S8080 Blog

If you choose the right web design studio they will be able to create a good looking web solution which to satisfy all of your functional requirements, but how good will the actual meat of the site be? Great content makes a great site.

Before you even speak to your designers you should collect all of the information that you want to offer the visitors to your website. Three important points to think about are…

• Who is your audience
• What are their goals when they visit your site
• How can you make it foolproof for them to succeed

S8080 have developed a comprehensive alignment process to ensure that every aspect of your functionality and content has been carefully considered and will be easy to find and use by your target user groups.

This process ensures that copywriters have a complete understanding of your site’s business and marketing strategy before being creatively briefed.

If you have existing copy (brochures, newsletters, etc) that you want to use on your website, it will need to be re-purposed it for the web - read ‘heavily edited’!

Everyone thinks they can ‘write a bit’, but a professional writer, experienced in crafting copy for the web will add tremendous value to your project.

At least three or four times a week (normally more!), I get hit by a blind panic that I have forgotten something extremely important. Normally in the shower when I am mentally prepping myself for the day. “Oh no, I forgot to get the new concepts for the viral game over to Beth”.

I rush into the office, fire up Outlook and dive into my complicated series of ‘to do’ lists, calendar entries and email archives only to find that it did get sent on time, two days earlier. Phew.

I am getting too old for these panic attacks, so one of my long term ‘to do’ list items has been ‘Get a time management/organising stuff system together’.

I am a pretty organised person - my system works, its pretty foolproof but I am not 100% committed to it - I don’t trust it, hence the daily panic stations. Also, this sort of thing doesn’t come naturally to me (right side of the brain and all that…), so I have been searching for the perfect (read easy/foolproof) system.

Hours of Googling led me to David Allen’s website, www.davidco.com and his Getting things done (GTD) system. I bought the audio book, then the real book, then the ‘Using Outlook with GTD’ ebook. It’s mostly pretty obvious stuff, but it’s the detail of his system (that can only come from someone who has spent the major part of his life thinking about this sort of thing), that makes me think this could work. He has thought of every eventuality for every single thing entering your business and personal life.

Google ‘tickler file’ or ‘GTD’ and you will see what I mean. Beware; this is major nerd territory.

I’ll let you know how I get on!

Marketing consensus says 4-6 ‘touches’ with your visitor are required before a web user will be willing to make a purchasing decision (touches may include offline & online). Depending on the product / service you are offering the order decision time can vary from a few days to months - you need to keep your visitors coming back to reinforce the brand and keep your organisation at the top of their list over your competitors - here I look at a few ways of doing this online.

The key – regular updates

If people are interested in what you offer they will return again and again as long as there is something new each time - this means you need to keep your site updated and refreshed. On the flip side if users visit more than a couple of times and nothing has changed the reality is they are unlikely to come back again.

Regular updates take time, energy and thought so here are a few ways of getting regular updates on your site without having to re-write your web copy time and time again - basically concentrate your updates to key areas of the site:

News

If you’re an organisation, post your latest news worthy information but make sure it’s of interest to your visitors, and maybe provide an RSS feed too.

Events

Post your forthcoming events online

Newsletters & mailing lists

Send your newsletter to your existing client base and sales leads (if they have opted in!), you can provide special online offers in your newsletter to help things - another excuse to contact your existing clients. Mailing lists can generate huge rewards if used correctly and your data is good.

If your website is more information driven, then a newsletter with summary articles and links to the details is a nice touch to get users to come back.

A blog or podcast

Blogs and Podcasts are great ways to publish information onto your site that is less ‘corporate’ or doesn’t necessarily fit into a typical news article. Depending on your’market, these mechanisms can help elevate your position in the industry from ‘just another company’ to an expert your the field.

User interaction

Allow users to discuss products and services via online forums – recommendations by your customers add more weight to your marketing machine. Amazon allow users to rate products and provide comments, this ‘adds value’ to the offering, I bet you have purchased books based on their star rating!

Special Offers

Special offers - particularly web site specific, lure people back. Change them regularly to keep visitors coming back - and email them to let them know what your latest offer is.

Provide online discounts aligned with any seasonally quiet times you may experience in your typical business cycle.

Downloads & freebies

Give something free, whether it’s knowledge in the form of blogs & podcasts, some wallpaper or desktop images or a quick flash viral game - this all helps to drive traffic back to your site. Make sure you change them regularly and inform your visitors, a simple ‘add your email here if you want us to tell you when we add new downloads’ is enough.

Support

If your product or service needs after sales support, think about a support section on your site. Downloadable manuals, FAQs, online help, how-to’s, downloadable updates and support forums all help reduce helpline enquiries and encourages users back. The more support you give, the more users will come back and use the site, the better the service you offer and the higher the chance for repeat business.

