February 5th, 2013
It’s rare that something comes along that is a ‘one size fits
all’ situation but I can honestly say that every website out there would
benefit from being transformed into a responsive design. Responsive design really is a one size fits all situation as well!
A great example of this is the latest Microsoft website – www.microsoft.com Take a look at the site
in your web browser on a computer / laptop – and drag the bottom right hand
corner of the browser to see the images and site layout resize to suit the
changing screen resolution. You can look
at the site on an iphone or on a desktop – it will take up your whole browser and
be easily usable still.
This neat trick ensures that your site shows perfectly whatever
size of device screen it’s shown on.
With the majority of websites these days receiving between 15%
and 40% of their traffic via mobile devices website owners can’t afford to
ignore the importance of their website rendering properly across many different
devices.
My advice is to get your website into a responsive design as
quickly as possible.
Tags: responsive design
Posted in Website Design For Businesses | No Comments »
January 27th, 2012
A new report commissioned by Google produces some interesting insights. Read Tim Webbers article on BBC here and you’ll learn about how as many as 80% of the zones internet users will access the web via a mobile device, and how the internet will go more social – allowing customers and businesses to engage with each other more freely.
I think that there are 3 key aspects that businesses can take from this research:
- All businesses should be trading online where possible – How? By considering your business model and integrating with digital / the internet as much as possible.
- Your website should serve up a mobile version of the site to users of hand held devices – How? It’s time to add a mobile site to your website (if you’ve not already got one).
-Customers and businesses are already engaging online. Be sure that your business is encouraging reviews, comments and feedback where possible – How? By blogging (allowing comments & feedback) and encouraging customers to review your performance (via Google reviews and the many other niche review websites now available).
All 3 of these actions are easily achievable for your business today and will prepare you well for the exciting future ahead for forward thinking businesses.
Tags: BBC, blogging, google report, mobile sites, reviews, Tim Webber, web economy
Posted in Business Advice, Internet Consultancy | No Comments »
November 4th, 2011
We’ve been telling our customers about the importance of obtaining positive feedback & reviews – especially Google reviews for a while now. The open nature of the internet is a double edged sword however and there is little to protect our businesses from false or even damaging reviews presently. Watch this report from the BBC’s Claire Marshall.
How can you avoid this? As the report shows it’s not easy. It’s important to be aware of any negative things people are saying about our businesses online so be sure to setup some kind of reporting service such as Google Alerts to monitor your brand name and report any use / misuse of it.
I think it’s also important to point out that we should all try to adopt an ethical approach to our own review writing online – this way ensuring that reviews can be the excellent guides that they should be for all of us.
Tags: bbc claire marshall, google alerts, google reviews, review sites, reviews and seo
Posted in Business Advice, Internet Consultancy, SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) | 1 Comment »
August 24th, 2011
Google is changing the way they rank websites. It’s really important that anybody working in the web industry, as well as any website owners are fully uptospeed with Googles latest ‘version’ of their algorithm – named ‘Panda or Farmer’ as it can (and is), having resounding implications upon the performance of many sites in the Google rankings.
I’ve read,viewed & listened to alot of information about Panda since it’s recent implementation, but this video from the experts at SEOMoz is by far the most comprehensive and well explained to date. I recommend you take the 10 minutes to watch this video and then give yourself time to process the information and implications for you and your business of these changes to the way that websites will be reviewed and ranked in the future.
I would be really interested to hear what business owners and other internet professionals have to say about these changes, so please drop me a line or leave a comment.
Tags: google farmer, google panda, SEO advice, SEOMoz
Posted in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), SEO For Business Websites | No Comments »
July 14th, 2011
The web may be cutting edge but old school skills are still incredibly important for your websites performance and conversions.
This recent article on the BBC highlights one angle showing how bad spelling can have a negative impact on conversions. This bad news is also compounded by Googles latest update – the ‘farmer’ or ‘panda’ update.
I’m going to put up a full summary of the key impacts of this change as it will have a major impact upon how websites achieve high Google rankings in the future, but for now I’ll just focus on the spelling issue.
As well as checking such elements as inbound links, onpage SEO etc, the Google spiders are also checking your spelling, grammar and even the accuracy of your information! If you’re making mistakes your site will be penalised and your ranking will suffer.
Maybe now would be a good time to go back through your website and spend a little time ensuring that the copy is well written with no spellings and is also grammatically and factually correct.
I know that we found a few gremlins when we recently carried out a similar exercise on our own site recently…
More on Panda soon – you are going to need to read this and take it VERY seriously.
Tags: farmer update, google ranking factors, panda update, spelling on websites
Posted in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), SEO For Business Websites | No Comments »
November 11th, 2010
I’ll bet you are on Facebook?
I’ll bet you’ve been told that social media is the next big thing in internet marketing also…
What is the truth about social media? Is it a good tool for an average sized business? Should your marketing people be embracing it? These are all fair questions you would be asking as a business owner looking to get the best out of online marketing. We see some bold claims about how well the large corporations are doing e.g. Dell making over a million from Twitter
As an internet marketing consultant dealing with medium sized businesses, I would urge cautious exploration. I would also urge that you don’t try to run before you can crawl! Social media would be right at the ‘mature end’ of an internet strategy for many businesses – unless you have a product or service that’s particularly social.
I would advise you get out your internet marketing checklist and make sure you have the basics covered first off:
- Website structure, usability and goals
- Website content
- Onpage SEO
- Offpage SEO
- Email Marketing
- Integration with any offline campaigns
If you can tick all of these boxes, then I would certainly take a look at some Social Media Optimisation (SMO). Start by looking at the different options and looking at how you business fits in. You can then start to plan your strategy & delivery. Remember that social isn’t sales – don’t be too pushy!
I’ll be posting more social media tips and information over the next few months – looking at how it can be effectively implemented for small and medium businesses.
Tags: internet marketing, smo, Social Media
Posted in Business Advice, internet marketing, Social Media | No Comments »
August 10th, 2010
An old client sent me a worrying letter he received from a stock image company yesterday. His website apparently contained an image which they claim was not licensed, and they had calculated that the client owed them £1240 unless he could prove he had a license for the image (including £300 legal costs incured to date in pursuing the matter…)
The site was built from a template purchased from a templates site about 5 years ago, so one would hope that they would have designers vetted to a high enough standard to avoid any licensing issues. Getting proof may well be a little tricky however I would think.
The ferocious nature of the letter, the frankly ludicrous fee they have calculated along with the fact that they don’t even give the client a chance to remove the image is nothing short of bully boy tactics, and to my mind this is just a cynical method of making easy money, and verging upon extortion.
This company is called Masterfile, so I would request any designers / companies plesae don’t purchase from these people. Apparently Getty Images also run this ruse, so let’s boycot these guys also.
As a keen photographer, I’m all in favour of copyright and content originators being paid for the use of their work, but this is not the way to go about it.
What can you do as a business owner to ensure you are protected?
Speak to your web designer and ask them to verify that all images used on the site have been correctly licensed.
If there’s any doubt, it’s pretty easy to use a cheaper stock image site such as Istockphoto to find suitable replacement images at a very reasonable price, which you can prove are licensed to you.
Even better – engage a local photographer to take unique shots for your site. Here are 2 I have worked with recently who I would recommend:
Photowell
Rama Knight
Tags: image licensing, website images
Posted in Business Advice | No Comments »
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