave us the conversion.

This obviously has little impact on the searcher as the only difference that they will see is the use of HTTPS protocol rather than HTTP, but from an SEO, targeted marketing point of view this could cause a few issues.

Interestingly enough this does not affect Ad Words, the paid marketing listing for Google?

This move by Google goes hand in hand with the soft (quietly done) launch of “Good to Know” … very interesting?

If you are looking to make your website more effective and convert visitors into customers then contact us now on 01785 256222 or email enquiries@rakemark.com

What does Google Premium Give us that the free version will not?

According to the Google Analytics Premium Fact Sheet the Paid Version will give us:

• Extra Processing Power for more Data Analysing and download ability of un-sampled reports, a lift in the data limits and 50 custom variables to help you make informed decisions.

• Understand your consumer better with the Attribution modelling.

• Get an agreement with 99% capture Up time guaranteed.

• Your own account managers to assist you in using this tool to its full potential and will assist with training 24/7.

Think you will benefit? Check out the Billing Overview.

The good news is the Google have said on their blog that while they have launched a “Paid For” Premium Analytics tool they are still committed to providing a free version of the product. So for the majority of us, nothing will change …….  yet?

Facebook have announced (in a panel in your personal Facebook profile) that the option to use the Reviews and Discussion app within the Facebook system is to be removed at the end of the Month (31/10/2011)

According to a statement on the official Facebook help section, the best way to encourage interaction with you friends (or business likes) is to use wall posts and comments.

The statement also warns that existing discussions or review sections will be inaccessible and content that you may need or want to keep should be saved independently.

Wow …. What’s for the chop next?

Woman Stressed Over Web Budget

Control Wild Web Budgets with Five Easy to Follow Tips

For most businesses a website is a must, but how do you get your business on the web without it costing an arm and a leg? Here are five tips for affordable web design and controlling wild web design budgets.

1. If you can do it for free, then why pay?
Free is about as affordable as your web design can get and if you’re prepared to put in the time to learn the basics then your affordable web design project could easily be a free web design project.

Look on the web for companies offering free websites, free templates and free web hosting. A word of warning though, often free packages will have advertising on them, so be sure you know fully what your signing up for else you might end up advertising your competitors on your website.

2. Use a Fixed price Web Design Package
If you need something more professional than a free web site but still need to keep your web design project affordable then look for companies that offers a fixed price affordable web design packages.

You can get a fixed number of pages designed just for your business with a contact form for a really competitive price. Another advantage with this approach is the help you’ll get from your web design company in avoiding common mistakes.

Keep an eye out for hidden extras. Make sure that your package includes everything you need to get your business on the web.  Ask about the cost of hosting, domain name, images and logo design and web statistics. The better companies all include this in the price.

3. Know What You Want and Stick to It
Nothing drives up the cost of a web design project like re-working design and content. Successful, affordable web design projects are the ones that have clients who start with a clear vision and stick to that vision throughout the project.

If you keep changing your mind then the web designer will have to do more work which can mean a higher bill than necessary. Once you have a quote for your affordable web design project, stick to it. That way there can be no nasty surprises when the invoice lands on your mat.

4. Know the on-going costs
The on-going costs vary wildly from web design company to web design company. Some companies will charge what seems to be a low cost until you realise that this is the annual cost.

If your on a fixed budget and need an affordable website then you need to choose a web designer who will tell you honestly what the ongoing costs are going to be.

The main cost you will encounter is web hosting renewal and domain name registration. This is usually an annual cost so make sure you know how much it will be in the future. Ask your web designer if you are unhappy with their support and hosting costs will you be able to move to a different company.

Good web designers are always confident you won’t want to move and will be happy for you to do so.

5. Control Update Costs with a Content Management System
If the term content management system (or CMS) is new to you, a CMS is simply a website where you can change the content on your website yourself through an easy to use interface.

It may cost a little more for a CMS over the traditional traditional website but if you need to make updates a few times a year then for truly affordable web design updates you can’t beat a content management system.

Example of Signposts in the Real World

In a previous post I talked about the importance of using web signposts in web design and this article continues on with three quick examples of websites that Rake Mark has signposts utilised them for their clients.

Website Signposts: A Quick Review

In the real world, a signpost is a road sign that’s used to point you in the right direction. It’s a big obvious sign that usually has a destination or place name and an arrow.
The web equivalent of ‘a big obvious sign with a destination and an arrow’ is an obvious visual clue to a destination on your website and then a hyperlink, instead of an arrow, that takes the user to that destination.

A powerful use of signposts is when you are ranking in Google for a generic or local search term, like ‘web design Staffordshire’. When a visitor arrives at your website using this generic term, signposts on the landing page can be used to direct them quickly to the area of the site that interests them. So although they landed using the term web design Staffordshire, they can quickly find their way to the affordable web design section.

You can find out more about website signposts in the earlier article, however, here is three real world examples to show how they are easy to use and simple to implement.

1. Signposts for Segmenting Traffic

The e-Quip website for Integra supports two main products, e-Quip AM and e-Quip PM. Most visitors will arrive at their site looking for support for one of these two products. To help visitors register that they are in the right place and identify which route they want to take we used two quite large signposts that went the full width of the page at about the fold. These take the visitor quickly to the part of website that the need to get to.

Website Signposts on e-Quip Website

2. Signposts for Supporting the Main Menu

The Embodied Living website uses signposts to give visual clues to their main menu. This is particularly effective as the top menu is quite complex to a layman and the visual side menu really helps the casual visitor find the information that is pertinent to them. This works really well if the visitor has arrived using a generic search term.

Embodied Living Menu Support Signposts

3. Call to Action

A call to action is the part of the page that encourages the visitor to take the next step. Some calls to action are very subtle that simply let those visitors who want to take the next step know what they need to do and others will shout ‘CALL NOW!’

A signpost can support both of these approaches. The call to action on the problem bathing website sits nicely between these two extremes with bold looking signpost that just lets the user know what they should do next. The longer they dwell on the site the more this type of signpost embeds into their subconscious.

Call to Action on the Problem Bathing Website

Website Signposts: Summary

A signpost in the real world is a big obvious sign that usually has a destination and an arrow. On your website a signpost should contain an obvious visual clue, like an image, that takes a segmented group of users to a destination on your website via a hyperlink.

Also this can be used in tandem with your search keywords. If you were ranking for ‘web design in Stafford’ then your landing page, especially if it is your home page, is unlikely to scream ‘Web Design Staffordshire’ and signposts can then be used to direct those landing visitors to the area they want to go.

In our three examples we looked at using a signpost for quick home page direction and also to support the main menu.

The example for Embodied Living and the main Rake Mark website both support the main menu and also help visitors who have arrived from generic keywords like ‘web design Staffordshire’ establish they are in the right place and also direct them to the information they need quickly.
The effectiveness of a call to action can be increased many times by using a web site signpost within your web design.

They are so easy to implement that you really should look at ways to include them in your web design: Staffordshire Web Designer Phil Brassington brings weekly web design articles via the Rake Mark Blog and is a director of Rake Mark Web Design, Staffordshire.

Signpost in the Real World

In the real world, a signpost is used to point you in the right direction. It’s a big obvious sign that usually has a destination and an arrow.

On your website you can use something similar to direct segmented groups of visitors quickly and efficiently to the section of your web site that appeals to them and that you want them to visit.

I have heard different colleagues use different names, they’ve called them image links, page stickers and signposts. But whatever you call them, make sure you use them on your website to help you direct groups of targeted users to specific areas of your website.

Website Signposts: A Definition

Like the real world example of ‘a big obvious sign with a destination and an arrow’, a signpost on the web should contain an obvious visual clue to a destination on your website and then a hyperlink, instead of an arrow, that takes the user to that destination.

A quick example of this: If you sell garden furniture and have a new product line, say hammocks, you might want to draw your visitor’s attention to this. So you would put a clear image of a hammock with a good looking person lying down on it. Across the image is bold text that says, ‘New Range of Hammocks Now In Stock!’. Users who are interested in this destination will click on the image and be taken directly to your new hammocks section.

Note: you don’t need the text, ‘Click Here’ on it. In the same way that the real world signpost does have the text, ‘Go this way’, your visitors will know that your website signpost is going to be click-able.

Website Signposts: Use in Tandem with Your Keywords

If you have regional, industry specific keywords like ‘web design Staffordshire’ then chances are your landing page won’t support this. So if you were looking for a local web designer and searched ‘web design Staffordshire’ in Google then chances are you will arrive at the Rake Mark homepage.

Web Design Staffordshire as a phrase is not featured on the Rake Mark home page but you will be in the right place and there needs to be something there to help you find your way. This is where website signposts can help your visitor get the visual clue that what they want is here and get there quickly and easily.

Website Signposts: Summary

A signpost in the real world is a big obvious sign that usually has a destination and an arrow. On your website a signpost should contain an obvious visual clue, like an image, that takes a segmented group of users to a destination on your website via a hyperlink

The real power of using signposts comes from the speed at which they can direct the traffic that has arrived onto your website onwards to the required information.

Also this can be used in tandem with your search keywords. If you were ranking for ‘web design Staffordshire’ then your landing page, especially if it is your home page, is unlikely to scream Web Design Staffordshire and signposts can then be used to direct those landing visitors to the area they want to go.

Although I’ve been mad busy for the last couple of weeks yesterday was the start of the first test between England and India and I’ve been following all the action on the BBC live text service. For those of you who are new to the blog (you are many in number, most welcome and appreciated) there is often some juvenile behaviour on the text that makes me smile.

Yesterday the conversation turned to TV Shows for Cricket starts. To give you an idea of what this is, Frasier in Leeds sent in,  “Idea for a TV show: “What’s Michael Holding” – A game show where contestants must work out what cricket related item is in the hands of the former legendary fast bowler with points deducted for every clue required.”

Not everyone’s cup of tea but this quintessentially English humour always tickles me and makes the day fly by. Some of the other better ones below.

@Emma_J_Turner, “Monty Panesar’s Flying Circus: Monty delivers a range of surreal risqué and innuendo-laden sketches.”

Rob, Lichfield, “How about ‘To the Manor Vaughan’. Unrequited love through the corridors of uncertainty in a Yorkshire stately home.”

From Tom, Nottingham, TMS inbox: “Ideas for TV programme – Saved by the Bell. Ian Bell as a super hero saving people’s lives using only a cricket bat, box and a bail.”
Note: Tom clearly doesn’t have kids as saved by the bell is a really famous American TV Kids show.

Some others suggestions that were listed without credit were,

“Indifferent Strokes” former England fast bowler Bob Willis looks back at batsman getting themselves out through poor shot selection. Each week following a particularly long rant over a badly executed reserve sweep or a top edged hook or such like, Sir Ian comes on and says “What you talkin’ bout Willis”

How about this geeky beauty, “Nasser Hussain’s semipermeable membrane’ The ex-England cricket captain discusses osmosis”
(My mate Jason Cooke will love this one)

“Goochy Coochy Coo, where Graham Gooch helps out a local maternity unit”. This made me smile so much. You really have to know what Graham Gooch looks and sounds like to get the full absurdity of this. Take a look at this photo of Graham Gooch up, you’ll have to find the audio on your own, but he’s often interviewed on Channel Five as he’s the current England batting coach

Have a good weekend, All
Phil

Spaghetti Head Gets Driver’s License

My favourite bit of fun this week was the Austrian who is wearing a colander on his head in his driver’s license photo. According to the BBC Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.

Niko said that the sieve was part of his religion as a member of the US Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Members if this church call themselves Pastafarians.

Niko Alm had to submit to a medical interview to check his mental fitness to drive, but eventually the license was issued in a blow to religious freedom and fun on a Friday everywhere.

Eh Up Duck, Doya Wan Spuds?

And I’m sure if I wasn’t married and I knew who the flip Mila Kunis was (an actress apparently) then I would be green with envy of the US soldier who used You Tube to ask out and got a yes.

It was an interesting approach to asking someone out and I am wondering if this will generate a craze of squaddies asking out famous people. If you can picture, if you will, the Sergeant’s Mess awash with budding actresses and half cut soldiers.

Although I’m on the cutting edge with technology, I’m personally a bit more traditional when it comes to affairs of the heart.

Without wanting to repeat myself, regularly adding content helps with your creditability, increases dwell time on your site and also Google loves it. So you need to regularly add content to your website.

In this article I’m going to discuss different types of content and give some tips on using it to engage your visitors.

Types of Website Content and How to Use It

When I’m talking about content I simply mean the stuff you fill your pages with, be it text based information about your products and services, videos, podcasts or articles. As I have said before, your website design images are also classed as content but images aren’t relevant in the context of this article.

Product and Service Information Pages
The same as in the last article, I’m starting with the most important and most overlooked area, so take note. Your product and service pages are your website’s bread and butter and are so often overlooked.

In an age when a conversation can consist of 160 character tweets and facebook status updates, when so much importance is put upon social media it is really easy to overlook what is really important.

The most important content on your site tells your visitors about your products and services and more importantly, how they will help them, solve their problems. Essentially, why they need you and your product range.

Web Tip 1: Go to your product and service pages right now and check that the benefits (not the features) of your products are completely clear.

Podcasts

Podcasting is a twist on video content. It’s a piece of audio, spoken voice or musical, that your visitor can either stream and listen to via your website or download and then listen to it on their computer or on an an iPod or other MP3 player.

I’m not a huge fan of podcasts, but that is probably because I don’t ever really listen to them. Personally I would never sit down and just listen to the radio but I do sit down and watch telly, so for me, I think that video will bring you greater rewards than podcasting.

Web Tip 2: Experiment with podcasting. This can add a new dimension to your website content.

Videos

Everyone has heard of YouTube and the millions of videos it hosts. Your probably also aware that YouTube is owned by Google and that Google now lists YouTube videos on its results pages. For this reason alone, creating some interesting video content that promoted your business is a good idea.

What you may not be so familiar with, and this is really powerful, is the trend towards using YouTube as a search engine. If you want to learn about the American Civil War for example, you could Google it, get a Wiki page on it and read about it. But if your thirteen then why read when you can watch a four minute video that gives you all you need?

Web Tip 3: A Video that goes Viral will be watched by millions of people. Make your videos informative and inventive for maximum effect.

News and Blogging

Once you have your products and service descriptions pages up and exciting your customers, then this is really where it’s at, especially as far as getting regular content onto your website is concerned.

Writing a blog is the ultimate way to demonstrate your superior knowledge in your chosen field. Whether that field is Web Design, Gardening, Stamp Collecting or xxx writing a regular blog is a great way to add content and continue on your journey of web success.

I want to cover writing news articles and press releases in another article and I think that good blogging should also have its own article as well, so keep your eyes peeled for those in the not too distant future.

We use these tips for our customers when we are creating their websites at Rake Mark web design, Staffordshire. They really work and you can put them to good use without any real cost on your own website, that’s the beauty of the web design tips series.

I have just had a client say that she has spent weeks struggling with writing word documents because the ruler at the side had disappeared and had to use the “Full Screen” reading mode so that she could see what was gone on.

I am afraid it is one of those really, really simple answer’s, but only if you know it! So here it is:

If your screen looks like this:

Ruler Disappeared in MS Word ?

Step one:

Hover over the top or bottom of you document, until you see this icon:

White Space Icon

Step Two:

Double click – your ruler should now be back ….   told you it was quick !

We are happy to hear and hopefully help about sticky problems that you may have – either send us an email or comment on a post or post to our Facebook Page.

Google loves it, your visitors want it and you need to provide it.  So welcome to the next in our web design tips series, the importance of adding new content to your website.

I wrote a paragraph in an article about website mistakes that discussed why you need updated content. I found that one paragraph titled ‘Write it, Launch it, Leave it!’ really wasn’t enough to give you what you needed.

Why Keep Updating Your Website Content?

The first and most obvious and also hugely overlooked reason for regularly adding new content to your website is it gives your visitors, your potential and existing customers, a reason to continue to visit your website.

Tip 1: Give your visitors valuable content when they come and the promise of more again the next day, and they will come back time and again until they are ready to become a customer.

Think about the journey that a visitor takes, especially if they’re buying a big ticket item. Once they’ve found you they’ll take a look around your website to get some information about  product from your website. If they need a bit of time to decide then new content will keep them coming back to you and your website.

A second reason is that it helps your customers to trust you. When you write blog articles and create podcasts and video’s then you are demonstrating that you have knowledge that is useful. This is really helpful in service based and value added industries, like financial services, where expert advice adds value to your offering.

Tip 2: Build your reputation and become an authority in your chosen market and give your customers confidence in you.

Adding relevant interesting blogs, videos and other engaging content will increase something called dwell time, which is the amount of time that visitors spend on your website. This is the third reason for adding regular content to your website.

The topic of ‘Engagement Objects’ and their effect on converting visitors to customers does deserve an expanded discussion, but that will be another blog for another day. For right now just take my word for it, engaging content keeps them on your site longer, which in turn gives you a better chance to convert them into a customer.

Tip 3: Engaging content keeps your visitors on your site longer which in turn helps you convert more of your visitors into customers.

And in case you still needed more reasons to add regular content to your site, a fourth reason to regularly add content to your website is that Google loves websites that regularly add new, original content. It gives a weighting to this when deciding where to place you in search engine results pages.

Filling your site with hundreds of re-written articles is not a good idea, the whole Panda / Farmer update that Google rolled out earlier this year was designed to slap website owners that did this. It has to be original content, based on original ideas.

Tip 4: Google loves sites that regularly add content, but it has to be original content that is no where else on the web.

So this is why we need to update the content on our websites, I think the case has been made clearly. Any one of the reasons should convince you. The next step is what content we need to be adding, I’ll cover that in my next web design tips article.

Until then, this is your friendly neighbourhood Staffordshire Web Designer signing off.

This email has gone uber viral around the web and has even been picked up by the mainstream news media. It is being reported as being an email from Carolyn Bourne to her soon to be Daughter-in-law, Heidi Withers.

Caroline Bourne seems to have taken exception to Heidi’s lack of manners and Caroline totally takes her to task in the email over her rudeness. The email went viral after Heidi received the email and was so shocked when she got it she forwarded it on to some friends, who also forwarded it to a few friends and the rest as they say is history.

Being a dad of three with two in their teens I do have a bit of sympathy towards Caroline, but some of it is a way over the top mega rant (in a very upper class way) and fair warning to anyone thinking of telling someone off via email.

