Emerging Innovations Blog

If you want your web page to look the same on all browsers ...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 17:19:22 BST

So let's get the answer that you're all looking for out of the way first ...

If you want your website content to look identical on all browsers then you should stop spending time designing websites and upload a PDF document.

Sorry, but that's the only answer.

Actually, we need to spend some time putting the matter of browser differences into perspective. A good starting point is to understand the rise of the mobile web and how browser's have coped with that. We're grateful for the fact that our smartphone browser displays websites in a cut-down way and allows us to wrap text nicely so that when we zoom in we don't find ourselves having to scroll sideways, aren't we?

Well, that's the same point from the other side of fence ... the ability - or need - to dictate to a web browser the exact size of any particular part of the screen is both unnecessary and unwise. Yes, the layout of the site needs to look good and the navigation needs to be clear but they need to be relative to each other, not set absolutely by size.

It's this point that means viewing your website in different web browsers before you launch a site is very important. Have a look at the main different brand of browsers:

Google Chrome
Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Opera
Safari

(and those are just the desktop ones, there's a raft of other mobile devices such as Dophin and Chrome Mobile).

So while we can't strive for our website to look identical in each one we must ensure that our website works and doesn't break (or look broken). The way that each browser implements CSS (see last week's article) and different HTML tags may cause problems but there's nearly always a way around it.

So, understand that diversity of viewing is part of the web, embrace it and ensure you check that it works for you before you launch your website.

Simple Introduction to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:58:52 BST

Web designers love their TLA (Three Letter Acronyms) so from FTP through to PHP and from RSS to XML we try to explain things clearly and concisely. This article is all about a basic definition of Cascading Style Sheets - or for TLA web designers CSS!

There are two key bits of knowledge to understanding the reason behind CSS and why it matters. Firstly, we explain how content is displayed on any web page and then, secondly, why CSS is an important part of making your web page work.

When the web started it was to share textual information between networks. Suddenly educational institutions around the world could all access digital information over this new network called the Internet. From those humble beginnings the web has grown into the interactive, glossy and styled beast that we see today.

Part of the revolution took place in web browsers and relates to how content is displayed. In particular, the separation of content and style made it possible to view any content in a particular way. For itself, the content does not need to have been made to look pretty, it just needed to have markings within it to define which sections are what. So, these markings - called tags - might define the heading, paragraph of link to more information.

So far any document that includes the correct tags we can apply some styling. This styling tells the browser how each of the sections - denoted by tags - should be displayed. Hey presto! We have a web page ... or something close to it.

For today's modern web designer's separating content from style is the norm. Web pages are written in HTML and include a number of tags which identify sections of the site. Stylesheets are then used to apply correct styling to those particular sections.

To make things easier, one website consisting of many pages might only have one stylesheet. Not only does this mean that web pages load faster but the styling across each page is both uniform and can be changed easily. There are other benefits to stylesheets too including resolving cross-browser issues.

So, next time your web designer mentions stylesheets and CSS you'll be a little more clued up as to what they are and just what they are designed to do!

Search Engine Optimiation for users of third party solutions

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 15:02:24 BST

Many business websites use third party solutions for trading online. These can range from an osCommerce solution through to various plugins available for Wordpress. They have the benefit of often being nice and easy to setup and - so long as your requirements are reasonably mainstream - will meet your needs.

With such a system in place, many businesses feel, however, that they hit a brick wall when it comes to optimising their site for search engines. Because most if not all of the shop content is managed through an administration panel this leaves little room for customisation that may be required for a successful search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign.

Acknowledging that many ecommerce solutions do provide certain ways to optimise their content (for example search engine friendly URLs, good sitemaps etc) there is often more that can be done. So, what are your options?

When Emerging Innovations are called to optimise a website that uses such a system we look at the following things.

Firstly, have all of the features of the third party ecommerce system been utilised? Often we find that businesses either lack the time or the in-house skills to get to grips with some of the more in-depth features and settings that need to be tweaked for a successful campaign.

Secondly, we start to lever the power afforded by any associated website. Because these third party solutions often sit on top of a standard website and connect with a Buy Online button there is a lot of scope for creating bespoke pages in your standard website.

We find the power of this to be extremely effective. What is happening in essence is that we are creating optimised landing pages that then direct the user to the shopping site where they can browse or buy a specific product.

If you are struggling with getting your website optimised - whether or not your use an ecommerce plugin - then speak to us and we are sure we'll have a solution that will be able to help.

Retain Product Value by Offering Online Discounts

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:12:25 BST

Virtually every business now operates in a price competitive market. The global recession has made people more cost conscious than ever and I'm sure that as a business you're looking to adjust the pricing offered on your website to ensure you remain price competitive.

Before you start editing down your prices it might be worth considering what the introduction of a customer discount feature might add to your customer experience. Once added to your checkout process there are numerous advantages.

Product or Service value perception is retained

One of the most important reasons for offering a discount over a simple price cut is that the original price value of the product is made clear to the customer. Providing that this original price isn't extortionate based on the quality of the product then the discount will be seen not just as a price change but as an opportunity to achieve that product benefit for less money. It's subtle but it works well and forms the basis of many marketing campaigns!

Appease bargain hunters

You may be surprised to hear that some people will only consider a purchase if they consider that they are getting a bargain. Discounts provide that transparency to allow them to be aware of the saving they are making on the purchase and to drive them to action. Time limited discounts are particularly effective at doing this.

Your Business is seen as price competitive

By offering discounts customers will see that you take pricing seriously and are keen to cut the price wherever possible. Of course you may have been doing it anyway but reducing it via a discount rather than simply changing the price on the website ensures you retain that level of transparency over what saving the customer is now enjoying.

Helps to evoke customer loyalty

If a shopper got what they considered to be a great deal by an offered discount then the transaction will be more memorable than a straight-forward purchase. This will encourage them to visit your website before any of the competitors and to take actions like bookmarking and adding themselves to your mailing list.

Can act as a hook for advertising methods

If you want people to act then give them some kind of incentive. So, when you're next placing that advert for your products in your favourite magazine make sure you advise customers to enter a discount code when shopping online.

Doing so allows your customer to attract the discount and to gain the advantages already mentioned but it also provides you with a way to monitor the effectiveness of your advertising campaign by seeing how many orders were placed with that discount code.

It's a reason to stay in touch

Offering past customers or those that have signed up to your newsletter a discount is a reason to keep in touch with them. If you find yourself scratching your head when it comes to the next eNewsletter then having a discount to include is a great lever. The customer also perceives value in being part of the mailing list and is more likely to read and less likely to unsubscribe.

We hope that the above helps you determine whether having a discount system for your web pricing is something that might benefit your business. Keep in mind that there are ASA rules and Terms and Conditions that may apply to offering discounts.

Photography Website Launched

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:40:52 GMT

Perhaps one of the hardest websites to get right are photography websites. The need to ensure high quality design combined with the limitations of website layout makes this a real challenge.

EI Ltd have just completed Anthony Kirby Photography that shows off the local photograph's skill in a simple yet effective way while not detracting from the user experience.

In addition, the entire site has a Content Management System to allow the owner to upload new portfolio photographs and to change the website content.

Twitter: Listening for Leads

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:16:57 GMT

Twitter was founded in 2006 but it wasn't until 2008 that it started to take off and has now achieved dominance as the de facto micro-blogging system of choice.

Surprisingly, this isn't yet another article on how you can increase your Twitter account following (the world really doesn't need any more of them!) but instead how you, as the owner of a business, should be engaging with twitter for leads ... even if you never send a tweet.

If you've made it in business past the first through months you must have the ability to network to some degree. Even if you're not the greatest, being in a room of people and discussing issues and problems with one ear on how you might be able to make a sale is all part of the business owner experience.

Ask yourself then what the biggest networking event that you have attended might have been. Perhaps it's a Chamber of Commerce meet or a business breakfast club attended by perhaps 40 or 50 people.

Now, imagine attending a networking event with 300 million people present ...

Alright, before it blows your mind and worries you about how many business cards you'd need to take let me relate this back to Twitter. You see, 300 million is (roughly) the number of users that twitter has. Each one of those users is potentially speaking and chatting and broadcasting things that may well be of interest to your business.

It's interesting that one of the fundamental reasons why people in business don't engage with Twitter is that they say, anecdotally, they really don't want to know what people had for breakfast!

It's a fair point ... but what if you were a manufacturer of breakfast cereals or a local grocer? What about now? Wouldn't people's eating habits and trends be of a particular interest to you? The answer, of course, is yes.

So as a business owner we need to listen to the tweets that are occurring. The key to making this task possible is to filter out any conversations that don't relate to your business and to regularly check on others. This is achieved in one of two ways:

Firstly, a simple search from the main Twitter website will return a list of tweets that people have made containing the search term. If you're a florist in Cambridgeshire then doing a search for "flowers Cambridge" returns a host of tweets about how people have sent, received or are enjoying flowers.

The second way is to use a tweet filter which is fundamentally the same as a search but is much easier to use. For ourselves, we use TweetDeck which allows you to set any number of search keywords and to see in real-time when a new tweet occurs that contains those words. You can even get an on screen notification.

Whichever way you choose, the next step depends upon the nature of your business, your time and the kind of tweet you're interacting with.

The Cambridge florist might reply to a tweet on their filter and say something like

@einnovations Hey, next time, try out our website when you want to send flowers. This link gives you 10% off your next order http://www.link.here/

or perhaps the tweet that shows in your search results is an invitation to tender for some business in which can you can follow the link that's included or visit the senders website for more details.

So set up your search terms and starting listening to what Twitter has to offer ... it's a great way to generate new business leads.

HOWTO: Adding Images to a CMS

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 15:34:12 GMT

Inserting an image into EI's website content management system is a straightforward process once you have done it a few times.

However, if you are new to the process or need a quick reminder of what is involved this short video takes you through the basic steps involved.

Of course if you've got any specific questions or are having any difficulties we are here to help so feel free to get in touch.

Using your own domain name in a commissioned website design project

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 09:47:25 GMT

We get asked by a number of clients whether they can use their own domain name that they have purchased in projects that we undertake for them.

Here's a short video of how to modify your nameservers so they point to your new server:

Save a Thousand Arguments with a Web Developer's Screenshot

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:02:45 GMT

How often have you had a conversation with your web developer that perhaps stopped just short of an argument. As a web development company, we've been on the receiving end of many (thankfully, not many that we haven't resolved satisfactorily!).

Although we are already producing project plans for website technical builds and the way things work we have found that these documents ' no matter how well they are written - are often quite dry and the customer has difficulty in visualising the resulting outcome. And therein lies the benefit of producing a screenshot of what a form might look like, how an email data may be displayed or the way and intranet screen will display a pie chart.

But don't be confused; we're not talking about the design of the site here. That is often signed off well before we get to this stage but doesn't capture every eventuality or situation that may arise.

So next time you work with a website developer and are having problems visualising the outcome of a particular design element then ask your developer to provide a screenshot - you'll probably find, like us, that it saves thousands of potential arguments!

My website, GIFs and JPGs - should I care?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:19:12 GMT

When having a website designed for you the sign off process for the design may well have involved seeing a mockup of how your website looks. However, once it is in place there may well be major issues around load times, image resolutions and clarity of graphics. Why is this?

The short answer is graphic types. The two most common graphic types that people (including some web designers we're sorry to say) get confused or simply wrong are the JPG and GIF formats.

The rules are simple:

JPG file formats should be used for photographs or images that have graduated or large number of colours within their profile.

