Never fear, help is at hand.  When it comes to understanding and knowing what information a basic website requires I have the answer.  It’s like a book, you need a Start, a Middle and an End.   Leave the design to the professionals, just concentrate on the content – which is your business.

So let’s start with Your Story…

Always start with a Home page, which can be, if you like, treated as landing page.  This is where your potential customer normally arrives, so make the most of it.   Think then what you want them to do once they arrive there? Do you want them to Call You?  Email You? Search the rest of your site?  Make it easy for them to get to the information they want.

So, after you’ve thought about the Home page, move on to basic products and services.  What products do you offer and what services do you give?  If initially you’re not looking to sell online, then a good image of your products with brief descriptions should suffice (don’t fall into the trap of writing chapter and verse, this is a real turn off on the web).  Short, punchy information is key. I also recommend professional photographs, on the basis that the potential client would like to see what he is getting – make the quality count!  Forget quantity.

So, now lets have a showcase of your good work with maybe a few testimonials from clients, and if you have a number of good images then maybe have some links to a gallery. You can use this to its  real advantage with great images.

And finally, the client needs to know where you are and how to get hold of you.  A good contact us page with postcodes.

Perfect.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.  No so daunting now!  Just a good story.

PS:  Now then, Your Story Part II is having a good map of how to find you (ie in Google), to get to read your story in the first place…

I heard a great keynote speech recently that went something along the lines of:

“Do you pay a professional Accountant to manage your end of year accounts? Do you pay a professional Financial Advisor to manage your financial affairs?  The answer of course is YES.  So why then do some business people believe that they can cut costs by doing their own marketing?”

The truth is that good times or bad times, marketing is paramount.  Your brand reflects your business, which in turn reflects your reputation.  Refer back to your business strategy and remind yourself why you are doing business?  Where are you headed?  Remind yourself of your long term and short term goals.  It is all only achievable by getting your marketing right.  Here are some tips that don’t cost a fortune that will may help:

1. Know your goal, know what you want to accomplish
2. What impression do you want to leave?
3. When you come across a business with a “home-made” flyer, what’s your first impression?
4. If you need to increase visitors to your site, make sure you have a way of processing this information, moreover make sure your site makes it easy to do this.
5. Focus on what you’re good at.  Even more, specialise in what you’re good at, and partner with professional people to cover the areas where your business needs expertise.

The moral of this story is, focus on what you do and do it well.  If you need professional help with your marketing, it doesn’t always cost the earth.  Feel free to drop me a line or call me, I’d be happy to help!

Don't be blond about your marketing

For every web developer/designer, we all know that it is fairly simple to create a table using a bit of html, and the issue can sometimes be that the clients do not. This became an issue recently when one of our clients wanted to update the website themselves, and add tables as they pleased.  Of course, we can always do it on their behalf, but of course this then defeats the point of having software whereby they have the opportunity to manage it themselves.

And so this led me to search for a solution, and I came across this very simple and easy to use table builder called ‘WP table’.  It’s a very simple way of allowing the user to add as many rows and columns as they like quite simply by using   ‘add new row’ button to add a row or the ‘add new column’ button to add a column . See below for an example.

This way, the user can easily expand or reduce the tables to their own requirement, and we can get on with our developer stuff!

Start your journey here into the world of Social Media

If you have heard all these buzz words: “facebook”, “linkedin” “twitter” “blogging” and are not sure where to start, and have made the decision to incorporate Social Media as part of your business strategy, then this would be the perfect place start to your journey into the “blogsphere”.

By popular demand, we are holding a 1 day event that will be the start of your education into Social Media. We will discuss all these platforms and how best to use these tools within your business to maximise marketing your business online. By the end of the day, you will be familiar enough to start to implement these tools into your Social Media business strategy.

We’re delighted to be working with Luke Williams from Web Matters in Bournemouth on this course.  He brings with him a wealth of experience in Social Media, and how best to incorporate these free tools into your business to get your brand out there.  He has been using them for many years now and is willing to share his knowledge and experience to help you promote your business.

Spaces are limited to a maximum of 10, so this will be on a first come first served basis.

Morning Session

9.30 – 9.45am Introduction

9.45 – 11am Overview and Introduction to Social Media

11am Tea/Coffee

11.15 – 12.15 Strategy Groups, working together to discuss best practice.

12.15 – 1.00 Lunch

Afternoon Session

1.00 – 1.45 Workshop Blogging

1.45 – 2.30 Worskhop LinkedIn

2.30 – 3.15 Workshop Twitter

3.15 – 3.45 Tea/Coffee

3.45 – 4.30 Workshop Facebook

4.45 pm Close

Next Available Date:

TBA – Watch this space

Location:

The Royal Chase Hotel, Shaftesbury, Dorset SP7 8DB

Cost:

£195 plus VAT, (£229.13 inclusive) including lunch – payable in advance at time of booking

Spaces are limited, so to reserve a space, book now

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NRG Bath was the first professional networking group that I joined and it has to be said that I was a little apprehensive before going along. My initial fears soon subsided and I really enjoy the company of fellow members. At the end of the day it’s about building relationships and having the confidence to recommend others.

NRG Bath is currently quite a small group compared to some of the others; and could benefit from increased support. This is by no way intended as a criticism, being a smaller group allows for some really good communication and a chance to learn more about each other. If you are at all interested in coming along I am sure the rest of the Members would be very pleased to meet you. If you would like more information visit www.nrg-networks.com

This country just grinds to a halt at the very hint of anything that resembles snow. In this day and age with such a vast array of technology at our fingertips; how is it that our economy suffered an estimated £600m per day according to the Federation of Small Businesses. I am not one to get on the ‘blame culture’ band wagon, however I do wonder if as a nation we shouldn’t take a deep look inside ourselves before we make wild broad sweeping accusations.

There are 2 plugins that I would recommend:

Akismet

The Akismet plugin should already be installed, to activate it follow the link in the plugin description.

This plugin checks comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. Anything marked as spam gets placed in the Spam folder accessible from the Dashboard.

WP-Ban

This plugin is for the more advanced user.

I would recommend using WP-Ban in conjunction with Akismet, when an IP number has sent you several pieces of spam then banning that IP number (and sometimes IP range) will reduce the amount of spam coming in. Some caution should be used with this plugin as banning your own IP number will prevent you from accessing your own site. A useful resource for those using this plugin can be found at www.ipaddresslocation.org where you can find information out about IP addresses and ranges.

Fortunately I love coding. We needed a booking calendar recently for some customers and were unable to find one with the functionality that was required. So after a little head scratching here is what I came up with.

Example Booking Calendar

It is natural that there will be a backlash against this kind of activity, to have a massive multi-lane motorway built in your back yard apparently overnight is a daunting concept, even more scary is trying to find your way onto it!

Like every thing in life these days; there has to be a strategy, a plan within which should be several key points. How much time to invest, how much money to invest and without doubt an idea of what you want to achieve; what is your goal, who do you want to attract.

Before we get too carried away it is important to remember that the traffic should be two way and informative. This is fundamental to what has become known as Web 2.0 don’t worry, this is not a new bit of software but a term to describe this phase of the internets development. This new phase is about opinion and being more personal and approachable. It is not enough for a business to exist now, it also has to have a character, opinion and a voice. Unless you have an endless marketing budget which allows you access to television and cinema advertising the Social Media Super Highway is the way forward.

We see part of our role as the Social Media Driving Instructors, you know how to drive, you’ve had a website for years; but you haven’t yet ventured onto the motorway and that is where we can help.