Designs that work for you
Britain’s Website of the Year Winners!
Jan 25th
You have reached the Website of the Year Hall of Fame. All the sites below have proven to be excellent in their categories. The prize for Best Website goes to the sites which scores the highest average on Content, Navigation and Design. The Most Popular Sites received the highest number of votes.
Basics of Web hosting and Its Types
Jan 16th
| Basics of Web hosting and Its Types |
Web hosting means the service of hosting a site on the Internet making it viewable for other users on the net.Types of Hosting :
Free Hosts : There are three categories of web hosting. This is based on economical and common features
Shared Hosts :
Collocated Hosts : Now the other type of hosting service to be discussed is collocated hosting. In collocated hosting the customer owns the server hardware instead of renting it. In this hosts the server will be placed in provider’s data center. This is an expensive service. Other Hosts : Including the above type of hosts there are also many other hosts such as email hosts, media hosts, data hosts, etc but these hosts will not be discussed in this article. |
9 Steps to Find You!
Jan 16th
Findmemarketing.com believe that there are 9 simple steps to follow in designing and developing the online presence that works.
Lets take you through the steps:
1 – What is your websites purpose?
You must determine the main purpose of your website, is it to sell goods? Is it to provide information or is it to provide a service? Once we can determine the points of your website then we can move to the next step.
2 – Who is your targeted audience?
Now you know the purpose of your site, you can now determine the audience that will be viewing the site, this is absolutely essential to design and ease of use of your site. For example, it’s an Aston Martin dealer; well the site is going to be elegant and classy.
3 – The design
Now that you know the purpose of the site and the audience this will have a knock on effect as to the design of the site. As mentioned above in point 2. The design will reflect the audience. We will sit down with you and understand your market and realise what type of website design you will need for the right audience. You only have to look at for example the biggest fashion industries in the world to realise, an example of this would be Chanel and Gucci’s websites have a very elegant and flash design (lovely websites actually) to them as this is the target market.
4 – Ease of use
At Find Me, we always stand by one principal – simplicity and ease of use.
If you want a complicated website which is hard to navigate around then don’t come to use because we just won’t do it. We want the user to be able to navigate around the web with ease and not be scratching their head because they can’t find how they contact you. You only have to view the portfolio of our work to understand what we mean. Your user will enjoy using your website and come back again and again and again.
5 – The pages
Ok now we have found out the purpose of your site, the audience and the design. We will now discuss the pages. This is important because going back to the ease of use cramming too many pages into the site and not navigating it properly will confuse the user. You need to have enough pages and content but being careful not to over do it and having a huge site that is impossible to navigate around. We will tie in this point and point 4 when getting an ease of use in the site. So if you happen to have a site with many pages then we will make sure it’s simple and effective to navigate through.
6 – Search Engines must like your website
Right we have covered the design, feel and navigation of the site so the user will like it and want to use it. What about Google? What about Bing? What about all the major search engines?
Anyone with a little bit of practise can build a web page. But a webpage that search engines love to visit and index is vital if you expect your site to get any traffic, you need a well structured coding and the correct tags within it and the correct advice, ok there is a little more to it but no need to go into depth just yet. Get in touch for more details on how we work this.
7 – The Content
Ok we have created a search engine friendly website, a user friendly website, what is next?
Simple – content!
The site looks good, feels good, its easy to use, the coding is search engine friendly but now you need content, this is a long daunting process for your first website as the content is new and you need to write it, afraid we don’t do that for you, only you know what you want to write. We will read it over and give you our expert advice on how to make the content entice the user and help in search engines.
8 – Customer Communication
Websites are two-way, interactive communication systems. You communicate your company’s marketing message to potential customers and make it easy for them to communicate back with you. The better the communication, the more trust increases, and customers feel comfortable to do business with you.
You start with basics here and that is your contact us page. Have a full means of communication here, for example:
- Name
- Telephone number
- Address
We will also ensure that your contact us page is always extremely accessible around the entire site.
One key communication tool on your website is to have a “contact us” form that the user fills out. This is key in catching the users details, such as name, address, telephone number etc, don’t forget to give the user a confirmation of their enquiry and deal with it promptly, don’t sit on it, you are only doing more harm than good. Now that you have your potential customer’s details you can help your business and increase sales, with a phone number you can call the customer and really show you care about their business – customer service! It helps!
