A year in and time to reflect

It has been (nearly) 1 year since One Stop Promotions setup One Stop Web Designers as an arm to their services. So as the web design department we thought we would show a few things that have happened over the year, not just websites we have developed but a few other bits and bobs along the way.. this blog entry in no way should be taken seriously..!

January

The beginning of it all. January saw a huge flurry of activity on the marketing side (it even came with a plan..) Fresh and new into the market came One Stop Web Designers, the response was frankly quicker than expected, which surprised us a little. It was great to see such a response however, we had 8 projects in total including www.actoncars.co.uk, a content management system with an automatic vehicle upload section. So we not only began strong but also showing off a little.

February

February quite frankly wasn’t very interesting. Shall we move on..

March

Now March saw the installation of Lian’s new mascot. Placed to see across the office and ensure all things were fluffy and pink in his world. We never got round to naming ‘it’ and are now relieved ‘it’ has now found it’s place in life.. down the tip. 

March however did bring us a very interesting project involving postcode geographics and calculations (yes we sound nerdy right now) but have a look and of course play around with www.buzz-cars.com and you’ll see why we are proud.. 

We also began blogging after a lot of conversations with clients reference twitter, we felt the need to blog! http://onestopwebdesigners.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

 

This fella appeared randomly from the digital department, we called him Fred.

April

April, ah yes April how cruel and kind you were. We had a client in need of a solution quick with their website, a rival company didn’t know what was wrong. They came to us and the picture is around 25% of the code we sifted through to work out what was wrong. It sent us slightly mad at the time, but not enough to pull our first big project in for NBV www.nbvconnect.co.uk a directory, a membership function and plenty more here.

May

May’s projects were brilliant, seriously brilliant, but we can’t speak about them. No seriously, we can’t comment as they were through a 3^rd party. It involved a blue chip client and payment system for an event. That is all we can say.

However May taught us two things

1. A soft drink can taste like ear wax
2. We needed a bigger workflow board

We also embarked on our first Groupon adventure using the F.A Cup and One Stop Promotions T-shirt printing department. Man City beat Stoke City in the final of the F.A Cup, cue manic design changes as we all had Stoke down to win.. just kidding. A large influx of t-shirt orders and proof that groupon can work for a business.

May also saw our second blog entry http://onestopwebdesigners.blogspot.com/2011/05/you-can-help-your-search-engine.html (we really must do this more often..)

June

And the commencement of the excitement.. absolutely nothing to do with projects or work, but the entry to a ballot for Sonisphere tickets, and not only entering but getting to be a chosen one! Well Steve was an excited man until the event, well after the event, for many months after the event in all fairness..! He still hasn’t removed his parking ticket from his dashboard..

Oh and we also had out busiest month to date, not expected with summer holidays coming, including www.drivinginstructorloughborough.co.uk and http://www.derbyshirecateringservices.co.uk/ amongst others..

July

Well not a lot happened in all fairness, mainly due to us hitting the beach and sorting One Stop Promotions website out (www.onestoppromotions.co.uk) 

So we got creative on the beach instead.. you can see where’s Steve’s kids are heading..

We were also minorly offended by a packet of sweets.. no need to call people names.

August

Now August surprised us.. no really, it jumped out of the cupboard and shouted “boo”. August was our busiest month so far of 2011.. It certainly wasn’t expected as one at the start of the year.. We thought too much sun and sangria would be consumed to actually order or want a website! It brought us some yellow pages design work, www.graciephotography.co.uk and www.wedding-cars-nottingham.co.uk among 8 other projects

However we did catch our boss breaking company internet policy, rude not take a picture. May come in handy...

September

The knock on effect of August meant September became hectic with www.euro-catering.co.uk  (in conjunction with Richard Hearn Design) finishing and the start of 9 projects let alone finishing of August’s work.. 

Enough of work, September was an up and down month for the OSWD department. 

Down: the installation of ‘swear pig’ – which effectively skinted us (when we say us we mean Lian - pictured)

Up: A wonderful card from a very pleased client

Down: Steve broke his external hard drive nearly lost a lot of personal info and pics of his babies (never sure if he means his kids or his guitars..)

Up: Won a DAB radio with Absolute Radio, in fact we won 2!

October

It seemed Halloween hung over us far too much in October. In fact if we are being honest can we just forget October happened? Yes? OK onto November sharpish...