There are a few versions doing the rounds but I think this is the fullest. I cannot vouch for its accuracy. Sit back with a nice Friday cuppa, and enjoy.

##EMAIL FROM CAROLYN BOURNE##

It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you.

I am being kept awake – or woken early – by Edward [Freddie's father] who is so profoundly upset by your behaviour on your recent visit that he is depressed and anxious.

Unfortunately for Freddie, he has fallen in love with you and Freddie being Freddie, I gather it is not easy to reason with him or yet encourage him to consider how he might be able to help you. It may just be possible to get through to you though. I do hope so. Your behaviour on your visit to Devon during April was staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace. Unfortunately, this was not the first example of bad manners I have experienced from you. If you want to be accepted by the wider Bourne family I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste. There are plenty of finishing schools around. You would be an ideal candidate for the Ladette to Lady television series. Please, for your own good, for Freddie’s sake and for your future involvement with the Bourne family, do something as soon as possible.

Here are a few examples of your lack of manners:

When you are a guest in another’s house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat – unless you are positively allergic to something.

You do not remark that you do not have enough food.

You do not start before everyone else.

You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.

When a guest in another’s house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early – you fall in line with house norms.

You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public. I gather you passed this off as a joke but the reaction in the pub was one of shock, not laughter.

I have no idea whether you wrote to thank [your future sister-in-law] for the weekend but you should have hand-written a card to her.

You should have hand-written a card to me. You have never written to thank me when you have stayed at Houndspool.

[Your future sister-in-law] has quite the most exquisite manners of anyone I have ever come across. You would do well to follow her example.

You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why.

It is tragic that you have diabetes. However, you aren’t the only young person in the world who is a diabetic. I know quite a few young people who have this condition, one of whom is getting married in June. I have never heard her discuss her condition. She quietly gets on with it. She doesn’t like being diabetic. Who would? You do not need to regale everyone with the details of your condition or use it as an excuse to draw attention to yourself. It is vulgar.

As a diabetic of long standing you must be acutely aware of the need to prepare yourself for extraordinary eventualities, the walk to Mothecombe beach being an example. You are experienced enough to have prepared yourself appropriately.

No-one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.

I understand your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume they would have saved over the years for their daughters’ marriages.) If this is the case, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes.

One could be accused of thinking that Carolyn must be patting herself on the back for having caught a most eligible young man. I pity Freddie.

##END OF EMAIL##

Christmas is going to be fun in this household this year.

Have a good weekend, Phil

Sadly, again this month we have had a new client come to us, requesting we create a website for them but we have struggled to get the domain names transferred and the registrar’s tags altered so that we could use the client’s original domain name.

So if another web design company has your name and they are refusing to give it back and you need to get it back then this is article will tell you what to do.

About Nominet

Nominet is the Internet registry for .uk domain names – this covers any email or web address that ends in .uk (or .co.uk, etc).

Thanks Nominet

Nominet was established in 1996 as a private, not-for-profit company, limited by guarantee. It was formed as a replacement for the original Voluntary Domain Management Group; then known as the ‘Naming Committee’.

This replacement was a necessary step as in the 1990’s the commercial selling and demand for TLD (Top Level Domains) grew and it became obvious that the small Voluntary Management group could not cope with the increase in volume.

Give me my name Back ! …..  please

Please be aware, this is for .co.uk names only and for this simple process to work you need to have originally registered and paid for the name yourself. If your web design company registered the name then it can get tricky, but the most important thing is have evidence you paid for the name to be registered.

Step 1*.  Find the original Invoice (and any renewal one) to prove that the domain is yours.
Step 2. Go to http://www.nominet.org.uk and click on the ‘login’ button in the top right corner.
Step 3. Click on the in text link ‘access your account’ in the first sentence.
Step 4. Clink on the in text link ‘re-establish your identity’
Step 5. Agree to the terms and click next
Step 6. You have a few details to fill in now, just follow the wizard.
Step 7. Make a Payment if necessary
Step 8. Nominet, now have it all in hand and they will contact you, ask for your proof (we faxed ours over) and job is done!

We also asked them to change the tags back to the original Clients account, I think they charged us £10 one off fee for this.

So £12.00 to re-establish your identity and £10 to change the tags £22.00 cost to the client and they have their name back – totally cutting out the rouge web designer.

*Of course ‘Step 1 is ask the person who has the name to return it to you. Try phoning them and emailing them first. Once this has failed and some dofus thinks they can hold your feet to the fire then follow our instructions.

Writing Your Web Copy Can be Fun, Honest

When I was writing my first web tips article on copy writing it started to get a bit long, so I decided to take my own advice and split it into two articles, so this is a bit like ‘Writing Compelling Web Copy – Part Deux’ (or part three if you count the five quick tips from Friday)

This is really the foundation stone of writing copy so not really a web tip, but if your new to copy writing then this really is my take on the starting point.

The generally accepted four step process to writing good copy can be expressed using AIDA, or in its long form, Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

Attention:
You only get one chance to make a first impression and your headline is where you can do this. Use attention grabbing headlines, pose tough questions or make bold promises, but grab the readers attention.

Interest:
Now you have their attention, build interest their interest in what you are selling. Focus on benefits rather than features. If your not sure what I mean, then remember that your reader will ask, ‘why should I care?’ or ‘how does that help me?’. Answer that question then they are more likely to respond.

Desire:
Build a genuine need or desire for the product by painting a picture of how this can help. Use real life examples to really bring the product to life and help the reader visualise themselves feeling great using your products or services.

Action:
You’ve done it, whatever it is your selling, their buying, but you need to tell them to buy, however ‘Call this number now’ doesn’t always do it. Try to use compelling language that makes it easy for the reader to say yes and difficult to say no.

Writing a compelling call to action is an article in itself, but do not overlook the need to ask them for the business.

Remember AIDA when weaving compelling words to help your customers visualise themselves using your products and services to solve their problems.

Most web designers in Staffordshire and across the UK will make an additional charge and no one knows your business like you, so roll up your sleeve and get writing you copy for your new website.

Tip 1: Use a Wordprocessor

Its Friday and I don’t have any Friday fun, so what is a staffordshire web designer to do. Well I have compiled some real quick copy writing tips.

If you read my copy writing article from earlier in the week then these five tips will help you to build up your knowledge and add even more power to your writing.

Tip 1: Use a word processor
If you don’t have a copy of Microsoft Word then download Open Office or use Google Docs. But whatever you do, use a word processor. It checks your spelling and grammar and makes it easy for you to edit and change your words without having to re-write all your copy.

Tip 2: For heavens sake write something
Don’t put it off, get started. If you wait for the perfect phrase to come it could be a long wait. Start writing and it will all begin to flow. The editing process will take care of everything else. If you are following the previous tip then its in a word processor and easily changed later anyway.

Tip 3: Proof read it
Catching all the spelling mistakes and grammar errors in your word processor doesn’t mean that it all makes sense. Always read through your work. If you can, wait an hour or overnight between finishing your article and proofing it.

Tip 4: Share it and get feedback
Once you have proofed, get someone else to read it over. Once you are both happy that their are no errors then move on to how persuasive the copy is. Would your friend buy the product? What would make them buy it?

Tip 5: Edit Aggressively
You’ve probably written twice as much as you needed to, so trim it down. If you can get your point across in twenty words then use twenty words. If you can trim that to eighteen and still have the same impact, then do it. Use as many words as you need to and no more.

There’s Still More

Another Web Design Tips article will be coming soon, next week sometime, so make sure you share this article, leave comments and check in next week.

Thanks
Phil

Rake Mark Solutions, Web Design Staffordshire

Copy means the text that you put on the page and writing compelling copy is a vital part of designing and building your website. With poor copy, with reams of over flowery text, no one will do business with you, they’ll all be asleep (or navigating to another site, more likely).

So here is an introduction to Writing Compelling Web Copy.

Budget Enough Time to Write Your Web Copy

We have all been caught out with the amount of time required that copy writing takes, especially when a deadline is looming. An hour per web page is the minimum that you should allow, often a first draft can take this long.

If writing your copy is stalling your web project then you may want to either cut the number of web pages or hire a copy writer (which can cost less that you think).

Tip 1: Don’t underestimate how long it might take you to write the copy for your website. Allow at least one hour per web page.

Write More About Benefits, Less About Features

You don’t buy shampoo, you buy beautiful manageable hair. When you buy a car you don’t just get a means of going from A to B, you buy an identity that this car represents and that you aspire to. Guy’s don’t buy drill’s just because they need a hole in a wall.

Beautiful hair is the benefit of shampoo. Your kids getting the best possible start to the day is the benefit of nutritionally balanced breakfast cereal. And I’m sure you can work out several benefits that a high output, hammer action power drill gives the man that wields it.

Tip 2: Customer’s buy on benefits, not features, so list the features but explain the benefits in detail.

Get the Tone Right

Although your business may deal with a wide range of different customers from varied backgrounds all with individual needs, each piece of copy writing will be aimed at a specific segment of that audience. Its important to write specifically for that intended audience.

Web pages tend to be more general than when your writing copy for an advert but even so, it is important that the tone and language that you use is appropriate for the intended reader. It is best to avoid specific terminology unless your writing is aimed at technical experts.

Doctors, for example, may expect a certain amount of technical language, assumed knowledge and abbreviations. This will apply to other groups as well, but this is the exception, not the rule.

Tip 3: Use the language and tone that your intended audience is expecting. Avoid technical jargon unless you are sure they want it.

And There’s More…

When I started this blog post I wanted to give a good depth of information so that it could be read and acted upon. It’s quickly become apparent that a full copy writing tutorial can’t be put into 500 – 600 words, which is my self imposed blog post limit.

So having read over 500 words, I hope the three tips you have will help you power your web copy, but there’s plenty more web and copy writing tips to come.

And please feel free to leave comments below.

The series is not aimed only at the technical experts who create the websites themselves, but is for anyone who is involved in a business website. So regardless of your technical expertise, if you own or maintain a business website, write the company blog, or work to try to bring in more visitors then these tips articles are for you.

Each article will cover a single topic and will contain simple to follow web design tips and information that you can use right now to increase the effectiveness and profitability of your website.

Please read article 1 with tips on getting the words on to the page, titled Writing Compelling Web Copy

Today I want to talk about the one missing piece of information that Matt gave us.

Search Engine Optimisation: Don’t Over Do It!

Using the same keywords over and over again on the same page in an unnatural way is called “keyword stuffing”. It’s a big Google no-no and let’s face Google are smart enough to not fall for that.

Matt said, “After you’ve said it two or three times, Google has a pretty good idea — ‘OK, this page has something to do with this keyword’. Just think about the two or three phrases you want to be known for and weave that in naturally.”

So if you do web design in Stafford for example and you wanted Google to rank you for these keywords then you would need to have these specific words in the title, main header and first paragraph, but simply forcing the term, ‘web design in Stafford’ over and over, every second sentence is going to raise a red flag with Google.

Know before you write your article or web copy what the target keywords for this item are and then creatively weave them in a few times, but not more than three or four.

So climb the rankings with a consistent message, that offers something to the users and don’t over do it. Remember, Google is just too smart to be out smarted.

A sea of text that doesn’t give any valuable information is sure to put your visitors off. It’s true that Google loves text and relevant text can help your ranking with Google, but pages and pages of irrelevant text is not going to help anyone.

Tip: Only write as much as you need to and make sure every word counts, either in important information for your visitor or in converting your visitor into a customer.

2. Fill your site with pointless pictures
Loads of pointless images are really going to put off your visitors. Make sure your images add something to the overall visitor experience or offer a visual clue. Images add to your page weight and will make your page load slower, so less is more.

Tip: Only add a few relevant images that add something to the users experience, preferably, an image that gives the user a visual clue they are in the right place.

3. Make sure that Google Can’t See Your Site
If keywords that are relevant to your business and website are not on the your website then Google isn’t going to show your site in their search engine results pages (SERPs). Think about how searchers will look for website or business and make sure that those keywords are on your website.

Tip: If you sell widgets in Staffordshire, then make sure that ‘Widgets in Staffordshire’ is in your page title, your header 1 tag and in the first paragraph. Also putting these important keywords in the meta description and in the meta keywords will help.

4. Hide Your Phone Number and Contact Page
Although you’ve written a load of tosh and google can’t find or crawl you, by some miracle someone has made it to your website and wants to contact you about your product. So make sure that you have your phone number and contact form readily available.

Tip: Put your phone number and a link to your contact page on every web page so that customers can get in contact with you. The easier the better.

5. Write it, Launch it, Leave it!
Once you have finished your website off and launched it, leave it be. No new content, no updates, loads of out of date information. If you never cleaned or painted your store front, never changed or dusted the window display, passing customers will quickly get turned off and the same is true for your website.

Tip: Your website needs regular updates. Make sure you update relevant information on the website, add news stories or blog articles and keep things fresh.

Reported issues are disappearing text when changing from HTML view to Visual View and tool bar problems on the HTML text editor.

This seems to be an issue with the editor itself which is the TinyMCE HTML editor.  TinyMCE have reported this as a known bug with IE9 that is now fixed and released so the latest versions of WordPress should have an updated editor which should fix the issue.

IE9 came out of beta in February (with an RC release) and the official complete product was released in March. I find the new IE9 browser much faster, cleaner and more reliable than its predecessor IE8 but it is only available for Windows Vista and Windows 7. If you can upgrade to IE9 then it’s a good idea. If you have upgraded to IE9 and you’re experiencing problems then let me assure you that a few kinks along the way is par for the course and no reason to go back to IE8.

For the time being it is advisable to simply use Firefox or Chrome a as an immediate fix. Firefox is my preferred and default web browser anyway.

A longer term solution is to upgrade WordPress to the most recent version and this seems to be working fine with the latest release of IE9 and other major browsers. To update your WordPress installation contact your system administrator or hosting support partner. If that’s Rake Mark, then don’t hesitate.

Please feel free to report any further bugs or issues relating to WordPress and IE9 via the comments section below or by contacting Rake Mark via our website

Over a year ago I wrote about how impressed I was with Sage Pay, leading me to recommend them to existing clients and every new client. Last year the payment gateway provider rolled out a raft of changes and updates and was plagued by problems for a number of months.

Third Man Down on Sage Pay Website

The system has seen a period of consistent stability with no reports in to Rake Mark of any issues since the end of April, but this is the latest in a string of outages that the third man system has had this year.

As of 6pm (ish) only a few transactions still don’t have a fraud score with a couple more than 24 hours old (which will now presumably never get a complete score).

We’ll keep you posted of any more Sage Pay related issues.

As a professional web developer in Staffordshire, my one tip has to be, ‘Register your own domain name’.

Domain Name Madness

Of course Rake Mark can take care of this hassle and register your name for you and if you ask our customers they’ll tell you that we are a trustworthy bunch and your domain name is safe with us. But not every Staffordshire web design company are as honest and as open as us.

And this is where you’re problems may begin.

Web Design Project Nightmare Scenario

You have selected the name for your new venture, agonised over the domain name for your new website and taken considerable care in finding a website design company that suits your needs. You ask them to register the names for you and after an initial consultation they get to work.

It soon becomes apparent that the design team are not the great fit that you hoped. They don’t seem to get what you wanted, don’t understand what you are trying to achieve. Its a shame but you are going to have to go elsewhere.

Or your website designer seems to have lost interest in your site and you really need some changes making asap. Your tired of being ignored so you’re going to go elsewhere.

You assume that because you instructed the web designers to register the names that they’re yours. Guess again.

Its only now you discover the true colours of the company that you have asked to create the website of your dreams. You now find that they are refusing to release your domain names. Or if they will allow the name transfer its under a major protest and will only allow the name to be transferred once you have paid an inflated bill.

Domain Name Heartache: Prevention is Better Than Cure

The sheer volume of heartache and problems that I have come into contact with over this single issue is unreal. It is the single most common problem that we come into contact with and in many cases the client has to register a new name and start again from scratch.

The sad truth is that it is totally avoidable.

If you create your own account with a registrar like 123-Reg then you can register any domain names yourself and keep control of your names at all times. It is a hassle, I’ll admit. You have to create the account, register the name, point the name at your web developers servers and then remember to renew the names (you’ll get emails to remind you).

But its worth it.

Another potential banana skin is not all website developers will allow you to keep your names registered elsewhere (and you have to wonder why) and then point them at their name servers. But that’s OK, plenty of us good guys do.

Eek. Rake Mark Registered My Name

As premier providers of web design in Staffordshire you can relax with Rake Mark. You are always totally welcome to move your name elsewhere (try it if you don’t believe me). So if your name is with us you can rest easy.

So why am I telling people not to register their domain names with us? Well it would be a bit hypocritical and self-serving if I said ‘Register your own domain name… unless your using Rake Mark’. I would in effect be saying trust no-one but Rake Mark and we do have honest competitors. The issue for you is you may not know who you can trust until its too late.

So as the song says you should always wear sunscreen and, when it comes to web design, register your own domain name. If you don’t then in both cases you might get burnt.

The Les Paul Google Doodle

 Wow! That’s all there is to say about the Google Doodle from yesterday. I thought the fully working Pac Man was brilliant but this topped that and then some.

In case you’re unaware of what the Google Doodle is, its usually an image to represent both the Google logo and also something of significance like Lewis Carrol’s birthday or the first man on the moon. When you click it it takes you to a google search about that topic.

Yesterday there was a collections of guitar strings shaped to represent a guitar and a the Google Logo, all in aid of Les Paul’s 96th birthday. Although that in itself was clever, the show stopper was being able to strum the guitar. Different strings had been grouped so that different mouse swishes would bring up different chords.

It really was genius.

Since the rugby season is over and there’s no test match this week I am really focused on Rake Mark work, which is great because we are suddenly very busy. So with everything that’s going on I really didn’t have a Friday Fun lined up or the time to find / write one.

But regardless of the bags under my eyes and lack of time in my life I had to share yesterday’s Google Doodle.

I hope you didn’t miss it.

I was reminded of this when I heard how Sir Chris Hoy MBE, the multiple world and Olympic champion track cyclist, played his part into the building of the new Olympic Velodrome. Although the architects knew how to build beautiful buildings, they had never competed in track cycling so they asked for Hoy’s advice on how to make the perfect track.