9 – Triple M
It’s a little ludicrous I know but it means Maintain Maintain Maintain, basically this means don’t just build a site and that’s it your job is done. Get a contract is place with your web design company to make monthly/weekly updates or have them build you a Content Management System so you can always make changes, amendments, have news, change images etc, you need to maintain the site, keep it fresh and new at all times.
To conclude a well managed, designed, developed and search engine friendly website, your site needs to be:
- Clean
- Simple
- Target the correct audience
- Built to a high standard to search engines to like
- Easy for users to contact you
- Keep it updated
Changing with the Times: A Key to Small Business Success
Jan 2nd
Most small business consultants will tell you that changing with the times is an essential part of small business success. Markets evolve over time, and the only way to stay viable is to change with them. However, one business found success by incorporating this adage with one of the most popular causes of our times: going green.
Shuttleworth was a small company focusing on making conveyor systems for other manufacturers, providing steady work for one hundred employees. However, like many American businesses, the company found its business in the electronics sector was being lost to overseas competitors. The company refocused on other manufacturers, making conveyor systems for industries such as food, paper materials, and automotives. That is, until this year it hit on a new manufacturing product with sales going through the roof: solar panels.
Small businesses are increasingly finding that going green is as good for their bottom line as it is for the planet. Not only are consumers more likely to buy products they perceive as ‘green’, there is considerable growth in green industries. Shuttleworth hit on a real winner: researchers have predicted that solar panels will triple to a $74 billion industry in the next decade alone. Wind power will grow at approximately the same rate. This is an enormous potential for an industry that was considered a specialty niche product just a few years ago. Indeed, Shuttleworth has projected that solar manufacturing will grow to twenty percent of their revenue this year.
How twitter works – in 140 characters
Dec 31st
John Stewart of the Daily Show last week said “For everyone who doesn’t know how twitter works, this is how twitter works….. I have no f*@king idea how it works. I have no idea how twitter works, or why it is” here.
The entire length of an email I recently received from my CEO was: “Rowan, I think we need a twitter page. What’s a twitter page?”
So, in an attempt to try and answer this question for my friends and everyone else out there who may be interested as quickly, simply and easily as possible I’m going to try and tell you how twitter works in just 140 characters. (For the uninitiated, twitter only gives you 140 characters.)Ready? Here goes:
Adam, a mate of mine who manages the twitter profile (amongst other things) for the company where he works says twitter is: “a personalised and branded RSS feed. People and companies put information out there for others to pick up.” *105 characters*
Recently I set up twitter for work (currently I’m in the process of rolling out our marketing strategy around it) my CEO now describes twitter as: “Another traffic source for the website” *38 characters*
And I say “It’s about human filtered content. You don’t have to know the person. You follow people and discuss because their content is relevant to you” *140 characters*
Twitter is a communication tool used for many different reasons by many different groups of people. The example that I came up with to explain twitter to friends over breakfast last Sunday is below. Regrettably it is slightly more than 140 characters but they got it after I explained it this way:
In nearly every country there are surgeons working on the human eyeball. But much of the time, unless they’re at a conference they don’t talk to each other. Even if did all know each other they wouldn’t bother emailing each other everyday to see if there was new information or research results it would be too arduous and time consuming.
Lets assume an Australian surgeon is looking on Google.com.au for new techniques and research about eye surgery. The information uncovered is good, but what if the newest ground-breaking research globally is only published in Portuguese in Brazil?
Would Google Australia know to pick that up and publish it on the front page? Would the surgeon think to check the Brazilian Google page, let alone every other Google country segmentation, on the off chance of finding the best and latest information available? No, that would be ridiculous, it’d take far too long and most of the time would be fruitless.
But what if a Brazilian surgeon had just read that latest ground-breaking research and thought “wow, I have to get this out to the world now!”. So the Brazilian surgeon then posts the article to their twitter profile i.e. “Latest Brazilian Eye Surgery Research tinyurl.com/12345XYZ”
for more go to http://rowanw.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/how-twitter-works-%E2%80%93-explained-in-140-characters/
Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 named ‘Best Buy’ by Computer Shopper
Dec 23rd
Kaspersky Lab, a leading developer of secure content management solutions, announces that the UK magazine Computer Shopper has awarded Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 its ‘Best Buy’ rating for an antivirus solution.
Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 received a five-star rating and Best Buy status following the comparative testing of 11 popular security solutions that included freeware, shareware and commercial versions.
Do you know what is MySpace?