November

What a month, the biggest and best, so far not over. Movember was adopted by Steve, so far raising around £200. We also did things like this in November www.personaltrainingloughborough.co.uk and www.alternatives.co.uk (this was a html site which we moved to a cms, design is not ours..) A good month for Steve as his other half’s relations came from Australia bearing gifts of an AC/DC fashion

.. and we also found the biggest grape in the world..  Seriously that is not photoshopped.

December

I know December hasn’t happened, but we’ve looked into our crystal ball and seen a drunken night in Loughborough for Christmas party purposes, the completion of 2 huge sites, a bloke with a white beard spreading delight over the world and an excessive amount of food and drink around the 25^th!

See you all in 2012!

Pinning your hopes on SEO

We may seem somewhat cannibalistic here? Yes we do offer search engine optimisation as a service, but I feel the need to express a dependency on SEO that I’ve noticed recently.

For those not in the know search engines such as Google etc look for certain criteria in your website. They crawl billions of sites and index them as they feel they need to. They then rank them on importance. Factors include keyword ratio, h tags, alt tags, compliancy, age of site and much much more.. (this list is very big!)

In the main companies either have someone in house working on this or come to professionals, like ourselves, and we push their search engine rankings up based on agreed keywords.

SEO once in action can make a huge difference to a business; it can increase leads and enquiries. Traffic on the high ranking listings is without doubt much higher than that of a site not optimised. But does this mean that the business is doing better? Does it mean you can kick your feet back and watch the business come in?

This blog entry I hope will get business people thinking in the first part and secondly realise the internet may not necessarily be the be all and end all of a business model, and to think so is very hopeful.

WE CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH!

The idea behind this blog occurred after a recent conversation with a client. We took over a site and optimised it on their behalf, currently top 3 for most of their keywords, but aren’t happy, the phone is ringing more and enquiries are on the up.. But the business isn’t coming in? A strange scenario.. but leads to my first point..

Your behaviour, conduct, grammar, spelling and etiquette are a tool you need to utilise.

We can only get you there... what you do with it is down to you. In fact this has been tried and tested. A very good client of ours tested the theory. I have optimised 2 sites under the same keyword for him.

He received the same enquiry from both sites.

Site 1 sent a beautifully written email showing the lady all the positive points of his service, and how it was an experience to use his service. This quote was £25 more than he would normally send.

Site 2 sent a quick thanks for the enquiry and a price £25 less than the original sent out. The lady booked from the first site. (He also charged the correct rate at the time... in case you thought someone was being ripped off!)

Our Advice.. Sometimes simply replying isn’t enough, especially the general public. Make every enquiry feel special.

DO THE BASICS

There are also some classic errors in seo, especially for companies trying to do it themselves. Again a recent client showed me their impressive seo work, but was frustrated at the lack of enquiries. After a quick look at the Google keyword tool it seemed that on average the main keywords were searched for less than 100 times a month. The keywords we felt they should be aiming at came in around 3,400 searches a month. Our advice... do your research! 

SORRY GUYS PRETTY WINS

One of the hardest jobs in life is to tell someone who is very proud of their work, that in all reality it’s not very good. Being top of Google is fine, but if the site doesn’t deliver on looks, navigation or just making sense the bounce rate will increase. Fortunately so far the people we have had to tell this too have become our biggest advocates, so all good in the end. Just awkward to begin with!

Let’s face it we are all vein to a certain extent, maybe a look at your site and an overhaul are needed.. it’s not as expensive as you may think.
Our advice... hire a professional.

BACK TO BASICS
And... finally.. before the internet came, before Google began their world domination.. What did you do for leads and enquiries?
This is the cannibalistic part, so I’ll be quick. Ask yourself that question.. look at your business, before the internet what were the traditional methods of gaining business.. Obviously internet related services can look away, but even people who E-Commerce.. what would you have done before..? Is being top of Google everything?

Some businesses just aren’t made for search engines, your business will and does come other avenues. In certain industries we have found 20% of business comes from seo, 50% who you know and the rest word of mouth/promotions.. this came from a very frustrated client. They were putting all there effort into the 20% and wondering why the site wasn’t performing as well as his rivals. Who of course put the right effort in the right places. We had to tell this one we couldn’t really help him with the rest of his business in the politest of ways.. Our advice.. seo is brilliant, but don’t rely on it alone.