The result? The track and the building are being hailed as a major success. The track shape, air temperature and the position of the infield are all very important for a track cyclists. But don’t forget the loo.

Chris mentioned that one thing that might be appreciated is a toilet near the start line. And he got his wish. There is even rumours that one has a plaque on it just for him.

It is this partnership between both the web development team and the website owner that will create a successful website project. As your website developer we know from experience which ideas will be effective and which have been tried and failed. That is our job.

But only you know your industry, your customers and your market. You know what your website needs to do, how it will fill the needs of your business and those of your customers. And it is this partnership that creates success.

Rake Mark will be able to build you a solid foundation, a website that simply looks the business and works to maximum effect. We can help you promote your new website, increase visibilty and drive traffic to it.

Only you know where to put the loo.

Earlier this year, we registered the name ‘rake mark’  for our family run website design business, established and registered as a limited company in 2006. As part of that process we needed to do some research into the legal bits and pieces associated with that registration.

What Trade Mark Symbol Should I use?

According to the IPO ( Intellectual Property Office )  there is no legal requirement to publically Identify your trademark, however if you choose to do so, using the ® Symbol or the abbreviation “RTM” (for Registered Trade Mark) is also recognised to show that your trade mark is registered. To use either of these identifiers the mark can be registered somewhere other than in the United Kingdom.

Using either the ® symbol or the abbreviation when your mark is not registered would be breaking the law under Section 95 of the Trade Marks Act 1994. 

However, contrary to common belief using the ‘TM’ is not indication that your mark is actually registered, only that it is being used as a trade mark. The symbol ‘TM’ has no legal significance in the UK. 

We created a couple of ® Symbols for our own use and thought we would share so feel free to download for your own Marks.

Try It ! Follow @rakemark

According to the official Twitter Blog, 50 websites have already added the new ‘Follow’ button including Fox News, The Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal and MTV.co.uk.

It is thought that this will make it easier for you to follow and interact with the people and brands that are of most interest to you. You will be able to instantly add the Twitter account to your follow list at the time of interest, rather than the conscious act of adding to your list of followers at a later time.

Standing in the shoes of the publisher or website owner for one second, the power of a single click follow is, I suppose, yet to be measured. This is a brand new social media marketing feature, however making the steps easier for you to gain a greater web presence surely can’t be a bad thing.

Twitter have published clear instructions on how to implement this into your own website and twitter is keen to see this throughout the Net. We will son implement into both the main website and the blog, we’ll keep you informed of the results.

I have blogged before about false Google First Page guarantees, but I came across one First Page Guarantee that really works. So if you are languishing on page 8 or 9 then get ready to instantly be on Google Page 1! [Note: If you are further back than page 9 then this method will only improve things by 90%]

I have paraphrased the instructions and made my own screen shots but credit to the original author. Also, before you get too excited about this amazing idea, note that I have posted this in the ‘Fun’ category.

Step 1: Go to www.Google.co.uk and enter a search term.

Affordable Website Design Google Search

Step 2: On the top right hand corner click the little cog and select search settings

Click on the Cog and then Click Search Settings

Step 3: Scroll down a bit to the setting section for “Number of Results”

If this is greyed out then you need to disable Google Instant, so click on ‘Do not use Google Instant. Once Google Instant is disabled then change ‘Number of Results’ from 10 to 100.

Edit Your Google Search Settings

Step 4: Click Save Preferences

Save Your Changes

Now scroll down, the result that was on page 8 or 9 is now on Google Page 1. Instant Google Page 1 listing.

This Search Engine Optimisation stuff is easy!

EDIT:
I arrived home from a hard days slog to a chilled glass of wine last night. So when I should have been posting this article and finishing off a few bits I was BBQ-ing and sipping cool white wine. Hence the Saturday post.

 By the way, I did tell you not to get too excited, have a good weekend.
Phil

Rake Mark Website Design in Stafford - photography by Sarah Brassington

We have been asked recently where our company name came from, so we have uploaded a page on our main rakemark.com website but also thought a quick blog article would give you all a good insight to our brand and company.

Rake Mark is a website design company based in Stafford, Staffordshire and is owned by Philip and Sarah Brassington. The web company started out it’s days about five and a half years ago, trading under the name of ‘Sapientia Media’ (which is Latin for wisdom) but we soon discovered that the name was being used by other companies so we set about finding our very own brand and what was to become one of our USP’s (Unique Selling Points).

We had thrown around dozens of ideas but nothing had really made us think ‘Yes, that’s the one’, until that is, we visited the bottle nose dolphins of Florida. It was whilst on this holiday in early 2006 we were fortunate enough to swim with these creatures and where we found out about the “rake marks” on their skin.

So what exactly is a Rake Mark?

Rake Mark’s are sets of parallel scratches/scores in the skin of a dolphin; these arise when dolphins fight, play and flirt with each other and are common especially in wild adult male dolphins.
These marks are usually shallow enough to fade with time as new layers of skin grow, but show clear evidence that the dolphin’s are meeting and interacting with other dolphins.
As these marks are created by the scraping of teeth on skin they are not uniform in any way and each and every dolphin will carry a different set of marks, making them individual and unique.

Rake Mark Affordable Website Design

Individual and unique, is how we feel about our company and the services that we provide. We firmly believe that quality website design is achievable at an affordable cost to you, making it an effective part of your business marketing plan.

Search Engine Optimisation: The Basics Just Don’t Change

For all the much publicised changes of the last few years to the Google algorithm (Caffeine last year and more recently, Panda) and for all the new methods that are written about improving your ranking, the basics just don’t change. New ideas on how to fool Google (known as black hat techniques) are written about all the time, but either they don’t work, or Google gets wind and updates the algorithm.

If you need convincing then read the original article and compare this advice to the advice that Google is advising on its webmaster blog and webmaster guidelines today. Not much if anything has changed. Things changed often in time gone by but Google is pretty stable in its recommendations and now has been for three years (at least).

There are loads of articles written on SEO all the time, so if there is nothing new to report are they all saying the same thing? No, (well some of them are) but blog articles on SEO tend to be about nuances or ideas to tweek your sites SEO rather than where to get started.

Other articles talk about black hat techniques, ways to fool Google into ranking your site higher than it otherwise would be. These ideas may work for a while, but sooner or later Google changes their algorithm and without any notice, your site disappears from Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for ever.

So now is time to throw away your black hat google book, stop with idea of the month. Learn the solid SEO techniques, practise them well and climb the rankings.

You hear about claims like this all the time and this seemed no different, but the real point of interest in this article was the aforementioned guy who offered pet care to those believers who were to be ‘Raptured’ and wanted someone to look after their pets once they had been taken up to heaven.

According to the BBC article he charges $135 to look after those pets left behind and is reported as tell the Wall Street Journal that they would be disappointed twice, “Once because they weren’t raptured and again because I don’t do refunds.”

No matter what your beliefs, that is pretty funny and very enterprising. Why can’t I ever think of those kinds of ideas?

About Domain Names

A domain name is simply a user friendly ‘pointer’ for your website address, for example www.rakemark.com is the domain name for our blog but by typing in the IP Address [89.248.50.235] into the address bar will still get you there it’s just not easy to remember and a lot less pretty Domain transfer … as simple as ABC

A Transfer Away, The Push: To transfer your .co.uk .me.uk and .org.uk domain names away to another provider,
Log-in to the current registrar of your .uk domain name control panel (you may have to ask your provider to do this for you) select your domain name and manage. Go to the ‘Domain Transfers’ and change the IPS tag to [NEW IPS TAG], save and Checkout.
Done!

B Transfer in, The Pull: To transfer a domain name into an existing account, Log-in to your Control Panel and select Transfer Domain. Enter the domain name that you want to transfer in to your account and click transfer and checkout.
Done!

C Synchronise: Synchronise the push and pull. Once the current owner has updated the IPS tags then the new company should, within a reasonable length of time, request the name. Once the update of the tags occurs (the push) then the request (the pull) the transfer is complete.

Very Simple, All Done!

*A word of warning, if a change of IPS Tag is instigated and a request is not made for the domain by the new IPs, the domain name may become inaccessible to both companies.

A .com .net .org .info .name .biz transfer has a few more steps but don’t let it put you off, you just need to request from the current provider an ‘authorisation code’ to complete the transfer of the name. You will need the ‘authorisation code’ to complete the pull element of the transfer.

Remember to make sure that the domain is in an ‘Unlocked’ state, and you should keep all the emails to and from those involved in case an issue arises.

*these are based on 123 Reg transfer instructions however all name registrars are very similar and transfers work on the same basis of ‘Push & Pull’.

Amazon introduced a one click checkout system on their online stores. The system takes all the card details and address details of a customer and then when they are browsing the Amazon store they can simply press the one click checkout and the item is paid for and on its way.

Amazon decided that they ought to patent this idea. They filed all the paperwork and the patent was progressing and then the Internet community got wind and got very hot under the collar, the feeling being that this business process was too broad to be patented.

Then, as the protests grew, some bright spark noticed that others had already invented one click checkout before Amazon and once evidence was presented the Trade Mark was awarded to the other mystery person and Amazon was not allowed to use one click checkout anymore.

The Proof offered was that there is no one click checkout on Amazon.co.uk any more.

Investigating the Urban Myth

Obvious place to start, the Amazon.co.uk website. I seemed to remember that there had been one click checkout but I couldn’t remember seeing it recently (which is how this ended up on my radar). Unfortunately, the it was confirmed as a myth straight up. I had to log in to the secure server, but once I had one click checkout was there.

So where did this come from. I had to know, so I Google searched “one click checkout patent”

This threw up all kinds of interesting tidbits. The story seems to be that Amazon was using one click checkout and successfully applied for a patent in 1999. Straight after the patent was granted they sued a major US competitor, Barnes and Nobel. It was settled and Barnes and Nobel use the one click checkout system. Also Apple were the only other company that the one click system is licensed to.

Then our story takes a twist. In 2006 a New Zealand actor became annoyed at Amazon and their slow book delivery and decided to dish out some revenge. He dug up old patents that were filed before Amazon’s one click patent and applied for a re-examination at a cost of $2520 (an expensive way to show your displeasure in a delivery service).

In 2007 the broadest parts of the claim were rejected by the US patents office but other elements were confirmed. So a partial victory for both sides. A few years of legal stuff went on with revisions being filed by Amazon until the amened patent was confirmed by the US Patents office in March 2010.

So the Myth is partially confirmed, there was a legal challenge to the patent which led to a re-examination with previous work being cited as the reason for the challenge but Amazon do own a patent for one click checkout in the US. Amazon applied for Patents in Europe but they have never been granted.

What This Means to Your E-Commerce Store

I’m not aware of any e-commerce software that has a one click checkout feature, mostly due to the difficulty for smaller businesses in safely storing card details for any length of time. So if your are an SME then this will be the prohibitive factor.

On a wider scale of things, Amazon own the patent in the US for online stores that utilise a shopping cart system. This is quite normal for most stores, so these stores won’t be able to integrate one click checkout.

However, a mobile app that wants to allow users to press a button and buy, essentially make one click to buy, no other cart system will be in place and this will be permitted. This is the biggest key to the change, the future of mobile shopping.

Incidentally, talking of the future, the Patent runs out in 2017 anyway, so not that long until we can all use one click checkout if we want to.

That is a direct quote, I wrote it word for word and then read it back to them so I could be sure that I had it right. As a uni grad my first question was, “What’s your reference?”, or in lay mans terms, how do you know that’s true. They didn’t know where it was from or why it was true, just that its true (not very helpful).

Exploring the Claim

A quick Google search will reveal a whole bunch of websites that use the claim but none of them actually use a quote or directly cite anything, they just attribute the “53 times more likely” claim to Forrester Research. One or two mention a blog post by Nate Elliot from Forrester, but this blog never makes a specific 53 times claim.

Since the person who made the claim didn’t know where it came from I decided to email Forrester directly and too my pleasant surprise, I got a very helpful reply.

Becky Anzalone, a citations specialist at Forrester research, told me in an email that the “53 times more likely” claim is based on research that is only available to clients. I found that it is available to purchase for $199. So, for me, if you didn’t buy the research you really shouldn’t be citing from it directly. And if you had bought it, you’d know where it came from

Furthermore, Forrester have an 18 month citation policy. What this basically means is if a published paper or blog article is more than 18 months old then they do not permit citation from it. This may be because the research they do is in a rapidly changing field, namely the Internet, the web and online marketing and the like) so once a paper is over 18 months old then the research may no longer be relevant.

The research that the “53 times more likely” claim is made is from November 2008, which is two and a half years ago. So even if we had the full research paper in front of us and we were persuaded by its data and its arguments, the relevance of this research will have depreciated so much over this time that even the authors don’t want it cited.

Ms Anzalone did kindly send me the quote but also asked that I did not cite it. I intend to keep my end of that bargain, so you’ll have to take it on blind faith that the quote with the “53 times more likely” claim in it that was sent does not prove it to be true and not something to base a £1000 purchase on.

If you don’t believe in blind faith, feel free to buy the article.

After a few posts flew up with the usual responses, one poster advised that maybe the OP (original poster) should either read the lengthy discussion on Wikipedia or maybe read this easier to understand explanation.

On another note…

Online Marketing Advice from Yell

I was intending to post and discuss a claim made by a Yell sales rep earlier this week, but it has become a bit of a tangled web and I haven’t reviewed all the supporting material sent me yet, so I’ll get into it over the weekend.

Essentially they told me that (and I quote) you are “53 times more likely to be on the Google front page with a video than without”. This is quite a spectacular claim and if its true then we need to stop worrying about blogging and value content for Google position and just all become handheld camcorder video clip creators (which would be far more fun than copywriting).

The claim seems to be attributed to some research from Forrester Research from November 2008, so pretty old research. It is so out of date that it is against Forrester’s policy to allow bloggers like me to cite from it. So it seems that as The Temptations said, “…believe half of what you see. Oh, and none of what you hear.” when you hear it on the grapevine.

Have a good weekend.
Phil

A bit under three years ago Matt Cutts gave an interview to USA Today. I saw the article shortly after it was first published and it did strike me as a really good layman’s introduction to search engine optimisation (SEO). It also hammered home that giving Google interesting unique content that is relevant to your search terms is not enough, you do need to spend a couple of minutes per page to make sure that you have made it friendly to Google, and then they will find you.

I came across the article again when I was clearing out my favourites and noticed how the article is as relevant today (three years on) as it was when it was first published and was worth refreshing and re-posting. You can find the original article on the USA Today website, but by the time you read this is could be a dead link.

Matt gave 5 pieces of advice,

1. Spotlight your search term on the page

What Matt is talking about here is your keywords or key phrases. Try to give each page a single searchable topic, to use Matt’s example, chiropractors in the San Diego area, and then think of two or three ways that people might search for it. So you might have “San Diego chiropractor”, “chiropractors in San Diego” and maybe “back pain treatments San Diego”.

Write these terms into your copy two or three times each at the most in a natural way. If this is what the page is really about then this won’t prove a problem.

2. Fill in your Tags

Even before the article was written SEO bloggers were saying that Google paid no attention to the ‘meta tags’ on the page and here is Matt Cutts telling us its important. These bloggers are still out there saying the same old things, but as Matt tells us, its important to fill in the description and title tags on our web pages with good keyword rich text.

Matt says the chiropractor should fill in the title tag with something like,
“San Diego chiropractor. Local doctor serves San Diego community.”

Matt also said that the keywords meta tag should still be filled in but Google doesn’t pay much attention to it (maybe this is what some of the SEO bloggers get confused with)

3. Get Other Sites to Link Back to You

If you ever wondered why other sites link higher than you, this is where it’s at. You need people to link back to you. This is because Google determines your popularity by the number of ‘votes’ for your site and if someone links to your site then this constitutes a vote.

Votes or links from big sites like the BBC or Times Online websites will count as a bigger vote than from your friend’s small blog, but they can still help, so ask your friends to link to you. The best tip for getting lots of links to your site is to generate content other people will want to talk about and link to.

4. Create a Blog and Post Often

Google likes regularly updated, original, relevant content. So our chiropractor could write short posts regarding the causes of back troubles and how we can avoid them, new treatments and therapies. Links from this content to relevant pages on the main site can also help. To build more links you could offer to guest blog for other sites.

The cost is minimal if anything with a great range of low cost and no cost blogging options.

Google Free Tools

5. Register for Free Tools

Google has a number of free tools that are really useful and can also help Google find, crawl and rank your pages. Your web developer should be able to help you set up the three main tools:
Google Webmaster tools: Here you can upload a text-based site map, which shows Google the pages of your site, and see some vital linking statistics
Google Analytics: Use this to monitor traffic to your site, who’s coming and how they’re getting there
Google Local Business: Google are showing business results more and more as the first 10 results so if you’re not registered, you’re missing out.

We, that is rake mark include both Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics with all of our new websites and have done for some time.

About Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts

For anyone who is unclear on just who Matt Cutts is, he works for Google in their web spam department and has an unofficial but authorised blog that talks about Google, its search Algorithm and other SEO related topics. It’s seen as a better source of information to the official webmaster blog as it’s more informal and less corporate.

As well as being the head of the webspam team, Matt attends a number of conferences each year and gives interviews from time to time. This information was from one of them.

IE 8 Web Browser: One Web Dev Guy Says Goodbye

When I moved from IE 8 I downloaded Firefox and Chrome. I just didn’t bother with Opera, we don’t develop for it and they don’t offer developer release notes.

I found Chrome broke all the rules and it wasn’t better for it. Where is my home button? Where is my menu? So I need to change some settings in the config menu, so where is the config menu? OK, get the idea, but too annoying for me, I don’t have time for that.

Firefox however grabbed all my favourites, had a simple menu bar, and essentially could be described as IE that works. It was actually a web browser that worked how expected a web browser to work, it followed the rules I was used to and displayed the pages I requested without crashing. Perfect.

Today I moved up to Firefox 4

Firefox 4: New Look, But Still Good Old Trusty Firefox

Its got that cleaner look that the new browsers are all going for since the launch of chrome, but its still my old trusty Firefox that browses for hours, displays all my pages as the developer intended (without the need for a compatibility view) and does it in a nice secure manner.

I’ve still got my toolbar, my homepage button, my browsing history, just a new look and a bit more secure. I just really love the look and feel and I really love the additional page space that all the new browsers give you, which I think is one great thing that Chrome has contributed to the new web browser design.