GIF file formats should be used where there is block colour and a small range of colours with little or no graduation.

If you get the file type wrong you can end up with some horrible results. Take the example below of a menu item. Does one look better than the other?

The one on the left is block colour that has been incorrectly sampled as a JPG. The one on the right is correct as a GIF. There is a significant loss in quality on the image on the left.

It works (or, rather, doesn't work) for images too. Photographs, remembers, should be JPG.

There are other file types such as PNGs that are pretty good at both but sharing the above information should allow you to review your own website with a critical eye to make sure you've got the correct file format for each image type.

Top Ten Tips for if your Web Design Project goes wrong

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:09:25 GMT

It is a fact of life that not everything runs smoothly, including web design and development projects. Because Emerging Innovations are professional web consultants with over 15 years of experience in the industry we are often called upon by both web designers and their clients to help resolve web projects that have stalled or just can't be completed.

Below are the top ten factors that you should consider if you find that your own web design project doesn't seem to be getting anywhere.

Make sure you have access to your hosting

Before you go too far down the road of moving web designers make sure you have access to the work that has been done on your behalf. As a basic principle this means ensuring you have access to your files (via FTP most probably) and perhaps a database if there is one.

Additionally, if possible, see if you can obtain a complete backup of the website and its database. This is extremely valuable in ensuring a smooth transition to a new designer, should it come to that, should there be any problems.

It is also worth noting that some developers may use systems to obscure or encrypt their code to prevent this kind of unauthorized access. Providing you have kept your side of the contract there should be no problem with you obtaining the unencrypted copy of the website.

Check that you own the domain names

Some designers inadvertently (we'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one!) register domain names that you have paid for in their own name instead of yours. Often overlooked at first this can later become a nightmare, particularly if the project derails.

Verify the domains that you own are in your own name by visiting websites such as WHOIS and checking it lists you/your company as the owner.

Give the current web designer opportunity to complete

You will do yourself no favours unless you have given the current web designer opportunity to make good on their failings. Switching to a new designer can at best be inconvenient so if at all possible try to work through your problems before considering a course of action

Put things in writing

Having a chat - friendly or otherwise - with a designer that is letting you down is a great first step because it can often bring to light issues on their side and give you an opportunity to get across your aggravations.

That said, however, make sure you follow up with an email and document significant project steps thereafter. Note any missed deadlines, incomplete work or work that is not as per the specification and save it for if it is needed later. A savvy designer will be doing the same thing at their end!

Review contracts - particularly if money is involved

Particularly important if you have monies outstanding or invoices that you have elected not to pay. Your web design contract should stipulate payment terms and, perhaps applicable in this situation, steps that need to be taken if there is a problem. Make sure you have kept your side of the contract. Simply throwing your hands up in the air and walking away leaving unpaid invoices may leave you liable.

Check outstanding ownership of IP

Another thing that it is incumbent upon you to check before you consider moving designers is what material could be claimed as copyrighted or as intellectual property. This is a particularly difficult area to give a general rule on but basically anything that you have not provided yourself or that has been provided by the designer and has not been paid for may fall under this category.

Having copyrighted or IP material may mean you would be unable to use it on your transferred site. This may or may not be a problem but it is one you need to consider before making any moves away from the current designer.

Consider timing and website downtime.

If the website transfer process goes well then there may be zero downtime for your website; but problems and other matters do get in the way sometimes so see what you can do to minimise the effect of any downtime of your website.

In particular it's worth mentioning that we dealt with one website transfer where the web designer's first action upon being told that they were being dumped was to take the site offline, even though it had been paid for in full! You can never tell what reaction you're going to get so let's plan for the worst!

Make sure your new web designer is going to make the grade

When you've completed the checks above and are ready to make the leap to a new web designer, you need to be sure that you don't fall fowl of the last bear-trap: You've spent so long anticipating and planning to move away from your current designer that you haven't properly analysed the ability of the new designer to deliver.

One thing you don't want is to be repeating this transfer process again in a couple of months so make sure you've thoroughly checked out the new web designer's ability, portfolio and skills before making the move.

Be open and transparent with your new designer

We would strongly recommend that you are open and transparent with the new designer and explain why the contract between you and your previous web designer didn't work out. Not only does this help the problems to be avoided in the future but it also ensures the new designer knows what level of commitment and expectation on your part that they are taking on.

Consider investing in a web consultant to assist

If this all makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end or your stomach churn then you may want to engage a web consultant such as Emerging Innovations to support, assist or liaise with this process. With knowledge of the detail of web design, the technical aspects behind it and the processes involved the procedure should be much more straight forward.

If you feel as though you would like to talk through your current problems or to discuss anticipation of your project please don't hesitate to contact us.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Just How Complicated is it really?

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:27:30 GMT

Like a number of web design companies we offer website owners a Search Engine Optimisation package priced on a monthly fee. Whether or not we have built the website in the first place we still aim to get that website to a highly ranking position on search engines such as Google and Bing! for the right keywords by using our expertise.

As anyone in the industry will know, selling SEO services is really tough; especially if you take care as we do to ensure that the customer's expectations are managed properly. We will guarantee to get you to the top of Google? Well, maybe. Explaining that nobody can guarantee a top listing often doesn't cut the deal!

Looking at it another way, some companies offer their customers packages that only involve getting links into their sites from other websites - even resorting in some cases to automated bulk mailing to ask webmasters to do this - and call it SEO. Such is the desire and drive for PageRank as it's known, the score your website gets from people linking to it.

Oh, if life were that simple. Have a look at this video where Matt Cutts from Google explains that PageRank is just 1 of over 200 different signals that Google looks for when determining the ranking of your website on search results.

We feel that our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) blend of transparency, reasonable cost, effort and management of expectations works well for us and why this service could work well for your company website too.

If you're interested in receiving more information or a quote for SEO of your website please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Affiliate Schemes for your Website

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:03:43 GMT

There are thousands of businesses and websites that are more than likely very interested in promoting your product or service. Their reasons may be because you meet a need that nobody else is able to satisfy or perhaps that they have had excellent customer service from you.

One category of potential source of product sales is websites that are set up specifically to take advantage of potential commissions available on end sales. These sites are often specialist part-time operations that make no effort on order fulfillment themselves but instead focus on marketing their site, driving traffic to you and taking commissions for those sales.

If you already have a functioning eCommerce website that attaching an affiliate scheme to it may be easier and cheaper than you think, particularly when you factor in the potential increased exposure and sales such a move would make.

Operation of an affiliate scheme is quite simple and may involve steps similar to these:

Sign up the affiliate
Whether you manually add the affiliate or they can sign up themselves onto your website is immaterial; once they are registered they are given some kind of unique identifier (a number, string or other code) that identifies them to your system.
They link to your site
On the affiliate's site, they are responsible for writing reviews, linking to your product or service with the appropriate code and driving traffic to their own website and subsequently on to yours. For your part, you need to make it easy for the affiliate to do this by - for example - providing banners or producing the necessary linking code that they can paste into their website.
Your store tracks the sale
The website customer of the affiliate site is now your customer and your website tracks the eCommerce sale. Because the tracking identifies the source of the customer the sale can be automatically credited to the affiliate account in order for commission rates to be calculated.
Unfulfilled Sales are Tracked
Often in eCommerce the website visitor does not buy first time. In this instance the affiliate that sent the visitor to your site can still get the credit and commission for the sale by your website identifying the person. This may not work in every case but can rely on techniques as cookies or IP address tracking.
Affiliate commission is calculated
On a weekly, monthly or on the basis of whatever your routine demands sales for each affiliate can be run off as a report and you can make the necessary affiliate commission payments.

The steps above are just one way in which affiliate schemes could work but we'd be pleased to speak to you about other approaches that may be even more appropriate for your business.

New Work Tender Area Launch

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:51:04 GMT

As an IT consultancy that prides itself on meeting all of our customer's needs we sometimes find ourselves needing to manage procurement on their behalf.

Keep an eye therefore on our Invitation to Tender page at

http://www.emerg-in.com/itt/

To make it easier we're also just about to introduce an RSS feed and you can already get notifications if you follow us on Twitter.

We look forward to hearing from you if you think you can assist in the future.

Five Reasons to Consider a Professional Email Marketing Provider

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:23:41 GMT

Most website owners would agree that having a robust marketing strategy will pay dividends and somewhere in that mix should be regular contact with your clients by email. In my time I've seen a myriad of solutions to the need to keep in contact by email ranging from using MS Outlook with customer addresses in the cc box (shudder - please don't ever do that!) to using MS Word and MS Access to mail merge out.

For those that find themselves in the situation of having an email marketing strategy that isn't quite working, consider these five pointers to engaging a professional email marketing company.

Firstly, however, let's deal with the obvious: Are we talking big bugs? Site like www.constantcontact.com offer packages from $15 per month which I hope won't break the bank and will earn a reward very quickly.

Trusted

I'm sure your inbox like mine gets a fair deluge of spam every day. Although some carry unsubscribe links I'm always very wary of clicking on them. You see if an unscrupulous mailer has included an unsubscribe link then chances are that clicking this link will simply prove to them that you saw the email, are a real person and they'll flag you for yet more junk mail.

Professional marketing houses always signify somewhere on the email who sent it and because that's often a trusted brand people are more willing to click unsubscribe. OK, so why should you be pleased about someone unsubscribing? Well, think of it in terms of a person being more willing to sign up in the first place if they know they can easily unsubscribe at any point.

Can bypass spam traps

Spending a lot of money on a bespoke mailing application may backfire significantly if all of the sent email gets caught in a spam trap. Flagged as spam, they never reach the users inbox which means you never get the exposure you crave - and that the customer has signed up to receive.

When composing a message on a professional marketing tool these spam checks can be done prior to sending. For example, is your subject line all capitals and are there lots of IP address links in the body of your email? If the answer to either is yes probably best to forget sending it until it's been reviewed.

Managed subscribe/unsubscribe

Keeping track and manually updating the recipient list can be a bit of chore after a while. With subscribe forms and unsubscribe links, however, marketing web sites can manage this for you and you simply get informed (in summary if you like) about what activity has taken place.

Statistical Tracking

If you write about something in your newsletter than recipients like then you want to know about it. Having the ability to track how many people clicked on which links (and even who it was!) is a great boon to ensuring you get the email even more focused next time.

The marketing companies can even identify how many of your emails have actually been looked at, although due to default privacy settings on software like MS Outlook this number may actually be far lower than it is in reality. It's a useful guide, anyhow, particularly comparatively over many newsletter sends.

Email archiving visibility

One final feature which has proved to be quite useful for a number of businesses is the ability to view the email on a website instead of in your inbox. Not only does this allow you to link to your latest email or newsletter for those that didn't receive it but it does away with the problem of display restrictions on some users email readers.

For example if I only read plain text emails and you've sent me a nicely formatted email I will see a message at the top that says something like Click here to read this email. I'm probably far happier doing that then risking the display of the email in my own email client.

So there you have it; some ideas on why spending a few dollars a month can give your email marketing campaign a significant boost. As always, if there is anything that I or anyone at Emerging Innovations can help with please don't hesitate to get in touch.

The Art of Subscription Sales

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:44:32 GMT

If you've developed a service to which people subscribe - whether web based or not - then charging a monthly or annual subscription for it is a great way to offset the cost of the service set up as well as with future cashflow. Perhaps a product you've developed could be supported in some way? That too could be provided via subscription channels.

The web of course offers a great medium for people to sign up to such deals. But what going into such a move with eyes open can ensure you maximise sales and opportunities.