IN SUMMARY
A well optimised and pretty looking site will do well on search engines and more importantly with your visitors, the internet is to be taken advantage of and some remarkable achievements can be made. But to rely on it solely can be somewhat narrow minded and not necessarily profitable. Remember your behaviour is part of your corporate identity and you are judged on this. Put the elbow grease in, ask any Dragon on BBC2 they will tell you exactly this. Very rarely does a site produce a millionaire overnight.

The power of Twitter

Sometimes something gets to you and you have to do something about it. I have recently blogged about Twitter and what to do and how to navigate it etc.. but a small bud of information has come along and affected me thanks to Mr Rufus Hound.

If you have taken any advise from my blogs, from search engine optimisation to twitter (so far!) then please take this on board.

I am a proud father of 2 and the thought of not havign their mother around not only upsets me but makes me feel ill. I know we are all hit with charity requests everyday etc.. but this one really hits home with me. I've donated and I hope you do.

I shall leave it in Mr Hounds capable hands to explain the full scenario, please at least watch the 3 minute video and decide from there.

http://www.twitvid.com/SVPQH

http://www.hopeforlaurafund.co.uk/

YOU CAN help your search engine rankings..

Many a time I’m asked how companies or individuals can improve their search engine rankings, to be honest the real truth is to hire a specialist and there is the only shameless plug for our services. However you can do a lot to help... a lot more in some cases than we can do..

Inbound Links

Search engines algorithms and rules are constantly changing, that’s where your professional comes in, however their rules on linking never seem to differ too much. First thing to do, go to www.google.co.uk and type link: and then your domain name.. go on do it, we’ll wait around a while...

OK.. I’m not mystic Meg, but I am predicting it says “Your search... domain name.. did not match any documents”. Now type in a well optimised site, for example “link:www.argos.co.uk” around 625 results last I saw. Not bad, there are better, but you get the idea.

Search engines are constantly spidering (indexing) the internet, every time they find a link to a website they report back to base and your links should appear in the “link” search, not always I have to say. Unfortunately Google is very picky in the sites it will show as links to your site, and have been quoted as saying they don’t like to show everything..

A useful tool to find inbound links to your site is http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-popularity-checker.shtml this provides stats from all major search engines.

So why all this pointless banter about inbound links? Well search engines love the right type of inbound link. The right kind of link can occur in one of 2 ways.. firstly a link from a well optimised site within your remit. So a link from a well optimised golf shop, for example, to your well optimised golf shop is a big thumbs up. Secondly a well optimised site that links to your site with your keyword within the link on their site. A mouthful I know, what I mean is your golf shop has a link to it from a price comparison website, but the link on the price comparison site doesn’t say your shop name, it says your keyword..

But hang on I hear you say.. I can’t control the above in anyway.. and I’m not linking to my competitors.. well yes and no.

Linking sites, it’s all about quality and not quantity, so as much as linking back from your well optimised competitor would be ideal, it certainly isn’t ideal. The trick here is to combine the 2 above, look for complimentary businesses. You must have some in your armoury..? Chauffeurs for example, you supply cars for weddings? Then you know a few florists, hairdressers, dress makers...? Put your heads together and link from the appropriate wedding pages to each others and make sure your keywords are in the links. Therefore the page is optimised to weddings and has a direct link back to your site for wedding cars.. just as an example.

It’s thinking like that which will bode well for your site.

Domain Names

Wait.. you didn’t finish the last chapter off I hear you scream.. correct I’m finishing it now.. as it’s all appropriate. I heard your cries that you can’t control what other people put on their websites for you.. Indeed correct. Price comparison sites, directories, network sites etc will have their own automated systems. So how do we break through?

Think about your domain name.. normally it will be something like www.mynamemyservice.co.uk it certainly won’t be www.myservicemyarea.co.uk. So Mr Plumber in Derby, your domain name is www.johnsmithplumbingltd.co.uk, so when you submit your site to directories/websites your main keyword doesn’t exist within their code or content. If your domain name was www.derby-plumber.co.uk then your main keyword will get into the directory and be seen by search engines, even if it isn’t written as www.derby-plumber.co.uk on the directory/website.

Online directories

www.freeindex.co.uk www.gumtree.co.uk are 2 worth considering. Gumtree is a place to advertise your services on, Google in particular loves Gumtree and seems to be permanently indexing it, I’ve heard of top of Google within 20 minutes after placing an ad on Gumtree. Free index is an online directory, but you customise everything written in their.. a good place to put keywords.

Be careful though.. some linking sites may not be good for you, avoid anything p0rnographic or gambling related for obvious reasons..