So my view of the new Firefox web browser is that its still trusty, secure Firefox, just its even better.

At a birthday party in December I was talking shop (Sorry Sarah, you know I try not to) and Sage Pay came up. The general consensus in the group was that Sage Pay was just too good to abandon, and even with the difficulties I have faced, I still agreed and looked forward to a clean system in 2011.

Since then the original blog post about SagePay has received some comments, mostly negative, mostly after the big website re-design. It is the ongoing problems and these comments that prompted me to write this update. Also, I can tell you that last week my first customer weighed up the pros and cons and signed up with WorldPay. I just couldn’t with a hand on heart recommend Sage Pay any more.

What Went Wrong?

Sometimes you can’t pinpoint the moment that a service stopped firing. With Sage Pay you can see it clearly. The October My Sage Pay update was problematic and it never seems to have worked right ever since.

I constantly have to report issues with parts of My Sage Pay not working. It is usually the Sage Pay security element, 3rd Man. It either doesn’t calculate the score, or you can’t see the detail or My Sage Pay just crashes. At least when it crashes now it doesn’t lock you out for 15 minutes and it does work in the Internet Explorer web browser (it didn’t for about a month you know).

New E-Commerce Website Recommendation?

At the time of writing all of our existing e-commerce customers are staying put, those with SagePay are sticking with Sage Pay and those with WorldPay or PayPal for their websites are staying with them, but some of them are considering their options. New customers get the full low down and then get to make a choice.

It is much easier for us to just implement Sage Pay and PayPal, we don’t want to have to support different gateways, but we have a responsibility to our clients. Will WorldPay work out any better? Time will tell, and I’ll try to keep you posted.

When I say new look, what I actually mean is ‘Twitters Newest Look’. The web designers at Twitter are kept busy with their fair share of updates, improvements and changes throughout their social media website www.twtter.com.
In amongst the most recent set of changes includes a change in the ‘Twitter Blue’, from bright & light to a more metallic & dust blue. The homepage has also been given a much cleaner and crisper look, displaying now a simple bar to display the most popular users. The ‘Signup section’ is now much clearer and has been made a lot easier for New user to clearly map what they need to do to create an account.
While I personally quite like the changes they are all visual changes but I would say that the biggest change of all is the language & user journey change.
Twitter now moving away from ‘what’s going on’ (asking you for input to tell others) seems to have now changed focus to ‘Follow your interests’ (giving you an insight into those that you follow). Now worded as ‘Follow your interests: Instant updates from your friends, industry experts, favorite celebrities, and what’s happening around the world.’
It is subtle and while many will notice the visual change, will miss the very clever way that twitter is changing the way it asks us to communicate and potentially the reasons for the shift in the market it is now aiming for?
So a shift in the market place for Twitter? Maybe?

Google Docs Viewer has today launched their support for 12 new file formats. Used by millions worldwide daily, Google Docs Viewer allows users to view files securely online without having to download the file itself. With support for formats such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and PDF Google Docs & Google Docs Viewer is already well used for both internal and external business use.

• The improved Google Docs Viewer support now handles:
• Microsoft Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 / 2010 (.PPTX)
• Apple Pages (.PAGES)
• Adobe Illustrator (.AI)
• Adobe Photoshop (.PSD)
• Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
• Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
• PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
• TrueType (.TTF)
• XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

As you can see this list now includes .XLSX & .PPTX  (2007 file formats) but also offers a ‘Quick View’ and embed options. MORE HERE

Of course, as always you could uploads you files to Google docs and share you files either in searchable or in restricted areas.

Building a networking community is a relatively straight forward, functional thing to do and with Social and Media Web coming into their own, if you haven’t already you should really get in the game if you don’t want to miss out on its possibilities.

So here are some very simple rules for you to apply to maximise your efforts of Social Media.

Build Solid Relationship’s – Don’t just post regardless who is out there, Listen to what you subscribers/Fans are asking for and respond to them either generally or personally. Be Interested in what they have to say and offer feedback and comment on the posts that they make or comments that the leave.

Patience – Creating a solid Social Media Network is not Happening overnight, or even over month. Months and years is a more realistic goal. Obtain and put in place ways that you can monitor and analyse the growth (or decline) in activity. Link it to times of the year, company promotions or activities, that way you know how to manage its success and direction.

Believe in your content – Do NOT post jibba jabba (unless it is supposed to be idle chat),  you will be busted straight away. Post material that you have full confidence and believe in, you will speak with authority and this will be reflected in your writing and in your responses.

Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin – Don’t try and cover a Huge array of topics, you will be poster of many and an authoritative source of none! Stick to just a few topics that you can cover extensively and build the reputation for the “Go to Guy”.

 Be Available – When you get feedback on a post or a re-tweet acknowledge that you know about the interaction. People love to feel included and while you may not always have the answers that they are looking for, closing your eyes and hope they go away by ignoring them is not going to build confidence and Relationships – Remember these people are singing you praises (you hope).

Do Unto Others – Social Media and Networking is all about human interaction, feedback, what people think about this company or that company, but it is usually based on something solid rather than they have a nice business card. If you want feedback and growth and your info/links spreading round the world then you need to do the same. If you find a nice article then post it, comment on it and then people will do the same for you – and so it grows.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools are now linking, making it easier to access your Google Analytics features form your webmaster tools.

So what’s changed?

You can now View your Google Analytics Referring Pages directly through you webmaster account via the link.

You can also now view and access your ‘Google Account Dashboard’ from you Webmaster Tools account.

Linking your Accounts

Really simple:
Go to your Webmaster Tools home page, click Manage next to the site you want, and then select Google Analytics profile.

Select the profile you want to associate with the site, then click Save

Accessing your linked data

Select the site that you wish, from the left hand menu select Your site on the web > Links to your site and then See the Referring Sites data from Google Analytics. Great little feature for grabbing data on Referring from your Google Analytics account.

How is this of benefit?

While the data is still in a relatively basic state, it can still give you a good indication of traffic, referrals and content that is being linked to.

Well I guess we all just wait and see. Watch for updates, improvements and watch the Google guys give us next.

The web and internet trends are always on the move and it is a continuous battle to keep up with what to do, what not to do and who’s doing what! According to comscore.com we are seeing significant changes in the use of Social Media Marketing (Blogs, Facebook Business, LinkedIn etc) at a rate that have not been seen for 15 years, and this isn’t just businesses jumping on the band wagon its businesses providing what their users demand.

2009 -2010 was all about Social Media awareness, uptake and letting business owners know the benefit of user content and possibilities for such a marketing tool. Now in  2011 we are very much veering towards ‘Use It or Lose Out’

Comscore.com reports that surveys conducted show 48% of people searching the web in 2010 did so using a mobile device and with an increase in both interest and usage of mobile surfing this is sure to rise throughout 2011.

So if your marketing your business online make sure you have all your bases covered, because you can be sure your competitors will be.

Almost everyone is familiar with the term SEO and if you’re not it simply stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’. The very basics of SEO and organic (or natural) listings are inexpensive and most website design and development companies should implement as standard but if they have not been, their absence will have a dramatic effect on the effectiveness of indexing (searchable content) on your website.

Start your 2011 Business Marketing Strategy with a online boost and get the basics spot on!

Here are 5 totally free SEO tips from our very own SEO checklist to get you well on the way to organic listing heights.

1. Page Title – Use clear keyword rich content for your Page Title. Avoid using the same title in more than one page and try to use this space to entice the user as it will appear as a hyperlink in the search engine results page. Perhaps something along the lines of ‘Web Design Services in Stafford – Rake Mark Solutions’, this is to cover search terms such as Web Design Staffordshire. This is prime Web page real-estate that is often overlooked and not used to its full potential.

2. Meta Data – sits between the <head></head> tags on your website. Meta tags are used for Content, Description, keywords etc. Now these tags have taken a bashing over the years with some web bods saying “no need to use them as Google doesn’t look at them anymore” while others say “always use them”. I’m recommending that you DO use them and the reason for this is that within Google’s Webmaster Tools it clearly lists your keywords, from your website so Google does know that they are there and does look at them, how much weighting they hold is an “unknown” but the facts remain, Google is still looking at them!

3. Clean Code – As web developers through and through we talk about ‘Tags’ as part of our everyday language knowing that all around us will understand, so let me firstly apologies for that, and secondly explain a  little. Tags form the structure of your webpage (before it is displayed in your browser) its format is <head></head> or <body></body>. Anything that has an opening (<body>) tag MUST be closed with a closing (</body>) tag. This helps the Brower, which at the end of the day is just a machine, read your web pages, known’s where a section starts and ends and can correctly index the content of your webpage so that it can be ranked in the listings page. If the code is rough, unfinished or poorly written, while it might render (display in the browser) as expected the search engines will struggle to index your web pages correctly.

4. Header Tags – Use Header tags <h1></h1> (Not forgetting to close your tag) to define page organizational structure and simplify page navigation. Header tags go from H1 – H6 priority, use 1 as highest header priority. Text within these tags is indexed and given a greater weighting over standard <p></p> (paragraph) tag text. Use them wisely, they will serve you well.

5. Rich Keywords for content – Over the years there has been tips and tricks and big money to be made if you have the correct combination of SEO cheats – not anymore. Google (and other search engines) reward relevant content … Simple, not tricks, no gimmicks.

Google expects to see your keywords in the first paragraph (so put them in there), It also expects to see references/variations of your chosen keywords through-out your page. However more is not always better. Google expect the keywords density to be maybe 1.5-2% of your keyword within a section of text which could raise your ranking, however don’t keyword stuff, Google will punish you and your effort will be in vein.

So starting with the top of the page and Page Title, moving to Meta Data, Clean well structured XHTML code, Include your Header tags and then fill you web page with keyword rich juicy content, you should be in great shape.

Internet Explorer : 61.58%
Firefox: 24.23%
Chrome: 5.61%
Safari : 4.45%
Opera: 2.35%
Other: 1.77%

By the end of the year:

Internet Explorer: 57.08%
Firefox: 22.81%
Chrome: 9.98%
Safari : 5.89%
Opera: 2.23%
Other: 2.01%

With the Browser Leaders, Internet Explorer and Firefox both losing ground it has paved the way for Chrome to make the largest upward gain of 4.37%.
Points of a percentage may sound insignificant at first glance but when you look at the hundreds of millions of web users around the globe these figures represent real live users and you can bet that with the current competitive browser market the way it is, browser developers are watching every single point!
However, there is possibility that Internet Explorer will grab this back its share loss and may even gain ground with the release of IE9 with is currently in Beta but has already shown movement in the browser wars.

Choice of Web Systems

SagePay have announced that you will soon be able to select which system you want to use, either the old system (known affectionately as myoldskool) or the new My SagePay interface. With all the current issues surrounding the new web interface I would imagine that there will be a lot reverting back to the old interface.

Time To Jump Ship, or Just Change Interface

So if we need to change back to the old interface (which is not actually fully functional) is it time to change Web Gateway Provider? Many who are shouting about it in the blogosphere would have you believe that they are going to do just that. Namely leave SagePay and hop skip and a jump across to WorldPay. There not, of course, because anyone who has set up a payment gateway knows that nothing is that simple. So I don’t think it’s true and even if it was, its a knee jerk reaction and a mistake.

This is not a time to make a sudden decision, or mistake or a costly move. I have used WorldPay and have customers who do. I’m not convinced that WorldPay is the way forward. Remember there is a reason we started using SagePay in the first place. Time will tell, and maybe SagePay will have to go and WorldPay or others will come back into play, but I think that they need to be given a chance to get their act together and start giving us that great reliable service we have come to depend on.

We are fast approaching the Christmas season and as a business you will already be well aware of the cost associated with designing, printing and distributing say 500+ Christmas cards to your clients is not one to be dismissed.

A recent study carried out by LinkShare, found that almost half of Marketers’ will be using one of the many Social Platforms for online marketing in the coming few months, with a further 37% intending to promote products and services with special offers and coupons.

Social Media Marketing is the perfect platform to either test the waters with a Christmas E-Card/E-Mail Marketing or to expand your current Email Marketing/ Social Media Marketing Campaigns, in either case you need to consider the following:

Budget

What kind of budget are you willing to commit to your campaign, if you are simply sending out an e-card for Christmas with no real objective then you won’t need much at all. However perhaps a smarter business strategy would be to combine the Christmas Season with a special offer or promotion launched on multiple platforms which would require more organising, monitoring, and follow-up and therefore more budget – but may be more beneficial in the long term. Whatever you decide be realistic in your expected outcomes.

Platform

Whichever platform/platforms you choose to use, be sure of one thing – that you can update and Socialise with then regularly or all you hard work will be a waste. Don’t over face yourself pick one or two areas and focus your energy on those – you can always expand at a later date.

Audience

Take some care to understand what it is and who it is that you are targeting e.g.  Don’t waste your time (and theirs) sending vouchers to individuals that clearly don’t have a need for what you are offering. Tailor your offers and marketing to your target and make it an easy decision for them.

Value

One man’s Gold is another man’s rubbish – approach your strategy with a rounded approach. While offering a voucher might tweak the interest of some, a newsletter signup crammed full of useful and therefore valuable info may well be just what the doctor ordered.

Don’t forget the Social in Social Media Marketing

Be prepared to spend some time just interacting with your Fans, Followers or replying to a comment. It’s a fundamental part of building trust, relationships and the difference between Social Media Marketing and Successful Social Media Marketing.

Whilst contributing to a couple of discussions and answering a few questions on my usual forum favourites over the last few days I came across a small business owner who wanted some help with a business to business leaflet campaign. I thought the feedback was interesting and decided to spin it into an article on the RM Blog. 

Is a Leaflet Campaign Effective

The initial query was, I am thinking of doing a b2b leaflet campaign in areas such as business parks and local shops etc. Has any one tried this and is it effective 

I think it was the word ‘effective’ that drew me to the initial post. When we are working on website projects and online marketing this is our yardstick. We consider, ‘Is it effective?’ Not just the look and feel but will it work, will it bring new business.

The responses on the forum are below:

Response 1

If all you intend to do is shove leaflets through letter boxes then your hit rate is probably going to be very low, because the average business gets plenty of them every single week.

Response 2

Create an outstanding leaflet to begin with. Whatever it is that you do, ALWAYS treat it as your “portable showroom” and make it as welcoming, friendly and informative as a good showroom should be. It must also be a “silent salesman” that will be working for you even despite the absence of a real salesperson being present. 

Response 3

It has to be a document that begs to be responded to. It must contain BENEFITS to your prospect, otherwise it will fail right from the start. 

Response 4

Rather than just shoving it through the letter box and walking away, enter the premises and speak to someone and get a commitment from them that it will be at least read. This may well be the receptionist, but even so you can ask her name and also VERY NICELY for the name of the MD or whoever you might think it falls within their job remit and also ask for the best time to call this person for a follow up call for their views. Because of that one-to-one contact and your charm, it is very rare that person will let you down deliberately. 

The business owner in question was enthused and replied, Good Advice! I am not really used to door to door style b2b sales so this will be an experience at least.

The best advice I though was from a poster called Kernow-man. His advice was,

The key to success is going out there to enjoy yourself rather than getting all apprehensive about what you are going to be doing. It is that mindset you start off with which puts a happy smile on your face and people always respond well if you have that glow about you. Treat it as drudgery and you are almost wasting your time.

So Do You Ditch your Website?

I feel that a leaflet campaign can be really effective but I am a big believer that no piece of marketing works well in isolation. If you think a leaflet campaign will be effective on its own you are likely to be disappointed. I think that its clear that any single piece of marketing in isolation is going to have a really limited effect overall but when your marketing activities all gel together then each activity adds more than it would on its own and (although it sounds a bit ponsey) the whole of your marketing becomes more than the sum of its parts.

So a big thanks to Kernow-man and the other posters for their insights. I think the young business owner in question will have a heap of great advice to give a platform for success.

One final thought from this, Kernow-man signs off with the following piece of advice, ‘Youth and vigour is no match for experience and cunning’.

You have been warned.

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A report from the National IT User Centre has predicted that all the “meaningless ramblings” and status updates of social media is potentially helping up and coming entrepreneurs of the future.
While some have a facebook friend list of maybe a couple of hundred people, we wouldn’t consider all of them friends (in the real sense of the word) in everyday life. Our Facebook friend list is often made up of old class mates, friends of friends, people and characters that we may have come across or been introduced to either by Social Media or via a third party but either way the network in vast and almost always self perpetuating.
Your tweets, status updates and comments act as a constant reminder of your existence and while the actual friends within your lists will comment back and interact with your comments (because they know you personally), the business/networking friends part of your list will be reminded firstly of whom you are and possibly where they met you or how they know you more importantly they will be reminded what you do for a living.
Networking in this way is thought to be opening the business arena wide open for entrepreneurs as they are now able to reach, connect and do business with potentially anyone in the world with fewer practical and geographical problems.

I see the four pillars of online marketing as Email Marketing, Google Adwords, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing but the foundation these pillars sit is your website. Others make the argument that in the digital age your website is the foundation to your whole business.

As with your house, if the foundations of your business are in poor condition then it is only a matter of time before the whole shooting match comes crumbling around your ears.

Planning

First and foremost (and the first question I pose to any new customer) what do you want your website to do. Think very carefully about this. It may be obvious (like with a recent new customer who wants to open an online second hand book shop called 10p books) but it might not be.

Your website can sell stuff, of course, but what if your business doesn’t have a product that sells itself and is easily shipped? What if you own a pub? What if you sell cleaning services? What if you’re a hairdresser?  The objectives you have in mind will be different for each one of those businesses.

A common goal for new online strategies is to use your website as the starting point for a conversation with your existing and potential customers. Even if they are not ready to buy from you today you can place your business in their minds for when they are ready to commit. You do this by offering something for nothing, usually information, and hopefully gain something in return, an email address for example. Once they are ready to buy, your website is the conduit through which they can make contact and book an appointment, a table or a meeting.

Cost

Regarding cost, you essentially have two choices with your website. Firstly, you can do it yourself or pay for a professional to do it.

Building your website yourself will save you money but be careful that by doing it yourself you aren’t starting the rot in your foundations that will cause your business to fail later. You will need a good deal of time and some knowledge of computers and the internet at the very least. If you are a novice, you could look at other websites and try to copy a successful design.