Choose the right payment platform

Making that subscription payment nice and easy is in your interests as well as the customer's. Online Payment Solution Providers (PSPs) may offer a recurring fee charging system. For example PayPal offers the ability to set recurring billing through its easy payment form and WorldPay offers futurePay for example.

Having a customer send a cheque every month is the last thing you want because of the overhead and problems that might cause so think about using a PSP instead.

Automate wherever possible

Even if your customer is paying via a PSP it is amazing how many companies still have manual back-office processes to update records and extend customer subscriptions based on the regular payment. Getting this process automated will save significant overheads for your staff and look slick to your customer.

PSPs offer "callback" routines that tell systems whether a payment has been collected, cancelled or there is a problem. Automated routines linked to your data management systems represent a one-off effort to rationalise this process.

Offer clear terms and conditions

Customers are wary at the best of times, especially if they are a new customer. If they're wary about giving payment details for a one-off purchase imagine what they'd be like with starting a recurring payment process!

Keeping this in mind means that your marketing content needs to reflect the increased concern. What exactly will the customer be getting for their money and what guarantees do they have that they won't be charged for additional services etc etc.

Be open about your cancellation steps

You obviously don't want to think of your new customer cancelling the service even before they've signed up ... but your customer may well be thinking that. The question of "How do I cancel this if I don't want it any more?" needs to be answered head-on. Don't fudge the issue or offer complex procedures, the customer simply will not set up the subscription.

Far better initial-subscription rates can be achieved by having a clear unequivocal (and even customer friendly!) cancellation statement.

Think about prepayment options

Having cash in the bank is ultimately what business is all about so why not think about offering your monthly subscribers the ability to pay for the year and receive a discount? They are less likely to cancel their monthly payments (although be clear about what happens if they want to cancel half way through their year) and you don't have the concern of collecting the money each month.

Don't let customer service suffer

Sometimes businesses see subscription paying customers as below their new business or key business. Realising that if done correctly subscription payments can grow to represent a key part of your business' income should add weight to the need to treat each subscriber with top-notch customer service.

We hope that the above pointers provides some insight and clarity in the important process of subscription support and management. If you are looking to pursue automation within your business and need help then please contact Emerging Innovations for an initial conversation.

5 Must Dos for Your Web Business in 2012

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:05:08 GMT

Get your website mobile enabled

To say that access to the internet and website via mobile devices has seen explosive growth is an understatement. Viewed graphically the trend speaks for itself and is accelerating.

If you haven't already done so this is an key time for you to review your website on mobile platforms. How does your site look on an iPhone or via the Dolphin browser for Android?

Sometimes it's necessary to make subtle changes to the web navigation and layout - screen size and viewer priorities can vary greatly between the two platforms - so a separate mobile-aware website might be a consideration.

Review your Search Engine Optimisation strategy

We have found that good intentioned Search Engine Optimisation strategies - particularly those run by business owners themselves - can stall over time. With competition on the internet growing daily this is something that can't be ignored so consider giving your SEO a shot in the arm, whether by engaging a professional or getting your SEO routine that you are actioning back into action.

Check that your website design still attracting your key audiences This may look easier than it is but try to take a step back from your website and see if the content, design and navigation structure is still attracting key audience types. Remember that over time a website that was built for customers may need modifying if new products have come along, customer education (knowledge of your product) has increased or the market conditions have changed.

Specifically, check that your design is still considered appropriate (look at your competitor sites if you haven't already!) and re-read your sales-conversion web content.

Connect with Social Media

You may not like it (we've discovered quite a bit of resistance to social media from business owners!) but social media is an effective way to get closer to your audience and to attract new customers.

If you haven't already got a Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus or Linked In account for your business then now is the time to get going. Even a superficial presence can have a positive impact and you may also be surprised at how little effort it can take to keep these feeds up to date if they are integrated with your strategy properly.

Review your Website Costs

OK, so the adage of "if it isn't broke don't fix it" is a fair one but how much money is it costing your web business? If your business has changed over the past couple of years then you might find that it will be worth your while reviewing things like your web hosting costs, Payment Solution Provider charges and any fees that you pay to your web developer. There are lots of companies out there (Emerging Innovations included!) that are keen to attract new business and willing to give you a competitive quote.

We hope the above points help and that your business will prosper in 2012. You know who to contact if there are any web, internet, social media or business consultancy issues that we can help with.

Happy New Year!

Formats for Managing Data Flows

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:03:54 GMT

We were discussing a new web based intranet project with a customer this other day. This customer has an existing system that needs upgrading and has export facilities.

When we reviewed their operation it one of the key steps was to take data generated from their legacy system (call it system 'A') and review it before it was imported into System 'B'.

Without going into detail, issue and the obvious benefits of overcoming the manual export, check and import process it was a problem for them in another way. You see the tool that was easiest for them to use to check the data was MS Excel and so the data was exported in CSV format.

Unfortunately, certain fields in the exported data contained commas, line-breaks and other nasty characters which means that the format which arrived was very cumbersome to analyse. It also caused a problem when importing into system B.

Understanding that there are right and wrong data formats is key to dataflow management and in this case our approach is to make three significant changes that will improve the data flow process and save them time and effort.

Firstly, system A is going to have a web interface for their checking process. This does away with the need to use MS Excel and allows us to programme in additional safeguards such as change log and rollback on any data that they modify.

Secondly, when exporting is required to system B this is done via XML not CSV format. XML is much more robust in allowing markup and other things that may well break a CSV format. It is also a common format understood by their system B during the import process.

Thirdly, by the application of rules the manual process is being semi-automated which - although a manual check still takes place - is a lot less onerous and time-consuming that it was.

Needless to say, they're happy that they called us in and we're looking forward to finalising the project over the next few months.

If there's a dataflow issue that you'd like Emerging Innovations to help you with - either consultatively or as a developer - please don't hesitate to give us a call and we can have a chat.

Rewarding your Brand Advocates

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:06:45 GMT

The maximisation of profit within a business is only one possible goal. If you are in a particularly competitive industry it might be more important for you to get your name known and to increase your customer base. Even if your business is well established there's no harm in following the same good practice to make sure your maximising your client potential.

Having people that have used your service and would highly recommend you is a great way of getting an increased client basis. Have a look at your current customer list and ask yourself what you can do to turn them into brand advocates.

In addition to providing a good product and service start to factor in after-sales service and support; are you meeting and surpassing their expectations? All this can meet quite a lot of work but hopefully it will be worth it!

If resources for support are severely stretched then you can be a bit cheeky and to focus on those customers that have already received good service and are also movers-and-shakers within the industry. This is no substitute for offering good all-round service but it's better than nothing.

Be ready also to support your advocates. Are you able to send them material that will help them to promote your product? Do they have a stack of your business cards and are they on your mailing list?

In terms of web development you can also monetise these incentives. Setting up an affiliate or reward scheme based on voucher codes, discount codes or inbound links can be set to track new enquiries and reward the instigator.

With attention to brand advocates you should be able to achieve a good level of customer service and receive the benefits for it.

Domain Nameservers: A Simple Introduction

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 20:35:30 GMT

When you purchase a domain name through a registrar such as 123reg or 1and1 it may take up to 24 hours for the domain name to work on a web browser and for email to work. This period - called the propagation period - happens because all of the Domain Name Servers (DNS) around the world need to be updated with your new domain name.

These DNS systems tells web browsers and email clients on which physical server your website and email resides. Once this is known, everyone can find your website and people can email you.

You can view the record held on a domain that you own (and any other domain, actually!) via the WHOIS system. There are a number of websites that allow you to do this be we often use www.who.is (because it's easy to remember!).

Note that somewhere on the page you'll see Primary Nameserver and Secondary Nameserver. This is the address of the server that is in charge of telling the DNS system where your website and email is held.

So we actually have three levels of control for a domain name; viz.

1. The registrar itself (where you purchased the domain name). This is the company that will be billing you for the domain renewal and should be contacted with any queries or changes to the domain;

2. The nameservers tell the DNS where the records for the location of the domain are held. This may be the same as the registrar but it may not be. You can change the nameservers by contacting your registrar but - and this is important - the domain name is still owned by you and is still registered through your domain name registrar.

3. Finally, there is the DNS settings which are managed on the server that is pointed to by the nameservers. Often these are only changed by administrators as putting in the wrong settings can cause quite a few problems!

Web designers may ask you to change the nameservers on any domain names that you are using when your new website is going live. Importantly, rest assured that doing so means that you retain control of the domain BUT both email and website traffic would in normal circumstances be redirected. Your web designer should already have informed you of this.

We hope this short article helps to clarify Nameservers as part of the DNS system but if you'd like any further help and support please contact us and we'll see what we can do to help!

Website Logo for Free

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:31:13 GMT

A good logo is important for brand identity and to maintain an at-a-glance understanding that the product, website, catalogue and any other marketing material is part of the same marketing mix.

There are a number of ways of getting your logo. Design it yourself, instruct a professional designer or use crowd sourcing. Sometimes, however, you want a simple and free logo for use on a new project either as a stop-gap or a proof of concept, for example.

If you are looking for a good starting place then LogoMaker.com is ideal. Simply go through the design process by following these simple steps.

Once you've created your logo, login if you already have an account or register (its free) and your logo will be saved.

Finally, by clicking on the saved logo and clicking Free Web Logo you'll get a web URL (Something like http://www.logomaker.com/?efrioreio.gif) which if you copy and paste into a web browser you'll see as your new logo.

Okay, so the logo hasn't got the resolution needed for marketing material (you'll need to pay for that) but it's a good start that may provide you with a good starting point.

New Carers Website Goes Live

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:17:59 GMT

The latest website from Emerging Innovations Ltd has just gone live. The London based Crossroads Care wanted an online presence that they could show to funders as well as keeping up to date themselves.

The website also features a nicely integrated translation option on each page to allow for the non-english speakers that visit the website to participate in the content.

With a forum and a content managed website it is anticipated that the development will see the organisation able to manage their online presence for a fair number of years.

Keep Up to Date with Blogs

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:26:40 BST

Blogs are a valuable source of information and opinion and a great way for you as a business owner - no matter what industry you are in - to keep up to date. However, finding and checking all of those blogs might seem like a bit of a chore so let's find out what simple steps we can take to minimise the effort.

Finding the right blogs

Apart from following recommendations and stumbling across the odd blog from day-to-day surfing you can use Google to find the blogs that are related to your industry.

As you might expect it starts with a search through the main Google search page for keywords that best describe your industry. The resulting page will show you normal search results including pages.

However, if you click on the left hand side you'll see that you can filter the results by Blogs only. Have a look through some of these blogs to see if there are any you may wish to follow and that seem particularly useful to you.

Subscribing to the blog

This next part isn't absolutely essential but it will provide you with a less pro-active way of following the blogs that you are interested in. Assuming you have found a blog that you think will be useful and you will enjoy reading you can either see if they offer newsletter updates, Twitter feeds or Facebook links. This will allow you - hopefully - to see when the blog is updated.

Many blogs, however, provide an RSS feed. This is their blog content in coded format that can be read by programs called RSS readers. There are many applications for your browser, PC or smartphone that allow you to view blog updates from all of the blogs you have subscribed to in the order that they are updated. You therefore don't need to miss another update.

Getting Broad Updates

A few weeks ago we blogged about using Google Alerts and here that tool finds a niche. You can specifically request updates via Google Alerts that focus only on blogs. While this won't return only the blogs you are interested in you will get a broad list of results from many blogs which may - or may not - be of interest.