Some directories may ask for a link back to them, usually an advert and at that point you need to consider your own site. The advert can be placed at the bottom of the page, but will it affect the integrity of your site? That’s a question you as the website owner can answer..!

Social Media

You’re probably reading this as it was posted on a social media site.. I hope so. Social media websites are huge, not just in popularity but literally HUGE! Tweets from twitter and updates to search engines are in minutes, not months.

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, FlickR and MySpace are great examples of sites where you have control of your content.

Tweet your latest product, service, triumph whatever it maybe, but get the feed from twitter to your site. Make sure your website is in your profile on all of the above. Youtube users, put your keywords into the title of the video, not just to help your site but so people can find your video on there in the first place!
Think of your usernames carefully on all social media sites, can you place a keyword into it?

Blogging Hell as if I didn’t have enough to do

Blog blog blog.. blog is king, especially one owned by a search engine, oh like this one...! Total content control, you can type whatever you want in a blog (well, don’t spam..!). In fact here’s a live demonstration for you..
www.onestopwebdesigners.co.uk – there you go a link from my blog to my site.. in fact let’s go one better WEB DESIGNER LOUGHBOROUGH, a link from my blog about web design to my website selling web design with my keywords in the link and my keywords in my domain name. Thank you, settle down, the standing obvation was lovely but really not necessary, got the idea now?

Help yourselves people to help your website, I’m not going into coding complexity here or content and h1 tags blah blah.. seriously get someone to do that for you, they (I mean we) can hide and play around with things that you wouldn’t know about. If you’re not technically minded help your site and do the above!

What exactly is Twitter and do I need to know about it?

So what’s all this Twitter about? What’s the point? Why should I get involved?

All very worthy and just questions from our client base. This particular blog entry is not here to convince you to get involved, nor is it biased to one social networking site above another. These are merely our thoughts and experiences with the, now 5 year old, networking site. We are asked about Twitter a lot, so here’s our take, our thoughts and hopefully some informative text to fill your coffee break.

Overview

Twitter is a social networking site; it wants you to tell its users what you are doing in 140 characters or less. Simple. The simplest form of social networking. A little snapshot of what you are doing at any one point in your day. Well that’s the selling points, but as we know and you Twitter users know, it can be much more than that.

Jargon

Here’s our attempt at translating Twitters Jargon for the non-user:

• Tweet: 1 use of twitter in 140 characters or less
• @ : Precedes a username of a twitter account when commenting upon them
• # (hash tag) : Used before a topic, thus allowing other Tweeters to search and find the same topics
• Followers: People who find you interesting enough to want to know what you tweet
• Timeline: People whom you follow have a timeline of tweets; the more you follow the longer your timeline will be.
• Direct Messages: private messages between twitter members, but you must be followed by the person you want to direct message.
• Trending Topics: the most popular topics being tweeted by Twitter members
• Retweet: someone has put your tweet back on twitter for their followers to see
• Shortened URL: a programme has shortened a website domain you have added to your tweet
• Yfrog / Plixi / Twitpic /Tumblr: Someone has uploaded a picture to their tweet
• Lists: You can make a list of the people you find interesting

Examples of Jargon

“@JoeBloggs Yes that dress was huge #bigfatgypsywedding #bfgw”

Here you are talking/commenting to JoeBloggs about the TV show Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
“@JoeBloggs @JoeBloggs2 http://plixi.com/rhz2 here she is”

Here you are having a 3 way conversation with JoeBloggs and JoeBloggs2 and you have uploaded a picture to show them
“RT @joebloggs @you you are so funny”

Here you have retweeted JoeBloggs comment about how funny you are

OK, got it? So what’s the point?

Twitter is being used by a huge cross section of society for many different purposes:

• Socially, we believe the saying is “Facebook is for friends, twitter is for people you are yet to meet” and socially speaking we second that.
• Business Networking. Finding and making contact with current and potential clients
• Communication in groups, using twitter to keep in touch with friend, clients, families or be part of an online group
• Being Nosey. Many celebrities use twitter from Stephen Fry to that bloke you half recognise off of the tele..! Twitter can give a very sneaky peak into their world.
• Community building and help groups. Using the hash tag can bring people together in groups on twitter whether fellow followers of a football team or members of a dieting club, using the hash tag can find people going through the same problems as you
• Portfolio, showing people what you do, can generate interest too.
• Spamming, sadly spamming does occur on Twitter. As with every media there are people who will take advantage of a situation, such spammers can be blocked or reported.