Paying a professional can cost less than £500 with annual costs for hosting and support being under £100 per year, but make sure you know how much the website is going to cost and how much the monthly or annual costs are going to be before signing any documents or parting with any money.

When making your decision consider how many hours setting up and designing your website might cost and factor in your time and how much you would pay yourself or the cost of taking time out of your business. Once you have paid yourself, the difference might only be £100 (or less).  

Design

There are no absolute rights and wrongs in website design but there are things that don’t make logical sense. Think of it like decorating. Your colour choice is neither right nor wrong, but you wouldn’t paint the windows or put wallpaper over the door, because that doesn’t make logical sense.

So you need to make your website your own, a reflection of you and what you and your business stand for but without making logical mistakes. If you’re using a web designer they’ll help you with this.  If the company you are using don’t seem to want to take the time to explain why something is logically wrong or why something else is important, switch to one that will, you’re not short of choice.

Content

Content means the information you are going to put into the pages. This will mostly be words (called copy) and appropriate images, but this can also be sound, animation and video. Sounds that are not invited (like background music) is really annoying and will drive traffic away in droves, but a podcast might be a great addition. Think carefully about headlines and then sub headers as these will give quick clues what the page is about and draw your visitor in.

Do you want to be able to add your own content later on? This might be in the form of a company blog or a news and events section. If you are adding products to a catalogue or e-commerce shop then updating existing products and adding new products will be essential. Don’t assume you will be able to. You won’t be the first to get caught out.

Marketing

Customers will not find your site without you making it easy for them. To help people find your website you need to publicise it in all of your offline marketing. Put the web address on your business cards, letter heads and other stationary. Put your web address in any offline advertising, be it a classified, a display ad or radio ad, make sure your new website gets a mention.

Online marketing can be deployed in small amounts to give your website a boost or it can be used in a more sustained way to drive high volumes of long term visitors. It really is a topic to itself.

A Considered Approach

No matter who designs your website you will need to have a big input from the very first moment the concept is conceived to months and years after the first version has gone live. The Rake Mark website is constantly evolving with new specialist micro sites that are created to support different aspects of the business. A comprehensive marketing strategy backs up and supports our online efforts.

Finally, please remember, no matter how well appointed and decorated your home is, it needs good foundations to stay up and you didn’t wallpaper up the kitchen door for good reason.

What are RSS Feeds?

Ok let start with what RSS stands for – Really Simple Synchronisation and is based on the language XML and on the off chance that hasn’t answered all you questions, you’d better feed a bit more.
In short the RSS feed itself is like a web page that is designed to be read by computer rather than people. The ‘Feed’ webpage is populated with all the news and events of perhaps a blog or the news pages of your website. Now as you can see by the above sample the web pages is readable by your users and can simply be bookmarked within their browser so your users can visit easily and as often as they like? But what if there were a way that your articles to go to them!

That is what RSS is all about!

What is an RSS Feed Reader?

Ok in really simple terms a RSS Reader is fed the web addresses to the RSS Feed Web pages (the ones you have fed it), and does all the leg work for you.

With a mahoosive choice out there I have put a few to get you started — Google Reader, FeedReader & Bloglines.

So Subscribers of your feed will get your News, Products and Events delivered to their computer? No fuss, no Problem and quite frankly No Excuse Not too!

Found this little UTube Video that may help too

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As a website design company we are often asked to create bespoke images for our client’s websites, Print Design Projects and Marketing Material.

Some stuff is standard and really straight forward to do but some is a little funky both to look at and to produce. We thought that it might be useful if we produce a few tutorials or “How To’s” as we go along our merry way.

We’ll use this Article to link to future tutorials; we will also publish any new stuff/ offers or vouchers off to our Facebook Wall (so probably best Become a Fan Eh)

Feel free to make tutorial requests to design@rakemark.com

Tutorials

1. How to create a Metal Effect in Photoshop

Blogging websites have been around for some time now but how many hang around and go on to be a successful information portals and how many wither at the road side limping from one article to the next?

If you’re a social blogger then anything goes really, the website is yours and besides offensive content (which your hosting company will likely remove) you have free rein to be as expressive and informative (or not) as you like. However if your blog is a Business Social Marketing tool then informative content should be high on your blog development strategy.

In a world where information is widely available at the tip of your finger (or rather at the end of a search engine) your users will become less and less willing to pay for the information.

One of the Golden rules of Online Marketing; Information is worth more when it’s free!

How the heck are we supposed to make are knowledge worth anything?

How to Make your Words Matter

Influential Information is all about giving your users a darn good explanation for what you are writing. It’s about creating content that they not only understand, but also value, because valued information is digested, commented on and is where opinions are formed. Your users will feel a sense of ownership to your article (as it will contain their opinions) and at this point your users is more likely to promote on your behalf and/or it will become self perpetuating.

It may take months, even years to get to a place where your articles are thought of as a reputable source but when you do, this is when your words and knowledge is worth something.

Now it may well be that you aren’t trying to sell anything directly but the principle is the same. Whatever your call to action may be create a ‘Zero down side and they have absolutely nothing to lose’ scenario.

Ok, well your reading this article so I am guessing that you already know how important your reputation is and in almost all cases a good reputation is pivotal to long term business success. Building a solid reputation in the business world is rarely something that just falls in your lap, it takes direction and discipline. But one thing you can be sure of is that you do have reputation, deliberate or otherwise – but how much do you actually know about yours?

If you’ve nurtured and guided your reputation from the start then you will probably have a pretty good idea of how your reputation is shaping up. However it never hurts to check from time to time with perhaps a feedback survey. Enter, stage left, Social Media Networking.

Use the tools that your customers are already using. The Social Media Giant Facebook broke the 24million user mark just in the UK earlier this year. Meaning that a large percentage of potential customers are already using the Social Networking website that you could be tapping into and utilising fully with perhaps a specific targeted FBML page or a free tool with Facebook to generate a Poll to gain feedback on what your customers really think of you.

Benchmark Your Reputation

If however you have let your reputation evolve by accident rather than by design you may want to start on the path of firstly finding out what people think of you and secondly whether or not you’re happy with the reputation that you have and now know about.

Obtaining feedback from your customers (those you have already dealt with) is a relatively straight forward process. Present your customer with a feedback form when they next pay an invoice, if they return the form give them 5% off their invoice – simple!

If you’re trying to find out what non customers think about you (and you may have to consider that their thought on your reputation is the reason they are a non customer) you are going to have try somewhat harder. As many have said before me “make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse”. Identify a niche need in your target and offer to fulfil that need where the prize has a significantly larger value to them than the price (whatever that may be).

Good luck.

In my previous article ‘Social Media Marketing, planning your way to success’, I touched on social media marketing methods that you could implement on a free basis and how enlisting a little help from a few professionals may improve you success, but what we didn’t discuss was your Social Media Marketing Strategy.

More and more businesses are realizing that social media is an extremely effective way of marketing your products, services and the ability and importance of using social media to build brand awareness.

A couple of things that you must remember while creating your strategy is the importance of Community – this helps build belonging and trust within your social network. Flexibility – your Strategy is not set in stone. If you need to change it (which you will) don’t feel that you are back to square one – you’re not, you’re improving and building a solid platform from where you can most effectively work.

With that in mind here are my 5 Tips to creating an effective Social Media Marketing Strategy.

Don’t over stretch yourself

Twitter, facebook, linkedin, buzz, digit, myspace, bebo …………… do I really need to go on?

To run and maintain an effective Social Media Marketing campaign you need to research your social media tool of choice (depending on your market placement) and focus on your chosen few. If you try to be the master of all, you will fail gloriously.

Out with the Old, in with that new?

Defiantly NOT! The great thing about Social media marketing is that you can totally combine more than one method of marketing your wears.  Let your clients/potential clients see the colorful advert you placed in the local newspaper, they either know you already (and they feel a sense of community and belonging) or when you send them a offer through the post/email they will have seen you before and there will be a element of trust already present.

Create campaigns that complement each other, that way it doesn’t look spamy sending out the same message all the time but you benefit from the exposure.

Shout load and clear

Small to medium businesses can be very loyal to other local businesses so make sure that you take full advantage of local listings (most of them are free) including Google’s own Local business listings. Don’t forget to submit your website to all major search engines, my previous article may help.

Don’t be afraid of colour

The well known phase “A picture is worth a thousand words” isn’t just a phrase, in this case it is absolutely true. If your news topic, article subject or product can be complemented or even enhanced by the use of either a simple image or perhaps a “How to” video then use it.

The use of images and videos (some product related others friendly/silly) can break down possible barriers and make your company appear friendly, approachable and show that you care about your company and more importantly your customers.

Take responsibility

Ultimately your social media marketing will only be successful if used correctly. Make sure that you are updating, announcing, commenting and spreading the good word of your work. You can and should have multiple people inputting and influencing your social media efforts; however one and only one can be truly responsible for making sure the job is done. Assign this to someone, or even split the tasks between a few people/departments but make sure that everyone knows there roll.

Hope it helps …. comments, feedback is always welcome and if you have any question do not hesitate to contact us

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To me, this is the essence of SEO

Google only wants to serve the most relevant search engine results pages (SERPS) for any given keyword. Therefore it follows that to get to get to the top of Google you need to create the best, most interesting, up to date website that puts interesting, unique and relevant information easily into the palms of the hands of Google searchers.

That’s it, the only thing you need to remember

Is There More than that to SEO?

SEO Companies in Stafford and across the West Midlands talk about loads more stuff than that one simple two sentence statement. They talk about the importance of keyword selection, site structure, on page optimisation, inbound links and a load of other stuff. Are they all SEO charlatans? Well, not all SEO companies in the West Midlands are.

The thing is all of those considerations will help your SEO endeavours but they should be used to help you achieve your goal of providing the best website in tune with letting Google know what a great site you have and not as a shortcut to SEO Black Hat glory.

Why Not Use SEO Shortcuts?

There are an absolute stack of SEO techniques that can help you climb the rankings on Google, Yahoo and even Bing and other search engines, so why not use SEO black hat techniques. The reason is simple and as follows
1. Google wants to provide the best, most relevant web pages for any given search term. That is why they are the biggest, because they were the first to put that goal at the heart of their business. Advertising came after that.
2. Google hire the best and the brightest minds from around the world. We are talking super bright, super nerds.
3. They ask these teams of super bright people to look for new black hat techniques and write new code into the ranking algorithm that removes them. Believe me when I tell you that your little SEO guy in Solihull, regardless of any claims or promises he may make, cannot outwit the Google web spam team long term.
4. Google is a multibillion dollar, multinational organisation. They are not stupid. Think about it, how useful would Google be as a web search tool if anyone could get to the number one spot just by putting their chosen keyword loads and loads of times on a page. Answer: Not Very.

So your clever black hat technique might work for a while, but sooner or later (and probably sooner) someone at Google will realise what you’re doing and write in a line of code and your site is gone from Google with no notice, forever.

Build Your Brilliant Website for SEO Glory

So learn the rules of how to promote your website to Google. Learn about the importance of selecting target keywords, site structure, back links and content optimisation. Learn also about black hat techniques like keyword stuffing, hidden text, doorway pages and link spam and work out how Google will spot them and why you shouldn’t use them.

But always remember the one simple self evident truth that Google wants to provide the best page for any given search term and your goal should be to provide that site.

A Sample Boycott Bingo Card

I’ve posted before about my love of cricket and the fun it brings beyond the simple enjoyment of the game. The humour really is tea and scone English. One of the commentators is Geoffry Boycott who (for those unfamiliar with cricket) is an opiniated Yorkshire man and former England Captain. When commentating he will often use phrases unique to him like, ‘I could have hit that with a stick of celery’ or (when a simple catch is dropped) ‘Me Auntie could have caught that in her nightie’. Its all a bit ‘Cricket nerdy’ and increadibly juvinille but quintessentially English.

On the live text on the BBC webiste (I’m too busy to watch six hours a day on telly) a discussion has started for Boycott Bingo. The nature of the game is to take your ‘Bingo Card’ (see sample image) and listen out for your Boycott to use a phrase that’s on your card. Once you have heard all the phrases on your card then your would should ‘house’ or ‘six’ or for those who remember desktop Richie then your might shout ‘Gottim’ (use an Australian accent for that one).

Writing a great survey is pivotal to getting useful and meaningful results that you can use to gain a greater understanding of your market – which is in the end why we are putting a survey in the field in the first place.
Taking extra special care to be mindful towards the respondents of your survey, respecting boundaries and being grateful for their valuable time is a must when building a list of qualified respondents.
In Part one we talked about the basic elements needed when writing a survey, here are survey writing considerations I like to call ‘fine tuning’:

THERE MORE!

Allow your Respondents to add comments and feedback (possibly prompted) this way they will feel assured that their point has been put across completely and will feel an increase sense of achievement and is more likely to complete one of your surveys again.

TIME IS A FACTOR

Keep your survey as short as you possibly can. Remember your objective, think about what your survey is design to achieve and create a list of questions that can achieve it. Continue to break your list down until you have a survey of as few questions as possible. In addition to this be honest with your Respondents, just them an accurate time that it will take to complete – Provide a progress bar – your Respondents will appreciate knowing how far they’ve gone into your survey. This will create a smaller dropout rate.

WELL SHOULD I COMPLETE YOUR SURVEY AGAIN?

People hate surveys and ingrained in us is a mindset that stops most people completing them. To get round this it might be a good idea to offer and incentive for your respondents for participating.

WE ALL LIKE TO BE APPRECIATED

Remember at the end of each survey to thank the respondents for their time. Everyone likes to be seen as valuable and regardless wether your survey was 3 questions or 25 it has been a commitment of time on their part so make sure your respondents get the feeling of appreciation from you.

SIMPLE BUT VITAL TO A SUCCESSFUL SURVEY

Before publishing the survey proof read the survey several times and when you feel you are totally sure, check it again!

Well that’s pretty much it I think … if you have any questions or contributions to the topic please feel free to comment or email us.

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While this article will concentrate on the web stat tools that Rake Mark servers have installed this does give you an overview of all stat software of a similar nature.

On the Rake Mark servers we have both AWStats and Webalizer installed. Both of these open source server log tools look at activity on a server level not on a human level. They make no attempt to identify the possible difference between HCI (Human Computer Interaction) and Spiders (a computer program that searches and interacts with WebPages).

Awstats and Webalizer are two separate pieces of analyzing software and while both have similar functionality they have been written by two separate engineers and as you would expect will have differences within the queries and information capturing boundaries.

A few of the queries and data sets that both Awstats and Webalizer capture are hits, pages, files, sites and visits. These are often misunderstood and perhaps give misleading results.

Explained:

Hits: Represents the total amount of server requests made in a certain amount of time (mins, hours days, weeks or months). That means EVERY hit that server receives for that URL…. everything.

Files: Represents the total number of responses from the server (something that is sent back to client). This does not include cached files or 404 errors.

Sites: Represents the number of unique IP addresses/hostnames that made requests to the server. Great care should be taken when using this and should be used as a gauge for interaction with your server only.

Pages: Represents URLs that would be considered the actual page being requested. Does not include images or video clips.

Visits: Represents when a request is made for a page on your server. While the same request is made from the same client in a period of time (30 mins) it will count as the same visit. However outside of the 30 mins it will be counted as 2 visits (or more)

While it is very important that we measure our marketing strategies, it is just as important that we know which data to analyze.

Google Analytics is a free piece of software that uses first-party cookie and JavaScript code on the page to capture data rather than server logs alone. In addition to that Google Analytics uses a range of factors to build up their picture e.g. Google account data, time between clicks to try and differentiate between web spiders and human interaction. Obviously Google has the benefit of owning one of the major web spiders out there and can eliminate that before they start collecting and analyzing traffic and stats into user friendly information such as page views, location, keywords and bounce rate.

Taking ‘Hits’ figures alone is never going to be an accurate way to monitor your website for say the success of a marketing campaign unless you are taking into account all the other figures and balancing them off one another (which is kind of what Google Analytics does for you).

While I suspect nothing is ever totally 100% accurate (due to the rapid advancement of computers) we use a full range of Google tools to assist in our Online Marketing monitoring, Analytics being one of them and that I think pretty much indicates which tool we think offers the more accurate figures. In fact we implement Google Analytics in all our new website packages for free.

This is obviously not a comprehensive explanation of the differences between server log data (Awstats or Webalizer) and Usage Monitoring Software (Google Analytics) it is about as far as I can go without getting or all techie on you.

Hope that it has helped

Want to Learn more about Google Analytics

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In the main, social media activities are free to step-up and relatively simple to implement however areas you may need to consider when taking on the Social Media Marketing world is what’s free and what has an associated cost.

Blogging – is available in a free format however often is quite restrictive on things like the url/web link. You may want to use your own Domain name (which has an associated cost). Free blogging account also has a limited amount of what we call themes (look and feel). If you have specific ideas on how you want your blog to look and feel you may wish to budget for a developer to write a theme specifically for you.
Also a consideration is content for your blog. Never underestimate the time and skill factor of blogging. If your blog is primarily a marketing work horse, you may need to consider copy writer to ensure you maximise the search engine ranking potential of your blog, this will obviously add an element of cost to your strategy.
Twitter & Facebook – at the moment totally free setup, however if you need branding (it to have your colours, logos, etc) it might be worth asking a professional company to do this for you. Also don’t forget about the time investment needed to make this beneficial to your plan.
Marketing your Marketing – sounds mad I know but you want as many interested parties as possible looking at, following, reading and forwarding your blogging and micro-blogging as possible. Sending out a newsletter (hard copy or electronic) will add cost. Updating your website to include and encourage followers and subscribers will carry an additional charge.
Monitoring – as always, with any marketing strategy……… if it isn’t working, Stop! Monitoring your Social Media Marketing efforts is a must. As far as blogging goes something like Google Analytics is a great idea and it’s free but endless you can manage this yourself it may add an unexpected cost. However you will be glad to know that both twitter and Facebook come with feedback and actively monitoring options.

In this blog article we have only just scratched the service of the kinds of tools to be used as part of your strategy but it probably gives you a good idea of where your budget will be spent.