Whichever methods you choose remember to set time aside to keep up with industry best practice and new products and services. Blogs are an excellent way to do that as well as gaining opinions and thoughts on these topics.

Using a Pre-owned Domain Name for your Website

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:05:20 BST

For many businesses that are considering a name for themselves, the availability of a domain name is quite rightly a major factor. It's a fantastic opportunity to own the domains that reflect your exact name.

Thoughts about a company name may start a number of months before you actually get going in business so it is highly desirable to buy the domain names that you want as soon as you see them. Do your checking and purchasing through a domain name registrar such as 123-reg or 1and1 or one of the others amongst the thousands that exist.

As part of this domain buying process your domain name registrar may offer you hosting. This will no doubt bump the price up considerably and if you've not got a website or the company isn't even trading yet it's an expense that will do you no good at all.

Therefore, it is important to understand that purchasing the domain name on its own is enough. As and when you are ready to put your website live your hosting can be provided. Some of the benefits include:

Not having to pay for hosting until you need it;
Not wasting the annual hosting fee when there is no website to put up there;
When hosting is eventually purchased it will be the correct kind for the type of website you build or have commissioned.

In addition to this, you can buy your hosting from virtually any hosting provider. Again, there are lots available include Emerging Innovations hosting and this article may help you to understand the differences between different hosting types.

When you've purchased your hosting the next step is to get your existing pre-owned domain names to point to your hosting. Once pointed, typing in your domain name into a browser will display your website. Email provided through your hosting account will also now work.

The simplest way to point your domain name is to change your domain name's nameservers. You should be able to set these yourself by contacting your domain name registrar through which you initially purchased the domain. Many have a control panel that you can log into and make the changes manually.

So what nameservers should you use? Well, you can't guess them or make them up. Indeed getting them wrong will mean that your website and email will definitely not work. No; Your only option is to get the correct nameservers from the company through which you purchased your hosting. Many hosting companies will send you a welcome email containing this information when you sign up.

With the nameservers changed you need to be patient and wait for up to 48 hours for the world to see your new hosting (actually it can be more like 4 hours but 48 hours should be the maximum).

Just to be clear, changing the domain name's nameservers does not change ownership or the registrar of the domain. You will still own the domain and the registrar that you purchased it through will still invoice for it periodically.

Finally, keep in mind that if your hosting company allows it (through the use of parked or addon domains for example) you can point more than one domain at your hosting account.

If you need assistance with managing your domain names or need any special hosting then Emerging Innovations will be able to help but we hope the above has clarified things a little for you.

AIDA and Early Customer Engagement

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:16:06 BST

Your business marketing strategy may already take advantage of the AIDA principle when it comes to obtaining new customers through advertising and promotion.

Attention: Make the potential customer and target audience aware of your product, brand and/or company.

Interest: Generate interest in the product or service by being clear on the features and how those features translate into benefits for that target audience group

Decision: Assist with the decision making process by eliminating risk for the potential customer.

Action: Make it easy for the prospect to interact with you to obtain the product or service.

With that understood, one needs to realise that the end-to-end process for AIDA can take quite a long time. For impulse purchases that carry low risk (low price products in particular) the whole AIDA process can literally take minutes. However, for higher priced goods and services in particular the process takes longer.

When dealing with website visitors the whole Attention part of AIDA can be in the form of a question answered. Engaging with your potential customers at a very early stage means that they are likely to continue that relationship to purchase point.

In terms of Search Engine Optimisation the keywords that your website should be optimised for may well take the form of questions or concerns that your potential visitors have in their mind. They have a need or a concern and are looking for a solution. They may not even be aware that your product or service exists, remember!

With this important concept built into your SEO strategy the Interest, Decision and Action parts of AIDA can be taken care of with a combination of website copy, social media and good sales follow-up routines.

For a review of your own website marketing strategy - with the blinkers off - speak to an expert at Emerging Innovations Ltd.

Your Business Website's Strategic Goal

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:49:23 BST

Emerging Innovations Ltd often run seminars for owners of businesses to understand their website from a strategic point of view. We often begin the seminar by asking those present a very simple - but telling! - question:

Why does your business have a website?

The stunned silence and uncertainty that this question prompts is testimony to how little strategic importance is placed on the role of the website within the average business. Yet without these goals how can the site be positioned correctly and, importantly, how do we know it is meeting what we demand of it?

There are a huge number of reasons why a business may have a website and the table below details some of those that may be most common. The table also suggests ways in which the selected goal should be evident within the website and how its success - or otherwise - may be tracked.

Goal	Evidence	Tracking
Sales Maximisation	Many pages with focus of each on target audience and product/service types Clear call to actions Sales orientated content with all necessary information	Conversions Sales (Quantity) Sales (Value) Links to the site
Brand Awareness	Highly orientated around the logo or brand identity May feature multimedia Answers questions about the brand High level of social media integration	Visitors Length of stay Return visits Links to the page
Event Attendance	May be a microsite Clear content with dates, times and benefits outlined Call to action High level of social media integration	Conversions (Bookings) No of Visitors
Download Maximization	Early capture of details Clear benefits of download May be a microsite Design quality may be lower than average.	Conversions (Downloads) Visits
Enquiry Maximization	Site may be focused on each target audience type Use of text and imagery to reflect visitor's need or greed Clear benefits of enquiring	Conversions (Completed Enquiries)
Viral Marketing	Easy to link to High level of social media integration May be interactive Likely to use multimedia	Social Media broadcasts Links to the page

If you're not sure where your website fits in then Emerging Innovations Ltd can help with an online website review that is tied in with an overview of your business plan and marketing approach.

The Clear Benefit of Benefits

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:50:34 BST

Getting the message across to your website visitors on just how good your product or service is can take some skillful writing. The key to success is always to keep in mind who you are writing for (the website visitor interested in buying the product or service) and what you are selling (the product or service itself).

There are 3 simple steps to getting your content to achieve the goal of driving enquiries and sales on your site. Follow these and not only will the task of writing become easier but it will lead to a more focused and targeted website strategy.

Identify your target audiences

You aren't going to be selling to everyone. Your service may have geographical restrictions or it may appeal to certain demographics or genders. Start by making a list of all of the different target audiences that your product or service could serve. You may come up with a dozen or so target audience types but for each one you need to be clear on what distinguishes them from the other groups you have identified.

List the features of your product or service

With that done your next step is to take the product or service that you are selling and start to list its features. These might be new features, unique selling points or just a plain description of its core components. Ensure you've got 3 or more for each of the items or services that you sell.

Now bring in the benefits

The final step is to make sure you convert those lists of product or service features into benefits for each of your target audience groups. While this may not work for each of the features you have identified it should work for a few of them. Create a grid of target audience types v features for each of your products.

With this information the content of each of your website pages can now be focused on your target audience type and product and the content should now - if you've got it right - be extremely relevant to their needs.

If you'd like help and support with undertaking this kind of analysis with your own product portfolio or service catalogue then Emerging Innovations are ready to help so feel free to get in touch.

Getting Website Visitors to Interact by using Calls To Action

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:16:47 BST

As an owner of a business website you've taken time to get your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) right and to check the design meets people's expectations. Even the content has been checked by a focus-group to ensure it gives the right amount of detail yet is easy to read.

However, after sitting back and waiting for clients to roll-in for a few days you start getting worried that something's wrong. What are the next steps? Should you be redesigning the home page or rewriting content? Perhaps your SEO strategy needs a review?

If this scenario seems familiar then you're not alone. EI Ltd speak to customers on a daily basis that need a little help in establishing a good online presence that allows for sales to grow.

In the above example, one of the simplest solutions may be to add some Call to Action buttons. These very simple, clear buttons reflect the steps that the website visitor needs to take to make their visit a success. This might be adding something to that basket, checking out or downloading a document.

Particularly true of sites that have large amounts of content, advertising, sidebars or graphics the buttons help your visitors to see the next step clearly and easily.

By adding call-to-action buttons that reflect the visitor path to your website goal you will see an increase in the number of visitor conversions and a significant drop in the number of frustrated website visitors.

Search Engine Optimisation and Sales

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:53:18 BST

The latest "cry for help" came at the end of last week with a website owner that had spent thousands of pounds and a lot of time getting their website optimised for search engines (SEO) only for his sales to remain flatlined.

Like all enquiries, Emerging Innovations Ltd takes a holistic view of the online business strategy and in this case - like in so many others we have identified over the years - a fundamental misunderstanding was the cause of their site's failure.

So, let's be clear about this:

Search Engine Optimisation does not automatically equate to Increased Sales

When you start to look at your own business website like a customer does you'll understand that the search engine is only the beginning of a journey that the customer is making. You're hoping that the journey will take them to the goal of your website: A checkout button, an enquiry form, a download, a booking ... or whatever.

Too many site owners spend their money and time looking at the first step and fail completely to acknowledge the importance of any other aspect. We don't want people to fall into this trap so let us share just a few pointers which may help you look beyond simple SEO effort:

Are your site's "Landing pages" (the pages that a user sees when they come from the search engine) geared towards their needs? You're not sending them to the home page are you?
What efforts are you making to engage with the customer on a long term basis during that first visit? Can they bookmark, sign up for a newsletter or follow you on Twitter?
If it's information that the visitor is after then don't let your sales patter get in the way. Provide the user with what they want and they're more likely to come back (and buy) in the future;
Your website enquiry forms work, don't they? When was the last time you checked for yourself?
Is each page that the user visits on the way to your goal absolutely necessary? If I know what I want to buy I don't want to be distracted or delayed from doing so.
Is registration absolutely necessary? Why?

The above are just some of the questions that we ask when we get engaged with a client. So you can hopefully see that although SEO is important that only gets potential clients to your site you still have to close the deal.

If you'd like more information or an analysis of your own business website please don't hesitate to contact us.

Staying Informed with Google Alerts

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:15:40 BST

If you have a good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy or you are aware of and need to monitor your competitors then you may find you are doing Google searches quite a lot.

Finding entries on Blogs, News feeds or the organic search results is a great way to see what has changes and to keep up with the very fast changing and fluid environment of web content.

To save yourself time it is worth investigating Google Alerts. This free service allows you to enter search keywords and be sent an email at a frequency of your own choosing so which details any changes that occur.

Has your company name been mentioned in an article? Has a competitor just issued a press release? Something related to your industry in the news? Google Alerts provides immediate answers to all of these questions.

Getting started with Google Alerts is easy and you can edit or unsubscribe at any time. Just visit

http://www.google.com/alerts

and fill in the details for each alert that you want.

Domain Names: Renew Them or Lose Them

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:01:16 BST

Website domain names (emerg-in.com, hotmail.com or bbc.co.uk) are leased by you or your company from a domain name registrar. Although you therefore have rights to that domain while you have the lease you never own them outright.

If your domain ends in .co.uk then you will have the lease for 2 years - others can be registered for different periods of time. Either way, when the lease is due to expire you will be contacted by the company that you registered the domain name through to ask if you want to renew it.

Because Emerging Innovations Ltd ensure that they have a close relationship with all of our customers we telephone and speak to you at this point to see if you want to renew. We will also email if we can't get hold of you by phone.

That said, registrars will only be able to contact you if they have the correct contact details for you. Occasionally people may register a domain name with a "temporary" hotmail address and then change email addresses. Should this happen to you then the registrar will not be able to get hold of you to let you know your domain is due for renewal.