Not every use of Twitter has been listed, but remember this blog is from our experiences! Feel free to comment and let us know how you use Twitter.

How do you engage with people?

The Twitter search function allows a user to find other people based on a common theme or interest between them. For example we like Rock Music, a simple search on rock music will show people who have tweeted about the topic, have lists on the topic and people who have it in their name. Drop a search in with a hash tag, i.e. #rockmusic and even more will show. From here you can engage with a person about a tweet, follow them and so the Twitter link begins.

On the go

Twitter can be used “on the go”; many mobile phones have twitter applications, allowing you to fill your timeline whenever and wherever you wish. Other applications both mobile and PC based allow you to tweet through them, for example Spotify will let your followers know what song you are listening to, if you let it. There are also many online applications you can allow into your twitter life, they measure your “Klout”, who has unfollowed you and much more. This is where Twitter becomes more than just 140 characters of what you are doing.

Security

Yes, Twitter has some security issues but in our view these are mainly down to the users themselves. As with any networking site, particularly Facebook, only give out the information you want people to know. As with emails, if you don’t like the look of it or you don’t know who has sent it.... don’t click on it!

How does Twitter fit into a business environment?

If you decide Twitter is a good platform for your business it should sit with your marketing team/person, they can utilise its functions to talk about your products, services, show off examples and bleat about a good testimonial. 

Using Twitter as a marketing tool

Twitter is another tool to communicate your company, product or service. So use it as just that, say what you need to say, show people your Twitter timeline on your website and let people know you exist. More importantly for your web presence, Twitter can generate links back to your websites, thus increasing traffic volume and placing a tick in the search engine optimisation box.

Why the marketing person?

We believe it should be developed by a marketer for one simple reason, it needs to reflect your corporate identity, the core morals and beliefs your business stands by. Those behaviours and communications that sit within your marketing department, they manage how your company is perceived; they communicate, design and behave with your brand/company. So why let an I.T person, delivery driver or production manager say what they think on a tweet, which could potentially reach thousands or more... and more than likely, won’t be a message you wish to convey.

Our Experience

Well hands up, we’ve made some mistakes on Twitter, lost followers and been spammed.  Our mistakes include mentioning how poor the Glastonbury line up was, only for people to jump down our throats. We’ve added too many websites and projects and people have become bored of our topics. We’ve mentioned the name of a famous celebrity or brand and been spammed with strange looking links. We’ve even insulted a celebrity without realising our comment could be taken in that way.

However, we’ve done some good things with Twitter and they outweigh the bad. We’ve generated clients and web design work. We’ve helped out people with various different requests. We’ve made some good friends and met some interesting people. We’ve increased our web design network and found some talented designers to help us out when it’s all a bit hectic. We’ve found people new employees. We’ve bought from other firms we found on Twitter and more importantly didn’t know they existed. We’ve... Well you get the idea; we’ve done a lot in our 3 years of Twitter.

General do’s and don’ts for companies AND individuals

Based on mistakes we have seen or heard about...

DO’s

• Do speak to people, say hello, and reply to their tweet, what’s the harm?
• Do search for people as interesting as yourself
• Do engage with people, relationships can become fruitful
• Do download a twitter application, we recommend Tweetdeck but there are plenty of other apps for your pc, mac and mobile device out there
• Do check a followers timeline and profile before following back

DONT’s

• Don’t spam, you can tell people about your product but don’t shove it in their face..!
• Don’t spam, yes it says that above, but a different spam. Just because someone follows you it doesn’t mean they want your message sent to them as a direct message, let’s not get peoples backs up.. play fair
• Don’t argue, what’s the point? We are here to get along and when the dust settles was it really worth it (Google Ed Byrne and Keith Chegwin on Twitter....)
• Don’t pick a fight, yes similar to the point above but this is about weight, just ask @brumplum about @stephenfry, if you upset a celebrity with over 1,000,000 followers you will get some abuse.

IN CONCLUSION

It’s difficult to admit but as website designers we were a little sceptical 3 years ago before we joined Twitter but now it is utilised by One stop Web Designers for more than just Business Networking, we’ve gained friends and influenced people. Twitter is not the answer for a failing business nor should it be seen to be. Within a business environment and with a lot of time, effort and love Twitter can be a powerful tool in your armoury. To rely on it for all your marketing needs would be naive, to pull it into your marketing mix can enhance your profile, use it incorrectly at your peril.

Written by Steve Corbett from One Stop Web Designers.