The email had 9 phrases helping us guys interpret what women really mean with the following phrases (I’ve just cut and pasted it). What do ya think Sarah, is this about right?
1.Fine: This is the word a woman will use to end an argument when she is right and you need to shut up.
2.Five Minutes: If she’s getting dressed, “five minutes” means a half hour. “Five minutes” is only “five minutes” if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.
3.Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. “Nothing” actually means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with “nothing” usually end in “fine.” (See #1.)
4.Go Ahead: This is a dare… not permission. Don’t do it!
5.[Loud Sigh]: This is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you’re an idiot and wonders why she’s wasting her time standing there and arguing about nothing. (See #3 for the definition of “nothing.”)
6.That’s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. “That’s okay” means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.
7.Thanks: If a woman is thanking you, do not question the gratitude, or faint. Just say “you’re welcome.”
8.Whatever: This is a woman’s way of saying f*&# you. [Editor's Note: In JoseyLand, "whatever" can also easily replace "fine." Often does. See #1 for more info.]
9.Don’t Worry About It–I Got It: This is another loaded statement, meaning she has told you to do something several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking “What’s wrong?” For the woman’s response refer to #3.

The Pepsi Refresh project was driven by social media and allowed the public to submit ideas for grants and allowed the public to vote for the best ideas. They have, so far, received over 30 million votes. That in itself is amazing, but even more outstanding is the viral nature of the project which has all the mainstream press and news outlets talking about it. So far it has generated over one billion media impressions in broadcast, print and online. I guess it sold a lot of Pepsi as well.
B. Bonin Bough said in his presentation, ‘That social media-led project has done more to change the whole company’s brand, for the good, than any other campaign.’

One other take-away from presentation was ‘Don’t let perfection get in the way of good.’ In this section Mr Bough talks of running with an idea even if it doesn’t quite work yet. If the technology isn’t perfect then run with it anyway.

The video clip below is of the while presentation, the Refresh Project starts at about 22 minutes in.

• Is a survey, web based or hard copy going to achieve the result that you want?
• Focus on one topic at a time (you can always send out multiple surveys and piece a picture together)
• Have a very clear end goal. Make sure your survey questions are going to get you the answer that you are setting out to achieve (test you survey on independents first and analyze your results [Pilot the survey])
• Don’t waste your results – let your tested parties see the overall results (they are more likely to continue helping/completing surveys’ when they see you are using the results in a positive manner)

Ok assuming you are ready to write your questions here are a few pointers to get you started:

TITLE

The survey title is a golden opportunity to instantly summaries a surveys objective and grabs the attention of invited respondents. Respondents are going to invest time in completing your survey so make them feel that their investment is worthwhile.

REMEMBER YOUR OBJECTIVE

Surveys are a tried and tested method of research, however keep it narrow and have a clear objective. Respondents that are not part of your target audience may give you survey inaccurate results.
By phrasing the questions and structuring an answer, surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of its purpose.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

Remember to keep your survey as simple as possible (you want your Respondents to be able to answer the questions easily). Use the same rating scale throughout your surveys and wherever possible use multiple choice questions (Your Respondents are more likely to answer to a suggestion already there)

DON’T LEAD BY THE NOSE

However subtle you think you may be being – you’re NOT. Avoid leading questions, your respondents will object to being asked a question and then being lead by the nose to select the one that you clearly want them to select.

ANSWER THE QUESTION!

Be kind to your respondents and Allow them to decline to answer. If you don’t they may feel uncomfortable and either assume you’re trying to manipulate data, answer inaccurately (tainting your data) or drop out totally.

LAST ORDERS

Make sure you let your respondents know when the survey closes – simply provide a closing date.

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#FollowFriday, @rakemark, RT Me, Follow Us on Twitter- Confused? You’re not alone

Now there is not many of us that don’t know what Twitter is, but how many of us just
get totally confused or maybe even frustrated using the Social Media Marketing tool
that seems to self spawn words and rules faster than most can keep up with – quite
a few if the questions we get are anything to go by.

Twitter itself is becoming a bigger part of our lives almost on a daily basis.
This micro-blogging phenomenon has captured some of us on a personal level but has
also evolved into a business social media marketing tool and whether we choose to
tell the whole world what we ate for breakfast or not we are being asked to use
twitter in the work place and we need to get to grips with the basics.

Tweeting

Ok Twitter is the tool/website platform we use, but the text that we write into our
140 character limited box is called a Tweet.

Followers

When you set up your Twitter Account you will have 0 Followers and will be
Following 0 people. Twitter only kind of works if you change this as soon as
you get your account set-up so the idea being, you follow people that you
find interesting or informative and people follow you for the same reasons.
This cycle is self perpetuating especially if you advertise yourself with a
‘Follow us on Twitter’ Strap line on your website.

RT or ReTweet

So you have say 100 followers and you can see everything that they Tweet – some
Tweets just won’t interest you but others may totally inspire you and your need
to spread the good word and this is where RT or ReTweet comes in.

The RT button within twitter will create a new Tweet (in your account and display
it on your tweets) but tag the original Tweet Writer in there. Now your
followers can see the original tweet and may well choose the follow them as well.
So it’s not difficult to see how this activity virally spreads and snowballs.

#HashMark

You will often see a # within someone’s tweet – this is very simply a way in
which to tag a tweet to a certain topic or activity and makes searching for this topic
within the website much easier. #followfriday is a popular one !

Tweeple

One of those self spawned words I was talking about – simply means people that use Twitter.

I hope that this has given you at least the basics. Please let us know if there is any
topic that you would like us to blog about and we would be happy to oblige.

Happy Tweeting Tweeple! Don’t forget to RT this post
Word Count – 445

Well we’ve been busy working on Website Design Projects all week at the offices in Stafford, so I think for my Friday blog its time for some fun. Now I know this doesn’t really relate to a blog from a Website Design Company, but I thought a fun post would be a good to unwind ready for the weekend (and make a change from the Friday Rant!)

I’m a big cricket fan but rarely get chance to watch games on TV, due to work and family commitments, but I do follow the live text and commentary on the BBC more often. On most days a really juvenile discussion breaks out from nowhere and during yesterdays live text commentary someone mentioned that Geoffrey Boycott had received an honorary degree and this lead to a spate of degree related gags, the best of which are below.

“I studied washing machines at university – came out with 30 degrees.”

“Re: Washing machine degrees – many years ago when I studied Washing Machines it was 40 degrees. How standards have dropped.”

“Re. washing machine degrees – I’ve got a PhD in them, I’m a spin doctor.”

A guy called Charlie said, “I graduated with a washing machine degree last year, but with the credit crunch and lack of graduate jobs, I feel like I’ve been hung out to dry a bit.”

To which someone replied, “Sorry to hear about that Charlie, but don’t worry, I hear these things go in cycles…”

Incidentally, I hear he [Morgan – an England Batsman] did his degree in ballet, but he only got a tutu.”

I did my degree in lift engineering, not a bad three years, had its ups and downs…”

And finally, my personal favourite,
I’ve just finished my MSc in Sandpaper Studies. Big subject that – after a whole year I’d only really scratched the surface.”

Have a good Weekend,
Phil

Ok so we all know about online marketing, SEO, SEF, keywords, Meta data and numerous other acronyms that if you are anything like me drive me totally insane, but are we (that being the royal we) taking full advantage of the tools and platforms that we have readily available to us already.

Long gone are the days where Search Engine Optimization is a “Black Art” and only specific companies charging equally mysterious amounts in fees can help with your search engine optimization, search engine positioning and page rank.

Google has to be one of the most recognized search engines in the world, to such a degree that we actually use the term “Google It” instead of what we really mean which is to search the internet so I will base my comments and thoughts around them.

Google inc make no secret on how you can achieve good website position and page ranking in their search engine, they obviously don’t tell all but provide some great tips on what they see as important. They describe one of the most important steps to improving your website’s ranking is “Relevant Content”.
Google’s newest release “Caffeine” highlights the importance of marketing techniques such as blog articles, news articles and even forums posts. Caffeine web indexing means that new content will now be indexed faster and your website updates will appear in a more “real time” way.

So I guess what I am saying is Google just made the Social Web, Business Blogging, Forums and articles on our websites an even more effective way to promote your business.

Word Count – 263

Copywriters are talented people don’t get me wrong, but writing copy for the web is different than writing copy for print and using copy in your web page that has been design specifically for print could spell disaster for your online effectiveness.

In the cyber world it may seem like the programmers and designers have the ultimate control and power of either the success or the failure of our website, yet if you look closer it is the words, and placement of those words that drive user interaction. The specifically designed logo or the clever section of code that work seamlessly behind the scenes are all major parts of a successful website but it is the words that bear the weight of how we influence our users, convey our marketing messages and convert the sale.

5 Tips to Improve Your Website Copy

• Use Effective Headings
• Your headings should be eight words or less.
• Don’t use vague headings – remember you have only a few sections to grab your user’s attention before they move on.
• Include keywords in your heading text.
• Remember you can use your headings as links to more information within your website.
• Title, Title, Title
• Don’t under estimate the power of the title tag of your web page – this is another area that you should be looking to use keyword rich phrases.
• Use different titles, don’t just copy and paste, this is another opportunity to shine brighter than you competitors.
• Drive, Guide & Help Your User
• Drive your user to take the steps that you want them to take.
• Breadcrumb incentives are a great way in influence activity on your website.
• A clearly labelled activity path will increase activity along you “Customer Experience Path”.
• Stay Connected
• Make your pages and content naturally progressive, use links to expand on information and products
• Linking to relevant content or being linked to as the source of relevant content will be beneficial to your page rank.
• Know what you’re Selling
• DON’T babble on about what your widget is capable of by providing a huge list of features, it’s probably of little interest and is a poor way to fill what is prime Real Estate space on your page.
• DO tell your user how the widget will benefit them, how it will make them look or feel, be brutal and tap into the users “needy” side – we all have one.

This is by no means all there is to writing web copy, but maybe a few pointers in the right direction.

Word Count – 448

Blogs are designed to be written by opinionated individuals, they are by nature not simply the imparting of impartial information, so you have to walk an interesting line of being able to share information and opinions, keeping your audience engaged but not alienating them.

So here are 5 quick tips to simple blogging. 

1. Develop a Good Writing Style

Use good grammar and spelling and don’t use text abbreviations. If your writing is sloppy then this will be reflected on your organisation. If you sit at a table in a restaurant and its sticky and dirty then your opinion of the restaurant is going to go down. If the blog is haphazard or poorly written then this is going to reflect badly on your organisation. You use an informal, relaxed and laid back style, of course, it’s not going to be a marked essay, but it does need to obey the rules of good written English.

2. Be Consistent and Write Regularly

Google likes regular content. Your readers will like regular content. If you regularly write 10 posts per month and then stop for a couple of months any readers you have will drift away and Google will stop visiting as well. Blogs with big holes always look like the company concerned just had better things to do that look after their customers, like a shop with no-one at the till. So pick a number of blog posts per month you have time to write and then stick with it. If you can’t keep it up then lower the number of posts, but keep going and try to be consistent.

3. Stick to the Topic

Stay relevant and on the topic you started with. A blog’s not your life story, it’s a single idea explored in a bit of detail. If you move around different themes within a single post then you are going to lose your audience. Similarly, if you go into too much detail in a single post your audience will not finish the post. If your article is more than a couple of pages in Word (around 1000 words) then I tend to think that you may have more than one blog post there and it is worth splitting it out into a series of posts. You can list them over a few days.  

4. Link to Relevant Additional Information

Links within a blog can offer more information about something you are describing or you might want to point at a product you’re promoting. Also, since I just gave you a max of 1000 words and you need to be concise within your blog, then appropriate linking will help your readership find out more or buy that product if they want to. You can link within your own site or you can link to another (non competitor) site. It all helps demonstrate your knowledge, inform your readership and with your SEO.

5. Have a sense of Humour

When you’re writing your blog, try not to take yourself too seriously. You may cover a serious topic that requires a certain gravitas, but on other occasions, if you can submit your information with a light hearted and laid back tone then your readership will find it easier to digest. Try to bring some humanity to your writing and try to connect to your readership.

So the key to good blogging is, use good English, stick to one topic per blog and keep it short and sweet. Write regularly and write with a sense of humour. Hopefully some new bloggers will find this helpful in their early days, I sure could have done with a few pointers when I was writing my first blog.

Word Count: 755 

Having a Web Developer /Web Designer Create a System that allows you, the non technical user, a method to update your own web pages not only seems like a great idea but indeed is one, however you first need to fully understand what it is you are asking for.

Full Content Management System – means a system that allows the user to create categories, add pages, and sub pages that can then be edited via a web interface. This system requires no intervention from a web developer. Anyone who can use a text editor can model, shape and create a website with an unlimited number of categories or pages within those categories. A system such as this uses a database for its content and structure and is relatively complex to develop and support. Expect to pay significantly more for a system such as this.

Partial Content Management System – usually means a system that allows the user to update a set amount of pages within a site. This type of system also uses a text editor and is straight forward to use but you can’t add additional pages, you can update to ones that are there but you can’t alter the structure of your website by adding categories and pages.

More likely the system will be set up so that you can update some of your pages, maybe your products page, or a page that is date sensitive e.g. Training Courses or Seminars your arranging.
Or perhaps you are happy to let your web developer update certain pages of your site but want to be able to add News & Events.

Although this kind of CMS also uses a database to hold its content it is not so complex, is more manageable to support and therefore you will see the benefits of updating your own pages with a much smaller price tag.

Hope this clarifies a few thing for you, but if not and you want some more details you can always just give us a call, or email us, we are happy to help if we can.

Fortunately there is some research into when the best time for marketing emails is from eROI and their survey gave the following results,

Business to Business Marketing E-Mails – Preferred Day for Receipt
36% Tuesday
33% Monday
15% Wednesday
7% Friday
5% Thursday
3% Sunday
1% Saturday

Business to Consumer Marketing E-Mails – Preferred Day for Receipt
31% Friday
26% Thursday
22% Tuesday
20% Monday
19% Thursday
16% Saturday
11% Sunday

Should Your Website Be Sending Marketing Emails on Monday

The report does only discuss customer preference rather than effectiveness of campaigns and this is a crucial point. What a customer wants is important, of course, but what is successful is key. I would definitely consider doing your own sampling and split testing to determine what is best for your business and for each email marketing campaign. 

I do find it a bit strange to find many customers wanting emails on a Monday. I usually find so much hitting my desk on a Monday that I rarely have time for coffee, never mind a marketing email or newsletter, so I think that these figures are interesting, but you need to do split testing and see what works best for your business.

It was a stunning stroke of genius the day that the guy’s and gal’s at Google set to offering the world professional, useful web tools for free.

Google Analytics currently has over 52% of the world’s web tracking market and this is only set to rise as Google techies provide us with more and more powerful elements.
Measuring your marketing is no new thing but by providing anyone and everyone with an easy to use tool that collates, formulates and turns the data into a visual representation of what’s working and what’s not in our online marketing mix is in my option a tool that you would just be foolish to miss out on.

We include a Google Analytics Account setup for all our new clients free of charge, but for those who don’t have it set up or could just do with a little extra help getting started:

Go to the web address http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html to sign up or http://www.google.com/analytics/ and log into your Google account. If we haven’t set an account up for you or you haven’t got a Google Account you will need to set one up first and then create an Analytics account from your control panel. [Setting Up a Google Account]
Overview Page: This is where all the websites that you may be monitoring will be held, Click on the Account Name (which is a hyperlink) to look at the data on the individual websites, select ‘View Report’.

This will give you a visual view of your data:

The graph at the very top (as shown above) represents the visits to your site and breaks it down into daily figures in any one given month.
It provides you with Bounce Rate (the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance) which indicates how relevant your visitors found the entrance page, Average time your visitors spent on your site (which helps you judge content quality) and New visits (those that have visited your site for the first time)

The map overlay shows you which areas of the world (yes the world) are showing an interest in your website and the traffic overview shows you how those visitors came to find your site.

So immediately you can see the data that Google Analytics captures for you can help you track ROI, and help create a targeted and informative ‘next move’ strategy.

Totally Free and growing all the time ……

Look out for more blogs on this topic and feel free to add a request.

The ‘How’ of Getting a Testimonial

The best way for you to get a testimonial will really will depend on your business. If you have a restaurant, then a customer comment card might be a good idea. Just put on the card that comments may be used on your website. If you have satisfied regulars that you chat with you could explain that you are looking for some feedback from your very best customers and would they mind you using their comments on your website. If they are happy to fill out a form or comment card, great, otherwise just make short accurate notes. Other B2C (business to customer) businesses could use a similar approach to using comment cards but if you work on a B2B (business to business) basis then you have a couple of options. You could send a personal letter asking for feedback or as part of a questionnaire but I find a customer service phone call is the best way to elicit useful feedback. This really has to be a customer service call and not a sales call, so first explain why you are calling and check they have the time to spare for this. Start with asking them about the products or services you have provided and make a few short accurate notes as they talk. Once they have covered all the ground that they want to and you have handled any issues they may be having, you can be sure that you have a satisfied customer. At this point you can simply ask them, it is as simple as that. I would say something like, ‘Thank you for your time today and thank you for your feedback. Would it be OK with you if I posted some of your comments in the testimonials section on our website?’ If they are genuinely happy then nine times out of ten they will be fine with having their comments posted.

The ‘When’ of Getting Testimonials

There is definitely a right and wrong time to ask for a testimonial. The right time is shortly after a successful sale. In the restaurant this could be as the coffees are served (assuming you will have checked that they have been happy with their meal). With a B2B sale this could be a few days or a few weeks after the product was delivered and could be incorporated into any usual customer service calls you might make. The key is to strike after the sale while the customer is most excited about your product, before that enthusiasm dies down.

A Final Note about Website Testimonials

Some marketers and Website Owners believe that testimonials should be written and signed by the customer but this is a bit over the top. Using the methods I’ve outlined above will get you plenty of genuine feedback that you can use. Also, some marketers and Website Owners will make something up and then get then the customer to OK it (and some customers ask for this also). This approach has two issues. Firstly you are missing a genuine opportunity to connect with your customer and make sure that they are happy with your service and secondly, your testimonials will all sound the same and represent the message you want to go out rather than the genuine advantages your business offers that your customers find important.