Dec 23rd
MySpace is a free online community composed of personal profiles aimed foremostly at a younger membership. A MySpace profile typically includes a digital photo and in-depth information about personal interests. The amount of detail included in the profile is up to the user and submitted voluntarily. MySpace policy requires users be at least 14 years of age to join. Members routinely send each other messages and “network” or socialize within the MySpace community. The format of MySpace makes it easy for anyone to submit profile information, even if they have little online experience. Though the domain has proved incredibly popular, reportedly hosting over 60 million profiles, it has also come under fire. The concern is that the vast majority of MySpace members may be too inexperienced to realize the potential danger of posting personal information online. Some profiles contain not only a picture, but the user’s first and last name, location, and details like favorite music and foods. This information enables a predator to easily target and befriend a victim.
If You Care About Search, You Must Care About Social Media
Dec 18th
All of the search engines are rushing to incorporate more social media elements into their interfaces. Examples of this are evident in things like Google and Bing’s deals with Twitter and Facebook. You can see it in Yahoo’s new Twitter tab for news results. You can see it in Google’s Social Search lab. Really you can see it in everyday search results.
Do you consider a social presence an important element to your search campaign? Discuss here.
A lot of Internet users spend a great deal of their time socializing or using social media sites in one way or another, whether that is to connect with others or simply to obtain information. Information is a key component of social media that often takes a backseat to communication in discussion of social media tools.
The fact of the matter is that more and more people are getting more and more of their information from social sites. That could be in the form of following a news publication on Twitter, following company updates on a blog or a Facebook page, or something as simple as a friend sharing a link.
Given that people are getting more info from social media sites, of course search engines want a piece of that, because their whole reason for existence is naturally to help users find what they are looking for on the web.
So, it stands to reason that if you want people to find information that you are producing, it can help a great deal to publish information and participate in conversations on social media sites. Never mind that users of those particular sites will have access to it. The general public will as well by way of search, regardless of whether or not they are a part of any particular community.
In an interview with WebProNews, Vanessa Fox, who used to work for Google, talked about reasons that businesses should be thinking about social media with regards to search. It’s about visibility. If you are having discussions out there about relevant topics, they could appear in search results not only in real-time search, but further down the road as well.
n other words, if you have a conversation with a peer on Twitter about some topic related to your niche, there is a good chance the resulting tweets of that conversation could appear in search results for that topic on Google, even a year from now, if that tweet happens to be relevant enough. That’s just an example (note: it’s hard to say at this point, just how tweets will impact search once the Google-Twitter deal starts showing results).
There are a variety of ways in which a social campaign can contribute to your performance in search engines, regardless of what these recent deals might produce. Like Lee Odden of Top Rank Online Marketing recently discussed with WebProNews, you can optimize your social content.
The web went blog crazy a few years back. Marketers found out that blogs were great for achieving search engine visibility because of the content and links that can come from them. It’s not that different with social media now. The web has largely moved into a social media-heavy phase, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Search engines obviously know this and care about it.
As Fox says in her interview, it’s getting to the point where more businesses are starting to realize that they need to be involved with social media. However, surveys still frequently suggest that many are reluctant, and even if they do engage to some extent, they are still holding back, and not reaching the potential they could be.
You know search is important to marketing on the web. Really, it’s important to marketing, period. If you operate on the web or off, your customers are on still online, as Fox noted. Social media is growing increasingly important to search. And search is only one aspect of online marketing. There are many more benefits to social media than that.
Check how Google will work for Twitter..
Dec 16th
Here is the best example how google will treat twitter for its search terms…
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=WRkYmx4A9Do
A very good explanation and how twitter account and information will spread at google search pages..
Google Announces Search Deal With Twitter
Dec 16th
From the Google blog:
“Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”
In other words, so much for Bing (Bing) getting the upper hand in the battle for real-time search. Absent from Google’s (Google) announcement, however, is Facebook (Facebook). That said, the vast majority of status updates on Facebook are not public, so how much of an advantage that will be to Bing is dependent largely on how Facebook is able to change user behavior.
For Twitter though, today marks significant validation of its business. Just two weeks ago, it was rumored that the company was working on search deals worth “several millions dollars,” and today, they delivered, by partnering with the two biggest players in the game. With a fresh $100 million in the bank and both Google and Microsoft implementing tweets in search, it looks like Twitter (Twitter) is in it for the long haul.
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