OK, some registrars keep credit cards on file and auto-charge at the point of renewal. This doesnt mean that you can't keep your details up to date, however. Credit cards expire, domain prices change and terms and conditions are updated. You need to be told.

Remember that it's your responsibility to keep your domain name renewed. This means checking the WHOIS database (here is a link to an easy to use checker) and make a note of the renewal date so that you're ready to chase up your registrar if nothing is heard.

If you feel uncomfortable about managing your own domains then contact us and we'll be glad to take over the management of them for you.

Does your Web Content carry Authority?

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:05:02 BST

There is a lot of content on the web and it is growing at an extraordinary rate. Estimates are difficult to come by but one recent one said that 150,000 new website domains are registered every day, and it's speeding up.

It logicically follows that it is therefore becoming harder for websites to get their voices heard above the background noise generated by all of this frantic activity. However, it is still possible if you are genuinely generating good web content.

Looking at your own site, business website owners need to ensure that they are actually providing interesting, topical and informative content. Having a sales page that simply lists the features of a product simply isn't going to have that blessing of good content. Instead take time to write or blog about each of the features and how it benefits your target audience.

With good content under your belt you're going to have the possibility of generating a much more positive and long lasting relationship with your website visitors. If that wasn't enough you've also got the benefit of a much higher chance of getting good listings in search engines.

Some of this good ranking comes from search engines realising you are actually providing content-proper rather than simply sales focus lists of features (yes, they are that perceptive!) but more get be harnessed through obtaining good quality inbound links to your site.

We would hope that good quality content would generate its own inbound links as webmasters of other websites add links to your site's content to their own pages. Remember you have no control over who links to you and you can't make it happen but you can help the process along.

One great way of starting is to simply find out who your top online competitors are. Do this by doing a search in Google for your own website's keywords and seeing who the top ranking companies are. From there, we simply find out who is linking to them and see if we can garnish a link from those same people to our own website. Type your competitors' domain into

http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit

and then set the Search Explorer to show all inbound links excluding the chosen domain.

Now your job is to pay, cajole and encourage links from all of those people!

Adding authority to your website by providing authoritative content and generating inbound links is an ideal way to get higher search engine rankings and a better relationship with your clients.

Your Website Should be The Same As All The Others

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 16:49:37 BST

There is no question that your website should reflect your business ethos and priorities. Have a look at some solicitor websites and then compare them to websites for dating or children's books you'll soon see a significant difference in the application of style, colour and the ratio of written and graphical content.

One area where a lot of first time website designers fall down is their failure to appreciate that reflecting radical, new and different concepts by manipulating website navigation and layout is often not a good idea and, indeed, can be quite harmful to your web presence.

All of this is summed up in Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience which states that

users spend most of their time on other websites.

which in turn means that if your website operates significantly differently from those the user will feel out of their comfort zone and potentially be unable to interact with the site.

Examples of this include having menus on the right hand side, having links that are hidden or only show you what they are when you hover over them or having pages where you have to scroll to the bottom of the screen for navigation links.

Keeping your website to a common layout and focusing on style and content will be a much better way of making sure your customers have the ability and confidence to interact with your pages.

Friendly URLs: A Friend to SEO too

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 17:27:04 BST

When a search engine starts to index your site one of the first things that it comes across is the address of the first web page. From there it will hopefully find links to other pages and so on until it has crawled your site.

There are a number of factors that determine for what search engine keywords that page will rank but a very important one is the detail of the website address - the web page Unique Resource Locator (URL) to give it it's proper name.

If you have a static or smaller website that isn't driven by a database then you can very easily start to create appropriate folders and pages within your site that have meaningful names. Giving the page the name of the important keywords within it is an easy win for your search engine optimisation, and people's ability to remember it.

http://www.example.com/dresses/black/prom.html

For a static site the address above works perfectly well but often you will find that larger, database driven websites can't have individual pages crafted or each item they sell. Instead, a website coding template is used that displays the necessary information from the database.

In cases like these the website itself does the thinking. It looks at the web URL and breaks down the component parts until it finds the appropriate item in the database. For example

http://www.example.com/dresses/black/prom/little_black_number.

Notice the slightly different notation (no need for the .html extension) and the use of underscores instead of spaces. There are two things to note here:

Firstly, the category of prom in the black and dresses category has to be set up to be unique. You can't have two categories with the same name otherwise the system will get confused. That shouldnt be too much of a concern if you've planned your website properly.

The second point is more of an observation in that our imaginary dress "little black number" has been given underscores between the words. Why is this? Well, it is first and foremost because spaces are not allowed in website addresses. If you try to do this you end up with the rather messy %20 being displayed which is a result of UTF8 encoding.

Anyhow, technicalities aside, the underscore provides a way for you to emulate spaces. Simply enough. Ah - but wait - there is another way to emulate a space which is the use of the hyphen/dash (e.g. "little-black-dress"). Shouldn't we use those instead?

Well, in this case the answer is no because "little black dress" is actually one key phrase that we want to attract. Using the alternative hyphen/dash would have separated the three separate words out and our page would have been trying to rank under the words little, black and dress separately.

If you are running a website - particularly an e-commerce store - that doesn't yet use friendly URLs like the ones above then let us know and we'll have a talk with you about how we can go about upgrading your site.

Thanks_for_reading!

Your Next Door Web Designer

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:14:28 BST

Our office is based in Wickford, Essex, UK but despite this we work with companies across the UK. Indeed, most website companies will do that and we'd go as far as to say it's the norm.

It is interesting therefore when we see website projects advertised that are open to web designers in Southampton or Carlisle only. It's pretty much always the case that the customer is based in that town and wants to have the web designer close by.

It is evident that there are certain benefits of having a web designer very close. Primarily most of the reasons boil down to the fact that having a face to face meeting is very easy to do. Perhaps yours is the kind of project that requires weekly meetings and this can most efficiently be provided by a local establishment. No argument with that.

But do you really need to have regular meetings? Unless the project is a new, cutting edge proof of concept then when customers need to have lots of meetings with their designer this normally is a red flag to one of two things: Either the specification isn't tight enough or they want to modify and change things. Those red flags aren't just for the web designer they are there for you as the customer too.

In addition, if you look outside of your own area you may well find companies that have a greater level of expertise to what you want, can offer the same site at a cheaper price or have done similar work for organisations similar to your own. All of this might lead to you having a website designed at lost cost and potentially higher quality.

Finally, with the communication tools in the kitbag including video conferencing, email and the good old telephone remote or distance working isn't as hard as it once was. This is not to downplay the ideal of locality at all but simply to make sure that this concept doesn't cost your business money in form of an over-priced website or a site that isn't as good as it could be.

Awards: How rewarding are they?

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:20:24 BST

Award badges are given out by a variety of organisations and reflect the best in the practice or kind of work that they want to encourage. For example there are awards for use of ICT in business, for eLearning and for customer service.

From your customers' point of view these award bodies have a scale of recognition. Obviously those that are familiar to your website visitors will carry more weight which will reflect well on you and add to the kudos of you as a good company to do business with.

That said, the interesting question of non-recognised awards needs to be asked. Do they, for instance, still add importance to your site or do they start to detract from the good will the website has built up and even start to harm customer relations?

To consider this point and to put even recognised awards in context let's keep in mind a couple of additional points:

Firstly, have an award badge appear on your website means that they can be clickable and can link to more information. If an award badge can be clicked on then more information about the awarding body and even details of the award that your company has won can be added. Problem solved, the award adds weight to your page in the eyes of the customer.

Secondly, how many awards are you showing? Having lots of awards is obviously good but making a long long list of them may seem to be overkill. Here is a website for example that previews its awards and then allows the customer to look at the full award list if they are interested.

Thirdly, the position of the awards is important. Of course you need them to be visible in order to make a good first impression but after that they may well be simply taking up real-estate on your web page that could be better used for information, testimonials or just needs to be de-cluttered.

Fourthly and importantly we must ask about relevancy of the awards. If my shoe retailing website was proud to promote an award for great customer care that's one thing but if amongst the awards you spotted one for best use of roofing materials (sorry, trying to make one up I don't think there's one for that!) then you'd be a bit suspicious not only of that award but of the others as well.

So, in summary, we can say that awards on the whole are good things for your website to display but make sure they are relevant, don't over-burden the visitor, are modestly presented and link through to more detail of what they are about.

Oh, and it goes without saying that we wish you good luck with the awards you're applying for right now!

Ten Components of a Web Project

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:21:15 BST

We try to make our initial web design proposals and any exploratory meetings as jargon-free as possible but that doesn't stop some customers from being anxious about the kind of things they might be expected to know about when embarking on a web project.

This short article will provide a good primer for businesses that are looking to speak to a web designer for the first time. We've tried to explain all of the jargon clearly but if there is anything you are still unclear about then please do contact us.

Domain Name

Once your website has been put live on the internet you will need your potential visitors to be able to find it. You do this by promoting a domain name which they can type into their browser.

Choosing the correct domain name is important as it reflects your business priorities and might even give you a good search engine ranking by containing keywords (we explain that below).

Design

Each and every web page has a design. Important for attracting customers, meeting their expectations, making it easy for them to navigate the pages and making them come back. You will spend a lot of time with your designer in order to get the design just right for your target audience.

HTML and Markup

Once the design is agreed you will probably be at the stage of having a non-functioning image of what it will look like. This "flat" image is taken by the web designer who use their skill to make it appear on your web browser as a web page.

The process of putting an image onto a website is actually split into two halves. The first half is the content of each page. For example the welcome message of your home page, the images of your products, their description and how to contact you. That information uses HTML to mark up the content so that search engines know what it is all about.

Cascading Style Sheets

The second part of encoding your agreed "flat" website image is to take the content and to make it look nice. This will mean applying appropriate fonts and colour schemes and making the elements appear in the right place.

This part of the implementation is done using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which is another skill set your designer needs to possess.

Designer v Developer

At this stage you'll have a web page that should look like your agreed static image. However, you might want the web site to do more than look pretty. For example you might want users to log in or for a contact form to send a visitor's enquiry to you by email.

Such tasks are not accomplished using HTML or CSS. Instead, we start to speak of programming languages that make the web page or web server take a certain action. Often the skills of a web designer and separate from that of a developer who specialises in this kind of programming. Be sure to choose a web designer that can handle - or knows someone that can handle - the web development that you need doing as well as the design.

Programming Language

There are a wide range of programming languages that make your web page interact in some way with the visitor. They range from the simple JavaScript that works on your browser through to languages like PHP that operate on the server side.

Without going into too much detail here you will want the web developer to inform you of which programming language they intend to use and why. PHP for example is the most common language amongst web developers and is very stable.

Hosting and Servers

Nobody is going to be able to see your web page until it is put onto a computer that is securely connected to the internet 24/7. These computers are provided by hosting companies and you can read about hosting here.

Your designer may well have a preferred host. Make sure you are aware of the ongoing costs of hosting with their option and take into account other important things such as how often the site is backed up etc.

Keywords

With your site nearly ready you may want to start taking advice on Search Engine Optimisation. This is a very difficult topic to do justice to in a few sentences. However, your starting point is normally to determine a list of keywords or key phrases that you want to focus on.

From there you need to implement these keywords in appropriate places. There is a tonne of material available to guide you but a lot of businesses pay a monthly fee to a company that will help them get near to the top of search engine results for their chosen keywords.

Browser Compliance

If you've chosen a good designer then one thing they will have had their eye on throughout the design implementation is how your site looks on different browsers. Unfortunately there are scores of browsers each of which display web sites in a very subtly different way. The fact that browsers might render the page to look slightly different is certainly not your designer's fault but it is something that they should minimise through good coding.