Ok, so by now we have all heard about Social Media how it works, how much time it takes and what’s involved, but maximising time for such web Marketing remains a challenge.
We were brain storming the other day during a meeting on how we could increase our productivity within the company’s networking activity. How we could still be active on our twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blog accounts while:

• It doesn’t consume all of our time
• We get a ROI on the time we do commit

Here are some of the suggestions that we came up with and thought we would share them:

• Be firm with either yourself or your staff’s time. Allocate an amount of time that you are going to participate in networking/social media and stick to it, there comes a point where ‘you can do no more’ to increase effectiveness so don’t waste valuable time.
• Don’t be shy at offering links, interaction buttons or even invitations wherever possible.
• Send out an E Newsletter to promote, publish and round up the months networking activities.
• Link your networking together with apps like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/
• Don’t *over do it*. Blogging, tweeting and profile updates that are done too often, seem to lose credibility quickly. Post often (@ least once a week), and post quality.
• Give things away. Don’t worry we’re not suggesting you give away a secret formula just give away enough to make your followers a) keep following and b) recommend you as a valuable/credible source.
• Measure! See our previous article. The above will all be totally pointless if you don’t.

So Why Am I Writing An Article On Salesmanship?

The answer is simple, I have to go out and sell sometimes. I’m a director in a small business we all have to do it. Without it Rake Mark would have folded years ago. So if I’m so rubbish at selling how do I overcome that to make a sale? These are my 5 quick tips to my brethren of fellow reluctant salesmen and women.

Believe in the Product

I couldn’t sell anything I didn’t believe in. I honestly believe that we offer the best website design products on the planet. No one offers the range of skills that we do, the depth of quality design that we do and absolutely no one offers the products we do at the most affordable prices. It is that simple.

I honestly believe that if I don’t demonstrate to a potential customer why they should select Rake Mark then they will pay more than they need to for a substandard product. I don’t want that and they don’t want that, so it is my duty to ensure that they understand what we do and why we are the number one draft pick for Website Design in the West Midlands

Understand the Market

Knowing your customers needs, fears and desires is a must. If you cannot stand in the shoes of your customers and feel what they feel and fear what they fear, then get into a business where you know it this intimately. Only when you understand their needs can you fill the gap in their lives. Only when you appreciate the problem can you offer the solution. Some simple market research will help fill in the finer detail, but you should know generally the what, why, and when of their buying without it being spoon fed.

Focus on the Customer

Your customers will buy based on the benefits of the product, not the features. You don’t buy shampoo, you buy beautiful manageable hair. The guy in the sports car didn’t buy it because he wants to accelerate from the lights at top speed only to be stuck in traffic with everyone else. He bought it for prestige. When he drives it he feels successful, free, and important.

So focus on how your customer feels about your product, what do they need and then demonstrate how your products, services, company and brand can solve that fear, that problem. Show your customers how they will feel when they buy your product and how that fills their needs. They will buy from you.

Overcoming Objections

Talking to your customers or potential customer will help to build a rapport and move the conversation towards closing the sale, the crucial buying moment. Often during the sales process you will come across resistance, an objection. Always respect the customer’s issue. Give it its due consideration to any valid concerns and ensure that your answer eases concerns and doesn’t add to them. If you can genuinely listen to their problem and help them solve it they will buy from you. 

Close the Sale

This is the key moment. If the customer looks at their watch or appears uninterested then move to the close. How do you close? You simply ask for the business. The key is to ask in a way that doesn’t offer an yes or no response.

So if you thrust an order form under their nose and say, ‘Would you like to move forward?’ they might well say no. However, if you say ‘If you don’t have any other questions then all I need you to do is sign the order and we can arrange your kick off meeting. Which day next week suits you better?’ You could use a payment method question, like ‘Would you like to pay using cash or your credit card?’ Or if it is a large payment and you offer a payment plan then ‘Would you like to pay in one instalment or would you like to take advantage of our payment plan?’

There are multiple closing statements that you could make. It is a very important moment and the only area that I rehearse in advance so I feel confident asking for the business.

Sales is an area that all small businesses must excel in and work on.

Good Luck.

Setting up an account is simple, but if you are still having a few problems then here are some pointers to help you on your way:

1. Open a Browser of your choice and go to web address https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
2. Fill in the details, accept the terms and conditions and create your new account.

3. Google will send you and a verification email (so make sure you use a valid address) that contains a link.
4. Click on the link – hey presto you now have your very own Google Account.

You now have access to an array of tools including Gmail (a free email account), Calendar, Analytics, docs, webmaster tools …..  The list is quite extensive.

It’s usually pretty easy to find out where the scam lies. It’s usually that the guarantee doesn’t actually mean anything and you only find this out after you’ve been tied in for 12 months. Sometimes the guarantee is based on really low competition keywords (like your business name or a really long tail) and sometimes it is a pay per click deal where you end up paying loads of money in clicks for your keywords (and if you wanted a Pay Per Click Campaign then surely that’s what you would have asked for). Whatever the catch is, any company offering a Google First Page Guarantee is rarely a search engine optimisation company you want to anything to do with. 

A Helpful Sham

 I find that the Google First Page Guarantee is such a sham that it is actually a really good way of working out the scam artists early on. If they offer you a guarantee then scratch them from your list of companies that you want to work with.

This is new but if this is the first time you’ve come across this then you can Google search ‘Google First Page Guarantee’ and you’ll find loads of articles explaining in great detail why any guarantee is basically worthless. The short version as to why the guarantee is worthless is.
Google controls the algorithm that determines which web pages are listed at the top, and no one can change that. Google’s objective is to deliver the most relevant page to the user. They make billions doing this. Why would they want your page at the top if it is not the most relevant?
 

Nothing New?

This is nothing new, of course, so why am I banging on about this now? Last year I had to get into this for a customer who is well versed in SEO and how it all works, but thought they had found the exception to the rule.

The Offer:
You select whichever keywords you would like and depending on the competitiveness they will give you a price. For that price they will guarantee that you will be in the first 10 listings on Google. If for any reason you fall out of the first 5 then they will set up a paid campaign to get you back on the front page. There is a contract and it is for 12 months.

How It Worked:
They would use one of the websites that they owned that had sufficient juice with Google and graft a keyword rich page onto it for you. They had clearly built up the page rank on a number of sites over time for this specific purpose. The page would look like your own site and would also have your navigation on it and this would be how visitors would go to your site.

What Happened Next:
I played along and gave in some tough keywords for the industry in question. This was nothing as hard as keywords for the insurance industry, but pretty tough. The price came back with a contract and both seemed in order and reasonable. It was frustrating me because I knew that this couldn’t work in the long term (it really was just another form of paid search) but I couldn’t get this across to the customer.

What Happened In the End:
The keywords we had selected were seasonal and so we were set to go live earlier this year. Unfortunately (or fortunately), in between the initial sales call and the go live date, the company in question lost all of their page rank for all of their sites overnight. All the companies with websites who had been made grand promises suddenly found their grafted page was nowhere to be seen, with a possible penalty for their site due to the link from the now black listed site.

The Moral of the Story

There are no guarantees. Maybe this company upheld the guarantee they gave and created hundreds of paid search campaigns using Google Adwords, but I doubt it. I continue to work for this customer promoting their website by helping them create killer content and attracting inbound links. We promote them using Social Media. We help them in their SEO and PPC. In case your wondering, I didn’t stick my tongue out and say, ‘Told ya so!’ and they know about this article and don’t mind me publishing it, hopefully to prevent anyone else chasing Google Guarantees.

Facebook

Founded in February 2004, and currently has over 400 million active users.
Facebook claims to “facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph” and I wouldn’t necessary disagree. Facebook offers photo and video upload, chat, email, a forum (or wall), marketplace (to display items for sale), Event and Groups and additional Pages to mention just a few of its offer’s (full list on the websites fact sheet).
Adding an additional pages or creating groups within your Facebook account is where the term “Become a Fan” is relevant. Creating your own Business Page/Pages is an excellent way to promote you business and keep your “fans” up to date on Events, promotions and marketing info. By creating this community of loyal fans and by making your offerings of interest and benefit you can soon turn a static promotion into a viral one.
* For the few techies reading, Facebook is one of the most-trafficked PHP websites in the world, and utilizes one of the largest MySQL installations anywhere in the world, running thousands of databases.
Want to find out more about Facebook? It’s all here

Twitter

Twitter is the leading micro-blogging site; this instant messaging social tool allows users to blog 140 characters in any single string. Messages can be uploading via a variety of means. Web, mobile app, desktop app, via SMS txt … they really have thought of pretty much everything.
The basic starting point being, you set up an account (which is free by the way), search on areas of interest and follow them or perhaps follow users you may already know that have a twitter account and start micro-blogging about stuff you either find interesting or more importantly others find of interest.
Though all my reading, there seems to be an option that twitter and tweeting your events, announcements and points of interest is the future of PR.
Despite being based on a relatively simple structure (in techie terms that is), twitter allows us to follow others (even our competitors), interact and influence our followers, create lists and interact with the world instantly.
News travels fast, but faster via twitter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has 60 million members in over 200 countries and with that in mind you can see that this is no small fry as far as social networking is concerned
According to the official LinkedIn press room, a new member joins the networking site, on average every second, with somewhere in the region of 50% of its uses outside the US.
LinkedIn is very much a business social networking tool. Like with the Facebook you are able to link with contacts/friends (LinkedIn call these connections) which can have second-degree connections and then third-degree connections. Within this web of connections you can build an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world. Sharing skills, knowledge, information, and business opportunities amongst your connections and even offering and accepting recommendations that the entire network can see.
With executives from all Fortune 500 companies being LinkedIn members

MySpace

MySpace was launched in 2003 by eUniverse (an internet Marketing Company based in LA). In 2005 eUniverse (and with it MySpace) was bought by Robert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
In April 2008, based on monthly unique visitors, MySpace was beaten by its main competitor Facebook.
In terms of users, the 100 millionth MySpace account was created on August 9, 2006 and on that basis I would guess they are doing pretty well.
As you would expect, MySpace has the standard blubs, a profile page, about me, who you would like to meet etc. What makes MySpace a little bit different to the others is the extent in how much you can change the visuals of your page. With significant editable sections of the site (both by “Profile Customizer” and html/CSS editing), users are able to brand pages making then total unique.

What makes MySpace stand out from the crowd is the ability to add music files to your pages – the music is added to a player which can then be embedded directly into your profile page.
So, it is no surprise that MySpace is the popular choice amongst the music industry.

Watch this space for Part 2 (Blogging) & Part 3 (Photo Sharing +)

Note: For anyone who is unfamiliar with this e-commerce issue, a chargeback is where you take a card payment over the internet and send out the goods only to find a month or more later that the cardholder claims they didn’t make the purchase. You get the money taken from your account without much further a do.

Sage Pay Support Call

The call was answered quickly and professionally. We initially discussed the transaction with the chargeback and why the chargeback had occurred. In this case it was a pretty clear case of fraudulent card use and the customer had simply missed it. If they had gone into their My Sage Pay customer area and checked the fraud score they would have seen the high 3rd Man fraud score and they could have held the order and contacted the customer. Doing this two or three times a day is going to be a pain and easily forgotten, but an email to let them know there was a high score would help. Unfortunately this functionality isn’t available.

There were other security measures, but these could throw a false positive, where a genuine transaction could be rejected incorrectly. It really is a juggling act that does rely on the customer going into their My Sage Pay area a couple of times a day, and there is no way round this

Installed Security Measures

CV2 Check – The CV2 number is the number on the back of the card. If you can’t put this in or you get it wrong for any reason then you can safely reject the payment

Postcode and Address Checks – If you reject against these then you can often loose genuine sales. We decided it would be better to allow them to go to 3rd Man Fraud checking. So the check is requested but the payment is not rejected if this check fails

3D Secure – This security measure takes the website customer to a new area to enter a password that they have set. It is a bit like asking the customer to enter their pin into a chip and pin reader. As the website owner you can allow this step to be skipped but I we decided to  ask for at the very least

Conclusion

The support we received from Sage Pay was first class. It is the first time we have had an e-commerce website customer on Sage Pay, but they will be the only company we’ll recommend in the future. We have mostly used World Pay in the past, but I’m moving to Sage Pay for our own e-commerce websites and for any customers who want to move across.

When is a website not a website? When the website is ‘Coming soon’ If ‘Under Construction’ Pages will kill off your business the dreaded ‘Coming Soon’ web page will stop you before you even got started. This is usually (but not always) when a new company wants a website, registers their domain and then asks someone to put up a single page with ‘Coming Soon’ on it.

No One Does Business Soon

So who wants to do business soon? Who wants to do business with someone who is not actually here yet (but will be soon?). If your not actually trading yet then you are ‘coming soon’ but this is rarely the case. What is the message that you’re actually giving out with this? Are you saying ‘We can’t get our act together and sort out our website’, or is it more like ‘We’ve neglected our site, but we’ll try not to neglect our customers’? Feel free to add your own theme on this one.

So if this is what we’re saying to our customers and it is as negative as I claim, why don’t people get this sorted out? It must come down to the time and money see-saw. If you don’t have the time you have to use money, but getting it sorted out costs an unknown amount of money (and it is probably too much money, you assume). But you can get this sorted on a budget and can be cost effective.

It Doesn’t Have to be This Way

Getting one page up should be well within your time and budget constraints. Any web design company worth its salt will be able to get to get you a fresh design with images up and live on the web for a couple of hundred pounds (at the most). You’ll have to compromise on design. It won’t be all singing and dancing and it may not be exactly what you want, but it will be better and more effective than your old coming soon page.

You may struggle to get the words out and down on paper and if this is the case you should think about hiring a copywriter to write the copy (the words on the page) for you. Most web design companies will have a copywriter they can recommend if they don’t have one on staff and copy for a page might only cost you £80, which compared to the sales and reputation you’re loosing isn’t too bad.

Helpful Hints

1. Don’t use the words ‘Under Construction’
   The web is a fluid and in constant change. Your site will always be changing and is therefore always under construction.
2. Don’t use the words ‘Coming Soon’
   If you have a page on the web, you’re not coming soon, you’re here! If your website is one page, then that is your site. Better to have one great web page than loads of nothing pages.
3. Make it Keyword Rich
   Google loves text. Customers love information. The two go together. Get one interesting, information packed, keyword rich page with a few interesting images to let visitors know they have hit the right page. Have a clear first paragraph that tells visitors they are in the right place, then add a benefit proposition that is the way it is, but …
4. Include a Call to Action
   Once your visitor has read what you offer, tell then what you want them to do next. ‘We can arrange your free, no obligation demonstration by calling 01799 111 222′, or ‘Visit us on market days for a great deal’. Use something that isn’t too ‘hard sell’ but encourages your visitor to continue the dialogue you have started
5. List your Contact Details and / or Form
   Now your customers know what you want them to do, make sure that they can. A contact form that emails you the requested details is always good. If your mega tight budget doesn’t allow the emailing form then just make sure your address, phone number and email are on there.

So Get On With It

So stop procrastinating and get going. Find a web company you feel like you can trust, will take a bit of time to chat to you and help you out and get one great page up on the web. The rest can come later.

Rake Mark can obviously help you with getting one great page up there ( or as many as you might need), just give us a call on 01785 256 222. We’re here and happy to help.

Starting with the very basics:

1. Images – very pretty, adds colour, interest and supports the textual based content on your website page, an image speaks a thousand words and all that, but also adds weight. By weight I mean the amount of data that is on the page and has to be requested and served by the web server. Now don’t get me wrong most websites have images but all too often, I come across the website that has IMAGES, Large (imposing on the page), pointless (offers nothing to the user) and Heavy (takes valuable seconds to load).When designing your website page make sure your image adds value to your page, are correctly edited and well proportioned in size for the page that they sit in and correctly compressed.
2. CSS– where possible use CSS files for layout and formatting. Your browser can cache the style and format of your page form an external CSS and loads your page a lot faster than if it had to parse through longwinded style script tags on every load.

Tables– try to avoid using tables for anything other than data, and nested tables are a definite ‘Don’t Do’. It takes the browser some time (valuable time) to work out which end tag belongs to what, match everything up and render your web page correctly.

3. Duplicated Code – If you are going to use the same piece of code multiple times throughout your website then you might want to think about putting it in an external script file. This way your browser will already have it in cache and will recall it much faster than if it has to run the script multiple times.
4. Clean Valid Code – Clean code is king. Search Engines love it, reward it and on top of all that your browser will render well scripted tags faster than any ill formed tag. If you happen to be using a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) HTML editor, take care to remove the (never ceases to amaze me) oodles of unnecessary, pointless scripting.

If you’re unsure what any of these tips mean then you should ask your website developer or you can ask us (we will be happy to help) by either leaving a comment on this post or emailing us directly, we are really friendly and tend not to bite.

Offending Web Pages on the Increase

Under construction pages seem to be back on the rise, I have come across several in the last couple of months, prompting this article. This is nothing new, a new website or new section of a current website goes live unfinished with the words ‘Under Construction’ accompanied by a horrific animated image. Why? I have never found a satisfactory explanation to this and it is usually the fault of the website design company. Some website design companies seem to be waiting for copy (the text to go on the page) and some seem to be pushing a deadline. The worst offenders may even be developing the client’s site live in the web (which is simply unforgiveable).

Whatever the reason, if you have these pages on your website, now is the time to decide that you need to either finish them or remove them. If it is up to your web designer then nag them constantly to get this sorted (and vow to never use them again). If you manage your own site then you can get them finished or take them down. If you don’t want to remove them completely then you can just remove any link to the pages.

Do this one thing for your online business before you do anything else. Under Construction web pages send the worst possible signal about your business to all who view them. Your website is your most valuable online ‘Real Estate’. Treat it with respect

Now count up all the times you have left a website because you were frustrated or fed up with trying to find the information you were after. If you use the web regularly then you almost certainly counted into double digits.

 You know the sites I’m talking about. They might have a flash introduction or the pages will be loaded with images that make the page take ages to load. The menu doesn’t seem to make sense and leads you on a wild goose chase and you get ‘de ja vue’ as you feel you are going around in circles trying to find the information you wanted. Eventually (or possibly, quickly) you leave the site, curse its name and never return.

Bottom line: Your visitors are far more likely to get impatient and fed up with your website than they are likely to be bored.

To underline a point, when Facebook redesigned its website a poll of its users revealed that 94% didn’t like the changes. When Amazon changed its menu it took me a while to get used to it and their sales took a dip because of it. Were the users of these sites protesting and demanding change? Not a bit of it, in fact when Facebook brought in its news feed in 2006 there were organised protests against the changes.

So Where Does it All Go Wrong?

