March, 2010

Beware of Those Offering a Google First Page Guarantee

The dreaded Google First Page Guarantee. I have to get into this a few times a year with different customers and occasionally with the firms offering this guarantee on behalf of a customer. However, I do find that the Google First Page Guarantee is such a sham that it is actually a really good way of working out the scam artists early on. If they offer you a guarantee then scratch them from your list of companies that you want to work with, because with Search Engine Optimisation there are no guarantees.


Social Web – Some Major Players

Networking -part 1 of 3 Facebook Founded in February 2004, and currently has over 400 million active users. Facebook claims to “facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph” and I wouldn’t necessary disagree. Facebook offers photo and video upload, chat, email, a forum (or wall), marketplace (to display items for sale), Event and [...]


Sage Pay: e-Commerce Website Card Processor of the Year?

I have just had a really good customer experience with Sage Pay and I thought that this was perfect for a Friday afternoon blog. I had a call from a customer with an e-commerce website in Stafford. They were having issues with chargebacks and they wanted me to investigate what could be done to reduce [...]


Get Your ‘Coming Soon’ Web Page Down and Your Website Up!

When is a website not a website? When the website is ‘Coming soon’ If ‘Under Construction’ Pages will kill off your business the dreaded ‘Coming Soon’ web page will stop you before you even got started. This is usually (but not always) when a new company wants a website, registers their domain and then asks [...]


4 Tips to a Faster Loading Website

As a follow-up to’ Make Your Website Design Engaging, not Frustrating’ I thought it might be useful to give you some honest to goodness practises that will help your web pages load faster without breaking the bank. Starting with the very basics: Images – very pretty, adds colour, interest and supports the textual based content [...]


Time to Kill Off “Under Construction” Web Pages

Are ‘Under Construction’ web pages damaging your business? If your website has pages with ‘Under Construction’ live on the web then they are almost certainly costing you enquiries, leads and sales. You wouldn’t allow a customer to walk in your showroom only to tell them you were unprepared to help them. You wouldn’t answer the [...]


Make Your Website Design Engaging, not Frustrating

How often have you used a website and gotten bored and left because of the website design? It’s probably not very often. If you’re buying a book or movie on Amazon, you search for it, find it and buy it. You might read a few reviews or browse for a few different comparable books or [...]


Analyzing Social Media

According to Nielsen, worldwide usage of Social Media Networking, such as Facebook, twitter, blogs etc is up 82% on the same period last year and with many companies adopting and enhancing their existing marketing strategies this is set to rise even further. According to a study by BrianSolis.com in 2009  over 80% of professional usage [...]