Accessibility and W3C Compliance

The last step before you take delivery of your website is to check that it is compliant. Being compliant means that if a website visitor is blind, partially sighted or has mobility problems they will still be able to interact with your site. You have a legal as well as moral and business duty to ensure this is the case.

For a simple check you can visit the W3C validator. If there are any problems then your designer should be able to sort them out for you.

We hope the above article helps you get to grips with the fundamentals of getting a webpage into reality and explains some of the concepts involved.

Integrated Sales Database Rolled Out

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 12:16:49 BST

A telecom sales company in Wickford has just taken delivery of EI's telecom sales database. Featuring a number of end-to-end sales process integrations it allows them to operate efficiently from any web based PC.

The secure cloud based database system which is fully supported and monitored provides the benefit of automatically producing sales letters for new orders and alerts for imminent client renewals.

If you are interested in applying the same kind of architecture to your fast moving sales environment then speak to EI today.

The World of the Midnight Surfer

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:25:51 BST

Hopefully you've not made the mistake of building your website so that only you like it ... it is your visitors and potential customers that need to be attracted by your website. To make a website appropriate for them you should try to think like them.

One possible category of web visitor that we try to consider when doing consultancy for customers is the one who generally works during office hours and wants to get as much done as possible at home late at night once the kids have gone to bed.

Introducing the "Midnight Surfer".

If you are seriously trying to attract this person to your site and for them to engage with you then having statements like "Call us to order" are going to be of zero value. This is especially true when perfectly good immediate and online substitutes exist for the action.

How happy would you be to view items on a website, add the ones you want to your basket and then to be told to telephone with your credit card details and read out the codes of the items you have purchased? I think you'd go elsewhere, yes?

So when you are reviewing what web visitors can do on your site keep in mind our friend the Midnight Surfer. Make it possible and they'll engage with you.

The Web Development Project Plan

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 11:06:03 BST

Some of the web development projects that Emerging Innovations Ltd take on can be quite large and often time critical. We find it very important to make sure that we commit to a Project Plan as soon as possible. It is both the process of generating the Plan and its contents that proves to be very valuable in delivering on time and on budget.

Below we've summarised some of the main reasons why having a Project Plan is not only important for your website project but is desirable.

It leads to Good, Clean Code

Let's start off with the one that most web developers will appreciate as the main benefit. When writing website code it is very important to have a full understanding of what the routine is to achieve. Yes, code can be modified and changed later on but the result can be a tangled mess of variables, functions and sub-routines if this is done too often. Understanding the complete picture leads to good, clean code.

Design work is Complete and Comprehensive

Your sample design may look beautiful and be just what your customers are after. However, as the project develops you may realise that there is no login box, the Twitter feed is missing and the images to show featured products won't fit on the home page. With designs that are finalised against a Project Plan these don't arise because each feature mentioned in the Project Plan is cross-referenced to the design.

It gives the Customer Pause for Thought

It's great to start out on a web project with enthusiasm but sometimes that enthusiasm can be a drawback. Developing a Project Plan allows you as the Customer time to reflect and come up with those important after-thoughts and to clarify some of the minor details that will make the web project work in reality.

It Ensures the Developer Understands the Project

On the flip side, because the web developer actually writes the project plan it makes sure that they understand it. Often we've been caught out by not mentioning a specific feature or function that the customer assumed would be included. Far from confrontational this is a benefit of developing the Project Plan as it allows the work to be agreed and specified. It allows the avoidance of surprises!

It allows Questions to be Answered before they become Problems

Continuing that theme, because the Project Plan can allow a pre-development end-to-end run through of how the website will work problems can be foreseen and rectified before they are even built. It might become clear that doing X before Y isn't possible or that customers need to be logged in order to do this but that doesn't work. Difficult questions are answered much more easily if they are tackled without time pressure and are outside of an already developed code framework.

Things are Developed in the Right Order

Again from the developer's point of view it makes the project must more robust if features can be developed and demonstrated in order. This order might be dictated by the coding requirements but could also be dictated by the customer's timetable. Either way knowing these time constraints from the beginning leads to a more manageable project development schedule.

Realistic Timeline and Price

So how long will the project take? This question will have been answered indicatively in the response to any website tender. However, now it can be confirmed, the timeline can be split into phases and the project meeting dates can be set. Pricing also can be confirmed. If there are any surprises (perhaps outside of the scope of the original invitation to tender) then these can be negotiated and agreed sooner rather than later.

It provides a Schedule to Track Against

The above mentioned phases may prove to be a great way of keeping track of the project as it develops. Having demonstration dates or dates by which features will be available creates a time-based development framework for the developer as well as giving the customer reassurance that things are on schedule.

It allows Resources to be Allocated

Both the developer and the customer know who to have available on the project and how much time they should be spending on it. It is likely that both will be doing more than one thing at once and planning so as to ensure the project doesnt fall behind schedule and maintains a high quality is important.

We hope the above factors help you to understand why it is worth spending time developing a Project Plan for your web design project and the positive benefits it can bring.

Understand the Business Value of your Web Server

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:58:25 BST

Emerging Innovations are often consulted by companies that want to begin integrating their sales or back-room operations with the web. Discussing the ways that the web server can assist and add value to business operations seems to always come as a surprise.

Therefore, we thought we'd list five of the most common suggestions that we make during these meetings. Think about your business and we're sure they'll give you food for thought.

Store credit card details for payment on dispatch

I'm sure you already know that websites can charge credit cards. However, sometimes orders can be taken with long lead times and it is unprofessional to take payment until the product has been dispatched.

Using a combination of Payment Solution Providers such as SagePay and PayPal it is possible and a stock management system users can place orders on your website and have their card charged when the stock is ready for shipment.

Do something at a specified time

A lot of the customers we see seem to be glued to manual tasks, often back-office repetitive tasks. Automating these via a web server allows you to potentially add value to your business and your web presence.

For example, emails can be automatically generated based on individual preferences and emailed out at sales maximising periods. A number of our customers receive data in their inbox automatically every morning on the last days trading activity. Simple, secure and reliable.

Respond to incoming emails

We are not just talking about automatic email responders here. Web servers have the ability to read incoming emails and to fire off a reply. OK, they aren't a substitute for an admin team but what about a help-desk that scans the queries for common words and responds with possible solutions until an operator is available.

Using such an approach problems may be solved immediately and the personalised, albeit automated, response will be greatly appreciated by the customer have a problem no doubt.

Receive and reply to data requests

If your website offers a service that others could benefit from then start to think about how that service could be delivered on their site. With a bit of thinking you'll see how this might apply to any site from language translation to an online shop.

For example, by developing a piece of code - called an API - your website can receive a request for information from an affiliate site, it can check their account (or even charge their credit card!) and return the required information. This might be to confirm a product is in stock and add it to the affiliate's shipment or to send back a document from their account.

Book a place or a timeslot

You may have read our thoughts on the Midnight Surfer. They are the name given to a user that is visiting your website during the night and want to get as much done as possible. Far from reading the message "call us" we want them to have the opportunity to engage directly with your business.

This might be booking a seat or making an appointment with you. Linking website to account manager diaries is something that will both free up your admin staff time and provide positive customer experiences on your website.

We hope that above examples are useful to you. They are general ones so please feel free to contact us if you'd like a chat about your own website. We're confident we'll be able to help.

Website Content: Depth and Context Counts

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:06:04 BST

We deliver a great number of websites every year and many of those come complete with a Content Management System (CMS). Giving the customer the ability to manage not only the content of the individual pages but also the structure of the website is a real plus for the customer.

Whether you are in the position of having a CMS or have been asked by your website designer for a website structure for your site it is vital to keep in mind a few rules for guidance. These will help you both with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) as well as with visitor conversion.

Firstly, let us keep in mind the concept of SiteRank. This is the idea that your website as a whole has a certain weighting amongst search engine results. The higher the SiteRank the higher your listing will be on the major search engines.

The SiteRank concept actually bundles together a whole load of search engine good practice such as domain name relevance, server location etc. For now, it's good enough to understand it as an abstract concept. It is certainly different from PageRank and the importance that each individual pages have within your site but I don't want to confuse things.

The key thing to remember is that the value will degrade the further into your site you go. The more clicks you are away from the top level of your site structure the more diluted will be the SiteRank concept.

You might want to keep that in mind if you decide to structure your data in a very layered way. Catalogue sites often feel the necessity to do this but products found 7 or 8 clicks down from the home page will not have the same impact as those higher up.

So how to get around this? The solution is simple and relates to the second rule of thumb that you need to keep in mind: Make sure you provide direct links and promote important content within your site. Of course "important" could mean products that give you a high sales volume or an event that you want to promote because it's close to the final entry date.

In our catalogue case, for example, you might want to create links at each level of the catalogue structure that highlight - and link directly to - such important products. Also use the home page to promote these deeper products further.

Moreover, a structured website is a good one but make time to break through that structure with promotions of deeper pages and deep links wherever you can.

New Entertainments Website Launched

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:09:58 BST

We have just rolled out a website for a local Essex company that delivers great value entertainment for events, wedding and corporate events. The site for PALS Entertainments was developed in close liaison with Perry and Alfie.

Speaking about the launch Perry said "From our initial contact they learnt about our company and delivered all that was promised with very good value for money - more than we bargained for!"

The website has been built on an easy to navigate bespoke menu structure and is focused entirely around the different services that PALS offer and the type of customer is it aimed at.

From EIs point of view it was fun and interesting to work with PALS and we wish them every success in the future.

Online Innovation Driving Sales: A Tesco Case Study

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 10:05:28 BST

Tesco have a presence in South Korea where they are called Home Plus. As the video below shows Tesco met the challenge of moving from number 2 in the online sales market to number one using a very innovative approach and the latest, but now common, technology.

In identifying the needs and problems that their target market had - in this case lack of time to travel to the store - and providing a solution to that problem - taking the store to the customer - the company was able to increase its sales.

Furthermore, through the use of technology, ideas that may not have worked or have been practicable a few years ago are now waiting to be exploited. A perfect example of how technology is a facilitating medium that allows businesses to move in directions often not considered by their competitors.

Whether it's making use of QR codes as Tesco did or adopting some other strategy that levers the power of technology then EI are here to help.

White Space in Web Design

Wed, 25 May 2011 08:52:20 BST

Whether you're thinking of a design for your brand new venture or a redesign of your existing website it's likely that you'll spend some time considering the kind of design and layout that your customers will want to see.

While that process is one that is important and highly recommended it's easy to fall into the trap of looking at a sample design and being critical of it because it contains a lot of white space. To many would-be designers white space is an opportunity to use widgets, gizmos and graphics to enhance the message.

But wait using white space (or actually not using it and leaving it alone!) is critical to allow website visitors to digest the information and to find what they are looking for.

So how is this achieved? Looking closer at the design above we can see that there is a large gap between some of the elements. This - known as padding - allows the object to be identified clearly and, in combination with font size and colours, provides a clear signal to the website viewer.

Furthermore, the use of drop shadow and other subtle techniques can be used to add depth to what might become an otherwise boring layout if white space is used throughout.

Take a look at your own website design and see if you've got the balance of white space correct.

Google+ and Your Business

Mon, 16 May 2011 10:01:56 BST

We're keeping our eyes open on your behalf for the business benefits of Google+. In a recent announcement Google warned business users not to rush ahead and use the first roll out of Google+ for their business. It appears they have something even better in mind.