In  (very) short, it goes wrong when you choose style over substance. Or to put it another way, it goes wrong when you choose to forget about what your website objectives are and concentrate purely on thinking ‘That looks cool!’
The old statistic is that you have eight seconds to grab your users’ attention and after this they will leave. This stat is proven in study after study and is generally accepted by most, but flashy graphics in isolation are not the answer. These same studies also state that users look for ‘visual clues’ in that eight seconds to work out if they are in the right place (or on the right page) and an effective use of these visual clues on your web page will help you ‘hook’ the user to find out more. 

Using Visual Clues Effectively

Flash animation

Flash animation is eye catching and naturally the users’ eye will be drawn to it. So if you are going to use flash animation then it must re-enforce the primary messages and encourage the user to stay. Be aware that page load time is a big reason for users to get frustrated and if they are faced with the ‘loading’ progress bar, your cool graphic may well have the opposite effect that you intended.

Images

Supporting images are helpful for users to find their way. You may think this is obvious, but having an image for the sake of it is not helpful. So if you sell baby clothes then a picture or a montage of pictures showing smiling babies wearing your product range is going to be a big clue to your users that they are in the right place.  But if a photo is not appropriate then don’t crowbar one in. A graphic image showing a sales chart or carrying other sales massages will be more appropriate if you need to break the page up.

Headlines

This is probably the most important element of each page. The text on your page has been crawled and indexed by Google and Google is where most website owners I work with find that the majority of their traffic comes from. So it makes sense that if you put a relative, attractive, attention grabbing headline this is going to be of immediate interest to a user. They are going to read it and realise that this page is in tune with the Google search that brought them here. Then they’ll start to read the rest of the information that you have added to your page.

Once you’re your using your website design to engage with your customers you then have a chance to convert them into a customer.

According to Nielsen, worldwide usage of Social Media Networking, such as Facebook, twitter, blogs etc is up 82% on the same period last year and with many companies adopting and enhancing their existing marketing strategies this is set to rise even further.

According to a study by BrianSolis.com in 2009  over 80% of professional usage of Social Media goes un-measured. Although Social Media Usage in the Business Sector has been around for some time, the requirement for consistent and continued ROI (Return on Investment) figures form such marketing methods means that anything you invest time into needs to prove its worth and have its performance measured.

Monitoring Software such as Google Analytics is free to use and is key to providing the data you need to build an accurate picture of your Social Media foothold in the marketplace. Date such as:

• Traffic Sources
• Network
• Interaction

… Can be the difference between a tumble weed blog and a credible source that users come back to time and time again.

The most important thing to remember is to measure your Social Media Activity for your company. Monitoring Software will provide a mountain of data, but is only useful if you are collecting relevant data that you can turn into useful information and fits with your SMMS (Social Media Marketing Strategy).

Monitoring Area Ideas to help you get started

• Track your referrals – this will give you an indication of tandem or child feeds that are working well and those that you either need to allocate more recourses or drop from your SMMS.
• SMID (Social Media Interaction Duration) – It may be prudent to analysis the amount of time that your visitors and lingering on your site. This might help you build a picture of your visitors interests.
• Bounce Rate – are your visitors leaving within a couple of seconds? Perhaps your page isn’t clear; your copy may need changing or may need more interest adding.
• Interaction – are your articles getting comments? What are the comments and are you responding to them?
• Membership – are your followers, subscribers or members increasing? If not why not?

If your effects aren’t working then change them! For more Tips on maximizing your web social Media or online marketing efforts subscribe to our newsletter.

With Millions of new websites being added to the internet every day it is easy to understand why your little website might get lost in the cloud.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization needs to start with the very basics. Simply launching a new website and expecting search engines (and in turn potential customers) to find your services is unrealistic and simply not going to work. As always with computers (which is all we are talking about here) they do exactly as we tell them. You cannot be subtle about this you need to tell them (search engines) in no uncertain terms, to go and look at your new website, shout it from the roof tops and send up a “Notice Me Flair” about how great your website is.

Search engines like to search and while they often struggle to keep up with the sheer volume of new websites, files and data they do give us the perfect method in which to flag ourselves and make ourselves noticed.

Simply submit your site to the Search Engine, tell it where to go and look and it will. Simple.

Google: http://www.google.com/addurl

Yahoo: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Alta Vista: http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/default

Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx

A Word of warning:

Submit your website to the search engine by hand only once in any one month, constant submissions will be seen as spam – check with your developer to see if they have done it first before you submit.

And just as a final point most search engine submissions will have a security text request on them. This is so that they know if it is a human or machine request. Be careful of companies that promise to ‘submit your site to all major search engines’, this usually means that they are using an application for submission and rest assured the search engine bots will know so enter them by hand that way you know you have done everything you can to be heard.

During my regular trawl through the business forums last week I came across a post from someone who is selling fashion accessories at their local markets and the giving the profits to local charities. They had a really low budget and so they were looking for sources of cheap advertising.

Unfortunately, advertising will often fail to give value for money, especially if it is used in isolation, small quantities or with a limited budget. I wanted to help, so I offered some tips on other marketing and promotion ideas that can yield dividends without costing very much money. An abridged version of my reply is below.

Hi

I think you should consider this from a rounded marketing approach. Don’t just think about advertising, which is probably going to be too expensive for you, think about other methods of promotion that will require time without costing too much.

1. Press Releases.

There are a few free press release websites that you can load press releases to. Also, contact your local paper with interesting things you are doing, new lines of jewellery, other activities. When you have been going 1 year, tell them. You are a charitable organisation, so they are going to be happier to print it than if you were just a new small business. You are clearly a big hearted person who cares for others, doing something other than moaning about your situation, a real can do person. The press will love writing about you.

2. Blogging

Your on the web so set up a free account at blogger.com and start writing about the things you do. Make it personal and interesting. The people you met at the various markets, the new lines of products, how sales are going, are you nearing a target, etc. Once or twice per week if you can. Put the blog address on any offline marketing you do (leaflets, cards, press releases, etc)

3. Twitter

So if you are blogging then try micro blogging. Set up a free account. Follow a few people who are interested in jewellery (search twitter for those users) and then try to write a few tweets of your own. Be upbeat and amusing. Tweet a few times per day if you can. People will start to follow you.

4. Facebook

Again, its free. Set up an account and start a fan page. You can upload photos of your designs and get feedback on them. Also you can profile the charities that you are helping. Every time an amount of money goes to a charity, find out what it does, then let people know.

5. Recognition

There may be awards in your area and nationally that you could win. Business people pat themselves on the back all the time. There may be something like the Pride of Britain awards in your area. I am sure that someone knows about the great job you do and if you were nominated for a local hero award then you could raise your profile and sell more jewellery and do even more good.

6. Personal Representation

Try to put yourself in front of as many people as possible. On days that there is no market you might want to try contacting local organisations either on the phone or in person. You could try to sell directly to the people you talk to or ask if you could have a small table with samples that you could sell during lunch time or at home time. Again, make a point of letting them know that this is charitable work, they are more likely to allow it. Maybe business centres with a lobby area or larger organisations with plenty of staff could be good locations.

All my ideas are designed to be cheap or free and generate buzz around your business. The more people talk about your business and how great your products are and what a great job you do for charity the orders will start to come in.

I really do wish you all the best of luck with this. Let me know if I can be of any further help.

Phil

You can read the full post thread at the UK Business Forums,  http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=1142952#post1142952

If Aileen gets in touch to say how things are going then I add it to my blog.

In the year 2010 most of us have come to the same conclusion that marketing has changed and success only really comes to those that position themselves apart from the rest move with the time and stay on top of their game.

Some companies are quiet happy sticking to the traditional methods of marketing that they have always used, and that’s fine, but now is the time to give you that competitive edge and really stride out ahead.

By using current and flexible marketing technology practices, such as e-mail marketing, social media and mobile marketing to drive traffic to your SEO (Search Engine Optimised) website you will soon see the ROI when an increase in website visits turn from “never visited website before” to “Just looking” and finally onto “ready to buy.”

Don’t make your users work too hard to find you

Very simple but often overlooked. Your website should be working for you constantly and if it’s not you need to consider why not? Think about the content of your website, think about how you can generate buzz about products and services displayed on your pages. Put into place your search engine strategy and don’t lose sight of your end goal … engage your visitors, generate interest and convert that interest into revenue.

Today’s web market place is made up of a variety of tools (categorized into Social marketing) e.g. email Marketing, twitter, facebook, alone press releases etc and are in the main free to use and in part your path to a successful online presence.

In simple terms the link between you, your customers and potential customers is the search engines and you need to shine big and bright.

Generate a website that is clear to navigate, full of factual and easy to find information about your services and products and then shout about it from the roof tops.

Striving to get to the top of Google isn’t a bad goal but get the basics put in place first and remember that measuring progress is one of the most important parts of your search engine strategy.

Four Tips to get you Started

• Know your market place and where you are going to position yourself in it.
• Follow best SEO and SEF practices
• Create your search engine strategy
• Measure, Measure, Measure with something like Google Analytics

Subscribe to our online marketing newsletter and we’ll send you the very latest tips and tricks to help you with more exposure on the web with less exposure of your wallet.

According to the Internet World Stats website the latest figures show that 1,733,993,741 of us use the internet and while not all of these users will be regularly active either in networking or a potential client it does give us a huge platform to sell our wares.

Armed with the information that we have a huge audience, it is not unreasonable to assume that a percentage of that audience is interested in what we have to offer, or perhaps not just interested but actually looking for what we have to offer and for whatever reason just didn’t know about us. Enter your business stage left!

The camera is rolling, your centre stage and the world is listening.

By creating this online arena, you are not just providing information to the world but gaining information, feedback and comments (good & bad) back that help you to grow, improve and promote your business and services. Creating a community of like minded people that interact, explore and collaborate could set you up nicely within your community and deem you a noteworthy source.

Creating these accounts and communities is free, total free and budget wise is an ideal solution for those on limited marketing recourses however, be careful, the downside to this type of marketing and exposure does require constant attention to reap any real benefit.

Don’t underestimate the time commitment that this will consume. Allocating specific time each week (or more often if you can) to update and interact with your community is a must if trust is to be built.

Social media really does come under the category of ‘You must put in, to get out’.

Join us on Facebook and Become a fan of our business Pages and you can follow more of our Social Media blog articles.

‘Media’ is not a new term that businesses are not used to using; however the term media now applies to many different areas, the main two being, Industrial Media and Social Media

Industrial Media is commonly referred to as “traditional”, “broadcast” or “mass” media, and basically uses the good old pen and paper, newspaper, TV and radio. The content of which is delivered to you, not by mail (well sometimes but) by the author. The content is written, read or broadcast in full and although offers feedback ability, that feedback does not form part of the content. Interaction starts and stops with the delivery method and the person that is consuming the media.

Social Media (also under the banner of Web 2.0) is radically different to that. Social Media uses the internet and web technologies to deliver and transform content with the start of the content being OTM (One to Many) generating the MTM (Many to Many) viral structure. Businesses will often refer to this as UGC (User Generated Content)

Social Media is designed to be highly scalable, highly interactive and most of all very informative.

Examples of Social Media are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, blogs …  the list goes on for some time but the idea being multiple inputs providing greater, deeper information – like the snowball effect.

How Do I Benefit from Social Media?

Other than the really obvious one of access to an array of information, you can also provide and array of information that others find interesting and repeat/ forward all over the word!

Google LOVES content, it’s not human, and it does care if your pictures are really pretty, it’s a computer and computers read information and the information on the web is HTML code – simple.

Every blog article, forum post, tweet that generates traffic, buzz and interest in your web pages is gold dust. If it’s on the web it’s HTML and Google is reading it.

But as I am sure you can imagine, not only did this make the page really cluttered, it also meant that every change would need to be done on every page, which is ok if you have 4 pages but if you had 100 pages this could make updating you website a bit of a chore.

Enter stage left CSS – Separating content from design and layout is a much slicker way to develop. It keeps pages clean and uncluttered, it keeps pages loading faster (browsers cache CSS) and makes updates not such a daunting task.

Ok, so building from your very basic web page in our previous tutorial we can now alter how our page looks from an external CSS (Style sheet)

If you are using an editor then create a style sheet giving it the name “StyleSheet.css” in the same location as your web page e.g. if you web page is on the desktop your CSS should be saved their also.

Go into your web page and add the element:

To the Head tag. Your syntax should now look as below:

Go back to your Stylesheet and enter the sytax:

Save it, reload your web page, if your web page has just changed colour then I guess you are all set!

Blog Tip: If you are using multiple style sheets on one project, don’t forget to note them at the top of your page, a reminder for you and a helping hand if another developer edits your code.

The standard syntax of a web page is:

Open notepad, Copy the above text, save it as myFirstWebPage.html onto your desktop and run it (double click on the file). It will display a very basic HTML page displaying “My First web page”

Well done, you have written your first web page. Try changing the text within the “title” tags see what happens.

Now all we have to do is make it a little more interesting!

I plan to make this a regular blog topic, and when I think of something that I think you guys might find useful I will be sure to post it …. Requests are also more than welcome.

Blog Tip: Keep you code clean and neat, Google loves clean code and the neat thing is for when you have to de-bug – and you will learn the value of that if you don’t.

Businesses worldwide are slowing coming round and understanding the full potential power of Social Media, online communications and the intense exposure and website marketing benefits that can be created by engaging in greater online ventures.

Over the last year a large percentage of social networking sites such as Face Book and Twitter, have published a continued increase in use, with facebook making no secret of it’s predicted success. In the real world this has turned social networking and what some would call idol chit chat into big money and therefore big business.

With more than 300 million active Face Book users reported and at least 50% of those users logging on everyday, that gives you 150 million lines of potential communication open everyday. Among those users it is reported that more than 2 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each week. That could be your information, your news stories and your blog posts reaching users worldwide.

To get the same exposure using traditional marketing and PR methods would have taken 30 times as long and thousands if not millions more of are hard earned pounds and dollars to achieve.

Social Media and Web 2.0 as a whole (not just face book) offers each and every one of us a platform to a mass audience. Use it poorly and as you would expect to receive poor results. Use with energy, vigor and a purpose to impress and you will be rewarded for your efforts.

Social Media is Big Business and it is not going to disappear any time soon, so release some of the rains and encourage communication and participation within your company and don’t allow your competitors to gain a strong advantage because you resisted change.

With Google’s version offering faster launch, faster searching and better compatibility we may well find that a whole in the market place as just been filled nicely.

As it currently stands Chrome has been making ground on Internet Explorer, so what will this new development do to the web usage trends

Google’s Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson indicated that he would be very disappointed if the Browser’s market share has not increased to 5 percent on its second birthday and double again to around 10 percent a further year on.

Attempting to not only scrap the surface of the browser users Google’s Chrome Team are determined to knock the Microsoft Giant of the firm foothold held for many years by making its first distribution deal with the one of the hardware market leaders Sony. Although the financial specifics of the deal are being held close, it has been described as experimental. However they are already in talks to increase their distribution with similar computer manufacturers to boost distribution.

Check out all the browsers available, the good, the bad and the down and out ugly.

The Basics
A very simple web page looks like this:

Totally Meaningless to the average bod however to a web designer/ developer and more importantly to a search engine, every squiggle and tag has a meaning. It is vital to the cross browser compatibility and SEO that each and every page is seen and read the way that you intended.

Some search engines can handle minor ticks or imperfections but on the whole search engines have been developed to obey the XTML standards, and could potentially fail to index your pages or lose data if they cannot parse the page correctly.

For example if we were to remove one of the ‘>’ from a section of the above code, the search engine would know where that tag started but would lose track of the end tag and might submit incorrect content. Worse still the search engine indexes (goes through) your page and gets lost after a missing head tag, drops out and doesn’t index any of you page at all.

So all that Keyword research you have done and relevant content you have written could all be going to waste!

How we check your code

As mentioned earlier in the article/blog Tim Berners-Lee created HTML mark-up and who also happens to be the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), who just happen to have a free valuator that check pages to W3C Standards…….. Who would have thunk it!!

So you can use either W3C XHTML Validator or WDG HTML Validator personally I would stick to W3C Schools Validator.

So whether you are having your web site done by a professional developer or doing your own web pages, do yourself a favour…. make sure that they are XHTML validated. It’s free and helps ensure that the search engine spiders can at least read the content on the page ……. which nicely leads me onto relevant content and keywords.

Ok Ok enough for now

Building a website is a process that is done in several stages, first we need to identify why we are building the website, for whom and to what gain? Assuming that we have not realised, actually I don’t need a website after all, armed with who and what we can progress onto making the content useful for our ‘target audience’.
For the purpose of this post my target audience will be arborists (people who climb and maintain trees) individuals not large companies, by picking this audience I can be reasonably sure that in main, this sector will be men, of an age younger than 40 years old (although a competition held at this year’s APF proved that the over 70’s are just as fast up those poles) so my content should be based and target to this range, although we should be careful not to exclude outside of these guidelines because our audience may alter over time.

So we have our male individuals, less than 40 years, now we need to target our content in areas that will appeal to this sector.
For example putting content that refers to purchasing large expensive machinery would be pointless, sole traders and small companies do not have the budget, however a better use of content space would be to point them at hire company/companies.
Equipment in for arborists is a specialised area (which is what our make-believe company does) and therefore is something difficult to get hold of, offers should be kept simple. Don’t try to give them discount if they buy 100 pairs of safety gloves – they are a small company, they will neither want nor benefit from this type of discount.

Provide your users with content that directly affects them, if you do, then they will return and send others to your ‘relevant site’ and the self perpetuating cycle begins.

Just one of the web standards that Rake Mark stick to 100% are the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). The reason that CSS play such a massive part in an accessible web app is the logical way that us as programmers have to code the web pages.

When we use CSS to style a web page, the structure of the page is typically linear, and therefore if we removed the CSS totally, although it may not look as pretty the main content would remain ‘accessible’ to all users.

Although the use of tables is still allowed, they should be used for data ONLY and contain the correct headings and labels to assist the mapping process needed if a screen reader is used to access the content on the page.

In 1995 the government passed the DDA (Disability Discrimination Act). This act aimed to put a stop to limited availability of products and services to those who have any form of disability.

 The act stated that all service providers need to make their service available to all regardless of any disability that they may have. This act was aimed at everyone that provided a service and that included the web. This meant that developers had to rethink and in some cases re-educate staff to incorporate this into designs.