Finally sharing the work and measuring the success

Remember to track and monitor your website stats, user journeys and impact of your new additions. If like us, updating the site is another marketing activity in your very busy schedule, then delegate tasks - ask your team to write blogs on their specialism, make it part of your business processes to write a news article at the end of each project. Think sticky.

ICAAN, the internet’s governing body has approved the domain .tel, the idea of such a domain is to allow companies and organisations to place all of their contact details on one site, so customers can just refer to this one address, rather than hunting around their corporate website for contact details. Think of it as an online company contacts directory.

Telnic, the company in charge of managing the domains aim to release further information in the coming weeks.

Matt Hazely, the hod carrier from Essex who was planning to complete a record breaking hiking attempt on the 2175 mile Appalachian Trail (in under 40days) in the US this summer has had to pull out due to injury.

After speaking with Matt it was very clear that he was incredibly upset after all of the hard work building up to the challenge. Matt has supplied the following statement…

“Due to developing tendonitis in the peroneus brevis tendon in the early stages of training on the Appalachian Trail, I have consulted a foot specialist.

I have decided that with the amount of rest needed to regain 100% use of my foot and the time it would take to train again, I have regretfully decided to pull out of my sub 40 day challenge for this summer 2006 to concentrate on an attempt in 2007.

My team has been incredibly supportive and has made this decision a lot easier for me. They have also offered full support for next year.

Thank you all for your support and kind words of encouragement. I now get an extra year to train so maybe it will have to be sub 30 day.

Once again thanks for all of your support, it means a lot to me!

All the best,

SQUEAKY

Matt has been in touch to tell me about his next challenge. I have promised to keep it under wraps for the time being, but believe me – THE MAN IS INSANE!

We are now mid way through upgrading our business system to incorporate ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) and OHSAS18001:1999 Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OH&S) – pause for breath!

For those of you that have worked with us (thank you all!), you will know that we have excellent workflow and quality systems in place and combined with our legendary project management, things run pretty smoothly – on time and always on budget.

But we are gluttons for punishment. We want more, another first!

The EMS and OH&S systems are normally used by far larger organisations, but they are helping S8080 to work towards perfecting every business process and external touch point for the benefit of our clients and our team members.

We are working with a fantastic consultant, Dawn Cairns of NDC Management Systems – she has a real talent of making sense of the systems and making them workable for us.

We are due to complete the process and have our certification in autumn this year.

If you are preparing the copy for your site, try and source images and photographs as you go along (or add image ideas to your text for your web design team to source later). If you are using a copywriter ask them if they can include ideas for images.

It is important to check that you have permission to use any shots that you plan to publish on your site. Even if you commissioned a photographer to take shots for your brochure, do not assume that you are entitled to use them on your website. If in doubt, just ask.

Most web design studios will be happy to source stock images for you, or arrange a professional photo shoot, but if you are on a tight budget it is a lot more economical to provide your own imagery. You can take you own high resolution shots with any reasonable digital camera.

If you decide to take your own, two simple rules will help you achieve better results…

1. Make sure there is plenty of light behind you, lighting your subject
2. Fill the frame with your subject (use your zoom function!)

Any photography book will give you plenty of advice on more advanced lighting techniques and composition – invest a little reading time and you will amaze yourself.

If you decide to employ a professional photographer (from around £400 a day), talk to your web design team and they will help you prepare a brief based on your information architecture and copy and help direct the shoot.

If you are up-loading the images yourself, you will need to ensure that they have been optimised for the web, this means that they are in the appropriate format (JPEG, GIF, etc) and at an appropriate size for your website. You will need photo editing software to carry out the optimisation, ranging from free to hundreds of pounds.

For more information on optimising photos and images check out this site…

http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/optimisation/imageoptimisation.html

They state that the new Flash Player is still compatible with existing content and is available for developers and designers alike to test their content and products before official release.

Flash Player 9 marks the first time a major Flash Player release has been made available before its accompanying Flash authoring tool. The next Flash authoring tool, code named Blaze, is expected to target Flash Player 9. No release date as yet, but a preview release that supports ActionScript 3.0 is expected to be made available through Adobe Labs.

Look out for Flash 9 and the next generation of flash movies!

Recent evidence suggests that if search engines detect that you’re making use of duplicate content you may find your website penalized and dropped down a few ranks.

The reason for this ‘SPAM’, search engines are constantly being updated to keep track of the latest stealth techniques to boost your rankings and will drop your site if you employ such underhand tactics.

Only recently a large German car manufacturer was dropped from Google for employing such shady tactics. So don’t make the same mistakes and check your content – and no cheating because they’ll know!