Businesses need to use deep analytics within their social media as well as the ability to list products and services. These differences alone make it more feasible for them to offer an alternative Google+ model for business users.Christian Oestlien, Product Manager at Google says How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands,.

"The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users. Our policy team will actively work with profile owners to shut down non-user profiles."

Christian Oestlien

We are expecting Google+ for Business to be available later this year and we will report on it further then.

Star Rating System Introduced

Mon, 09 May 2011 14:52:47 BST

We've just rolled out a star rating system on our blog pages to give viewers the opportunity of rating what they see.

So far, feedback is good but what do you think? Simply use your mouse to select the correct number of stars that you think we're worth.

We will of course use the feedback to provide improved content along the lines that people want.

Google Plus One: Social Searching

Mon, 02 May 2011 10:10:40 BST

Google obviously think that social networking is pretty darn important. They have tried before with Buzz and Wave to create a framework for systems but they never really succeeded.

However, their latest +1 button integrates the company's core competency of search results with social networking and brings Google's heavy artillery to bear on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Yes, it's potentially that important.

You can read the full details of the +1 button on Google's own blog when it was launched. However, in a nutshell it allows you to highlight certain search results that you consider to be quality by clicking a +1 button next to them. Any of your social contacts will then be able to see your recommendations.

While presently the system stops at Google Chat and Contact buddies the ultimate aim is for your search results to understand more about your social connections including those through Twitter. How's that for integration?

In order to use the +1 you'll need to be in a certain geographical areas (if you can't see it yet it'll be with you soon) and be logged in to your Google account.

Website Voice Recognition is a Reality

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 10:27:06 BST

Google has rolled out its speech recognition system to its main search portal.

For those using Google Chrome the little microphone icon that appears on the right hand side of the input bar provides a very powerful way of doing searches by speech. Our testing has proved the system to be extremely powerful. Coupled with instant results being displayed you'll see your query answer almost immediately.

Of course being lovers of all things technological that's fine but whats the value and benefit of it to the average user? Well, the first thing that springs to mind is the ease with which it enables users with disabilities to interact with the search bar. For those using altered or different input devices it can be a slower process to enter text than using the keyboard.

In addition to that, mobile devices which have this facility enabled will make data entry must easier (even the best mobile device keyboard is slower than speaking the words).

Perhaps the best use of it we found is if you don't know how to spell what you are searching for. Need some chrysanthemums for the garden? How about looking for a an exhilarating experience from a conscientious provider? For those of us not good at spelling these can become a nightmare, even with Google's "Did you mean" feature! (Both of those examples work with speech recognition).

For those that think this feature would be of great benefit to their own website we can make speech recognition available on your site (so long as the end user is using Google Chrome as their browser and has a microphone, of course). Let us know if we can help with that.

What is your experience with speech recognition, and what do you think the next big adaptation of it will be?

Top Quality Fashion Website Launched

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:02:31 BST

Visiting Wardrobe Dilemma for the first time provides you with a clear and uncluttered design that lets you focus on the key aspects of the site: the high quality clothing.

Recently launched by Emerging Innovations on behalf of Wardrobe Dilemma the site is easy to navigate and allows for voucher codes and easy basket management.

As with all of Emerging Innovations' sites the customer has full control of the content both in terms of page content and category and product listings.

For such high quality clothing the website is worth a visit if only for the competitive pricing and wide range of stock available to order.

Keeping Business Moving During Holiday Breaks

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:07:18 BST

Emerging Innovations is a small company and like other small companies staff holiday always has an impact on projects and response times. Not that we begrudge our holiday as our staff work very hard to keep people happy!

Here are some ideas on how we mitigate any impact of staff being away:

1. Advise people in plenty of time
If like us you deal with pretty much the same key clients on a regular basis then let them know in plenty of time that you won't be available. Often it's a good talking point as to where you're going etc that serves to strengthen the relationship. It certainly allows them to play deliverables and queries around your vacation.

2. Don't just disappear
If you are a very small business, perhaps you are the only contact your customers have, it is vital that you don't just disappear. If you're going to be somewhere where you can't check your emails or can't make phone calls on urgent matters then make sure you have somebody in place that can help. Reciprocal holiday arrangements between companies is common in a number of industries and we have been looking after the phones for another company over the past week ourselves. They would do the same for us if the need arose (fortunately we have more than 1 member of staff and stagger our holidays!).

3. Outsource what you can.
While I was away on my last vacation I came back to find that a key project that I had been working on had moved on significantly due to the efforts of a third party that I had commissioned. The key to this being a success is based on a good solid brief before you go. Take time to document the exact requirement, what you expect to be delivered and when. You can further enhance the outsourcing process by having a shortlist, like we do, of people that we use regularly. This way they get to know us and we get to know how they work best.

4. Allocate time to catch-up on your return.
Don't kid yourself that you can return from your holiday and plough straight on with moving projects forward. Even the most diligent worker needs time to readjust to work, find out what has happened in their absence and to generally catch up with emails and other assorted bits of paperwork. Factor this in to make sure you get a good, productive soft landing on your return.

Are you in it for the Long Haul?

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:00:43 BST

We have spent the day with an interest new potential web design client. We've seen the excitement that a new project can bring to the people that contact us in order to make their dream a reality. This time, however, it was plain to see that the long term strategy of the project had been considered.

Depending upon the complexity of website the time from drawing board to reality can be measured in months. During that time it is critical that you don't see your project in isolation. Make sure that you keep your eyes and ears open. You should be listening for the sound of competitors hard on your heels.

We have spoken before about the fact that your idea and business doesn't necessarily have to be scared of the big players but with potential returns in the web world getting higher for the right combination of product and expertise there are many people that will quite happily usurp you if you're not careful.

So what can you do to protect your brilliant, fantastic and - at least so far! - unique idea?

1. Make a quick start
Get going now! Being slow off the starting blocks can be the biggest reason the competitors soon catch you up. Start speaking to relevant third parties including web developers to make sure you can start and proceed quickly and smoothly.

2. Explore your Core Competencies
Anyone can build a website but it takes the knowledge and expertise combination that you have to make your project a success. Explore the key skills and competencies that you and your partners have in the project. Competitors will not only need to match you on project ideas but also on the level of expertise and understanding that you have too.

3. Leverage Buy-in
When customers come to you they need to be made to feel part of the project. Offer opportunities to listen to and respond to feedback. Use forums and social media to make people feel part of the company. Doing so reduces the perceived distance that your company is from the buyer. They're not only more likely to buy but they're also less likely to go elsewhere.

4. Maximise your Incumbency Returns
If you are lucky enough to be the only company offering your product or service in your market (whether demographically or geographically for example) make sure you maximise that position. Now that doesn't necessarily mean maximising profits but you may instead maximise customer satisfaction; your customers won't even look at the competition if they are more than happy with what you are providing.

5. Plough-back your successes
Just as a business talks about ploughing back their profits so your website idea should plough-back its successes. This not only means being bold and upfront about the fact that you have been the first but because you are ahead of the learning curve you will have overcome problems that your competitors may not yet have even realised. This is a strong position to be in when attracting new business so make sure that confidence and methodology makes it back into processes such as sales and customer sign up.

POP3 Email with Your Account

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 17:41:08 BST

One of the main benefits of using an EI hosting package over competitors is that all of the account management including email management is done for you at your request. A simple email or phone call will mean the account is set up the same day.

For those that want hands-on control then our shared hosting accounts are cPanel based which means you can log in and control every aspect of your website and email system. Want to set up an out of office reply? Or perhaps you need to forward emails from another member of staff due to their absence? Log in or give us a call to make it happen.

For those that don't want to contact us, you can always log in to your cPanel account by visiting

http://www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel/

You will need to enter the username and password that you were given when the account was set up. If you don't know it or have forgotten it then contact us and we'll reset it or remind you.

Have full control of email allows you to provide a profession name@yourdomain.com face to the public and allows you to ditch your Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo! free email accounts.

Using Twitter to Monitor the Brand

Mon, 21 Mar 2011 14:45:38 GMT

One analogy that can be made about Twitter is of being at a party; a party with hundreds of millions of people in the same room. Okay, it stretches the imagination a little but give it a moment.

Just like a real party you will find that the people attending have a tendancy to gather together into groups that find their mutual conversation interesting or have something in common. Now that's not dissimilar to Following a person on Twitter; I get to hear everything that they say (if I'm listening, that is!).

Let's take this one step further: If everyone is talking ("Tweeting") at the party it should be possible for me to filter the background noise and pick out words and phrases that people say that interests me. And this is where it suddenly becomes very rewarding indeed, not least from a business point of view.

The first tool that you need to become familiar with is the Twitter Search. Log into Twitter and you'll see it at the top. By typing in a word or words that relates to your product or service you'll see a list of people that have spoken about it recently. What they have said will depend upon what action you take.

To take an example, let's say you sell wedding cakes. Doing a search for "wedding cake" (we put the quotation marks in to ensure we get results for those two exact words in that order) may show up some people tweeting about the fact that they don't know how much one might cost. Here you could step in, reply to their tweet and advise them. Don't just sell to them (you're at a party, remember!) but instead be helpful and informative. Remember everything that you tweet can be heard by other people too!

Once you've mastered doing the searches you might want to download a tool like TweetDeck. We at Emerging Innovations Ltd have this running constantly and we have it set to alert us to anybody mentioning the web products and services that we specialise in. Then we join in the conversation.

You can also, of course, monitor the mention of your name, brand or area of the country. It all makes the world a easier place in which to do business.

Good luck in the twittersphere and we hope the above tips help you develop your business further.

David McLeary, Web Consultant

Should I show Pricing on my Website?

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 19:11:07 GMT

In my role as a web consultant perhaps the most discussed topic when dealing with ecommerce website content is whether the business should show their prices.

The rule of thumb when dealing with this is quite straight forward: What do your competitors do? Have a look as their websites (or literature if they don't have websites) to see whether they get the pricing information across in figures or by other means.

Sometimes it is wise to give an idea of price or even not to mention it at all. It very much depends upon the type of goods or services you are selling. This is why looking at what the industry is doing is important.

That said, you don't want to give a misleading impression to a potential customer. If you could charge 5 for your widget painting service but you know that it is more likely to come to 20 after all the extras then this is what your site should state, if it mentions it at all. Capturing customers and then cranking the price up is a dicey business for all but the most experienced of sales people!

With services it is common for the price to fit the job and therefore many customers probably wouldn't expect to see a specific price for the work that they wanted doing. They would have to contact you and get a custom quote. However, you could lower the number of people that ask for quotes and then don't go ahead by giving a price range. This gives a good indication of the kind of fee they would expect, helping them decide whether they should contact you. You can give a minimum and maximum price or alternatively a case study giving details of an example service provided and state the price for a customer wanting a similar service.

Whatever your pricing strategy ends up as, make sure you have thought it through. Web consultants such as me can help with discussing this and other topics for your new or existing website so feel free to get in touch with me through Emerging Innovations.

David McLeary, Web Consultant.

London Telecoms Company starts working in The Cloud

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:41:51 GMT

Emerging Innovations have just launched a database system for a north London telecoms company that allows them to work faster, more flexibly and with a greater level of support.

Replacing a MS Access solution the web based database operates via any web browser and allows their staff to search, run reports and edit and add data easily. It also interacts with their customer communication system and generates letters to customers as soon as records are updated.

Because the core data and architecture can be accessed in the cloud by the developers there is no time lag in being able to support the customer whether in terms of making security updates or adding new features, meaning the company remains efficient and at the cutting edge of systems processing.

For more information on how a cloud database could help your company speak to EI.

New EI Facebook Page

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:53:34 GMT

EI have recently launched their Facebook page which we hope will become a place for you to follow our work and comment on some of the topics that we write about.

It will feature not only opinion on web based technology for your business but also shout outs of our blog, portfolio updates and special offers on things like hosting and website upgrades.

You can view our Facebook page and we'd be delighted if you would follow us so we can keep in touch with you.

Site Map in the Planning Stage

Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:44:49 GMT

A good sign that you have spent time thinking about the operation and overall structure of your website is whether you have a documented site map.

Whether paper based or in a software package such as Word or Visio a site map allows your planning efforts to take shape. Quite simply it is a document that shows each page as a box that serves a certain purpose. For example, a washing machine sales website might have a box for contact information and, of course, the home page, but also for the target audience types that it is trying to attract.

One of the first tasks that a web consultant will do is to draw up a site map for you. This might be based on your existing layout if you have a website already or might be taken from research you've done into marketing and product demand.

Importantly, without a documented sitemap your content runs the risk of becoming unfocused and, dare this author say it, rambling. Navigation can also be a problem as website visitors fail to understand the structure of the site, often because there isn't one.

If you need help with your website structure then Emerging Innovations can help, no matter what stage you're at.

Browser Compatibility: Perhaps the biggest hurdle of all.

Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:23:16 GMT

I see people get very excited at the prospect of learning web design, HTML and getting their first website ready for launch. That compares with the deflated feeling that they get when they realise that viewing websites in different browsers can lead to them displaying differently or not at all.

The way that different browsers interpret the same HTML coding is the biggest hurdle facing a web designer. It affects novices more than professionals because novice's coding may of a lower quality or be browser specific but let's be honest, it affects the professionals too.

With Microsoft launching Internet Explorer 9 this week it's timeline to do a list of the major browsers so that you can ensure you view your website in them and make sure that - even if it doesn't look identical in ease - at least it looks reasonable, readable and isn't broken.

Heres a list of the most used browsers:

Internet Explorer

Test your website on version 7, 8 and 9 if you can. If you're expecting to work with government institutions or local authorities then you need to include version 6 as well as that's the one maintained by that sector. Download the latest version.

Mozilla Firefox

The latest version is 3.6 which is the one you need to check. Download it here

Google Chrome

Becoming very popular very quickly, this one is currently on version 10. Download it here

Opera

Version 11 will be the one to check here. Download it here

Apple Safari

The browser is the default for Mac users so this is an important one to check. It is available for download on a windows platform too, however. Version 5 should be fine. The download page is here.

If you want a full list there is an excellent diagram of all the browsers with how they have evolved over time. But don't be put off by that; sticking to the ones above will suit you fine.

There are plenty of online resources to help with browser compatibility such as Browser Shots which is free to use and allows screenshots to be taken for a whole range of browsers.

Oh, and one last thing: The browsers above are all desktop application browsers and don't relate to any testing and checking that you might want to do on mobile devices. I think I'll leave that for another day.

Vanity and Desire: A Web Designer's Closest Friends

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:42:34 GMT

Website visitors are not going to engage with your website, no matter how good your written website content is, unless the design and imagery is right. Vanity and desire are two key concepts that should be in the forefront of your mind when looking at a design that will engage your potential customers.

To make people sit up and take notice of your website content it must appeal to them. Given that people are different and as a result your company may well have different target audience types it is important to find out who the visitor is as soon as possible.

Introducing, then, the concept of Vanity. By providing images or links that clearly identify the type of user you will invite them to click and, as a result, you can immediately serve up content that lists features and benefits of your product and services as it relates to them.

As an example, consider a company that manufacturers widgets. These widgets are available in different sizes and colours in order to appeal to a range of different buyers. If we know that one of our target audience groups are working women that have children then we can provide a suitable image with a caption that says something like "Widgets for Busy Professional Women". This will be clicked on by the appropriate group.

Now you can add the concept of Desire into the mix. Desire works for products and services in the same way that Vanity works for target audience types. Words or, preferably, images (they work even better!) are used to allow the visitor to fetch the product or service that they want.

Our widget maker would show a range of widget pictures, all of which would be clickable to allow the visitor's desire to be shown. Adding the appropriate widget to the basket or getting more information about it should be as simple as possible once the desire has been shown.

A simple way to assess how powerful this last concept is - and as a lesson in bad practice - see how frustrated visitors get when they try to click on an image of a product or service that they want which isn't clickable or does nothing more than give them a larger image of the it.

You may even have been one of them in the not too distant past. When people want to buy, we should let them do so!

If your company needs help with making changes to its website to lever this power of design, vanity and desire then speak to Emerging Innovations and we'll be able to help.

Managing Multiple Domains: Parking

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:27:36 GMT

For those that don't already know, having domain names that contain the keywords that potential customers are searching for can greatly enhance your listing on search engines. What's the best way to bring these domains into use with your website? One way is parking.

If you register your domain through a reputable registrar such as 123reg or 1and1 you'll be able to log in to your account and manage each of your domain names. By doing this you can determine where each of your domains points - that is, which website is displayed when someone visits them.

Having more than one domain pointing to the same website is perfectly acceptable. On some (particularly shared) account packages you need to ensure that the domain names are parked in order to get the most out of them.

A domain that is parked in this way will work in exactly the same way as the domain on which it is parked. Take these two as an example:

http://www.emerg-in.com/blog/

http://www.emerginginnovations.co.uk/blog/

You will notice that both of these addresses go to exactly the same page. This page hasn't been replicated, it is simply being displayed because of the nature of the parking that has been set up.

Note also that a parked domain will allow you to set up multiple email addresses that span the different domains.

Setting up a parked domain can be done via your Control Panel for many hosting companies or, if you're an EI customer, we can assist without charge.

The Home Page Content Conundrum Explained

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:22:35 GMT

Although many website owners think that the home page of their site is the key to sales, this is often not the case. If your website is structured properly and the content is focused it is unlikely that the home page will ever, on its own, create a sale.

So what can we say about the home page?

One of the most important opportunities that the home page affords you is to allow the filtering of your website visitor traffic in a number of ways. If you're able to use your home page to direct traffic to appropriate pages based on who they are - the target audience type - then you may find a higher conversion rate.

Put simply, it has been shown that website visitors will click through on images and text that reflect themselves and/or the kind of product that they are interested in buying. Making full use of this on the home page and then providing relevant content on the destination page based on that click is a great way to meet visitor's expectations.

So, next time you are considering your home page content don't fall into the trap of trying to put everything on it. Instead, plan and structure your website so that key content is focused within the site itself and the home page acts as an index or signposting tool for that content.

Emerging Innovations are able to help with website content planning and structuring.

Customisable websites with the Customer in mind.

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:57:52 GMT

When we were approached by a motorcycle retailer to enhance their existing website the list of requirements was based on problems they had encountered with their previous website.

As with all of the websites that we build we try to give the customer as much control as possible over the content - saving them money and time. Because we use a bespoke and customisable editing system we made it very simple for this busy company to change text, add news and control the menu structure.

Whether you are considering an improvement to an existing site (and want more control of it as part of the deal) or are looking for help on a fresh venture then have a chat with us.

Google Searching: The OR operator

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 20:21:19 GMT

Being able to search effectively is becoming a skill that can save you time and give you access to a long list of appropriate results. In our series of how to work with Google we have a look at the simple OR operator.

When typing up a search it is tempting to put all of the words that you are seeking into one string. There's no problem with that in itself but if we are looking for pages to be returned that contain an alternate word, rather than all of the words, we need to use the OR command.

Here's an example to show you how it might work:

emerging innovations web design OR development

This will return all documents that return emerging innovations web as well as the word design or the word development. If we were to leave out the OR it would produce a different list, showing documents that contain both the words design and development.

When using the operator make sure that you type it IN CAPITALS otherwise it will be ignored.

(And here's the advanced tip, note that you can use pipe (|) in place of the OR word. There, we've saved you a key press there!)

Hopefully that tip will help you find more relevant results in your searches.

Finding inbound links

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:54:28 GMT

Our comment last time regarding search engine commends (the site: command; read about it here) had people asking what other commands were available. Well, here's another one that allows you to see who is linking to you.

The link: command can be used with your website address like this

link:emerg-in.com

and it returns all of the pages that the search engine has indexed that contain a link to your site.

While it works on Google as you would expect there is a need for you to validate your site on Yahoo! and Bing! don't offer support for that command at present.

It's particularly useful if you want to see who are linking to your competitors sites. Because we know that inbound links are good for search engine ranking you should ensure they also link to your site too.

Is Your Website Listed?

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 11:31:29 GMT

As a business website owner you'll know that being able to be found on search engines is important to getting traffic to your website. Before embarking on a potentially time consuming or expensive search engine optimisation campaign be sure to check your site's search engine visibility.

Search engines do their best to index everything on the web, but the web is a big place and getting bigger minute by minute. Therefore, check you are listed on the major search engines using the steps below. If you're not you can easily do some tasks to help you appear there quickly.

The key to discovering your website's visibility is to use the site: command. Although little known many search engines now allow you to run a command from the search bar and the Site command is just one of them.

In Google, Yahoo or Bing simply type site: followed by the domain name of your website. Don't put a space between the colon and the start of your website address.

Your search might look something like this:

site:www.emerg-in.com

You'll then see a list of results that detail each and every page indexed from your website. If you have a 20 page website then you should see 20 results. If not, try to find which page is missing.

If you're not seeing any results or the number of results are less than you would expect then the most expedient thing you can do is to obtain links to your site. Remember you can't control who links to your site but you can ask people so contact businesses that you supply to see if they would be willing to do that.

In addition, you can also create some entries on directories. Often these are free but nearly always allow you to create a link back to your website. This counts as a link and like all links to your site will increase the speed with which search engines find you.

Does your website need carpeting?

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:29:31 GMT

Whilst I try to do most of my shopping online for Christmas it was inevitable that I had to go into a high street store at some point. I'll admit that I don't find it very enjoyable and even less so when my good wife takes me with her to buy clothes she needs!

Occasionally, however, these trips can be quite eye opening from a business and marketing point of view. Indeed, last week whilst in a shop in town I notices something quite interesting about the floor ...

Firstly, appreciate that the shop that we were in was selling clothing that was discounted and was for everyday-wear; it wasn't designer label by any means and the layout of the store, the ad hoc way in which the items were on the racks and the generally eclectic dcor reflected that. The customers responded to it very well.

Here was a store that had obviously done its homework on the kind of people that purchased its clothes and therefore wanted to create a relaxed, informal atmosphere to go with their clothing style. Overall, it was working.

Back to the floor ...

To maintain this relaxed - sometimes bordering on the chaotic - style, the floor of the shop was a wood effect laminate and that fitted entirely with the rest of the dcor. However, there was an area beyond the main store area that had a completely different vibe and feel to it and that was carpeted.

A quick scout around this carpeted area showed that the clothing was of a slightly different quality. It contained accessories complementary to the clothing on offer and had a much more designer feel. The carpet along with the rest of the dcor (think chrome, glass and warmer colours) continued that feeling.

There were fewer customers in this area but those that were there were very aware that they had stepped into a different level of quality. Some looked on from outside but didn't come in while others headed straight for it without spending hardly any time in the other area. What an excellent example of design providing a pull that relates to your target audience type.

Writing from a website perspective the conclusions are easy to draw. Having a website that looks ostentatious is fine so long as that is what your target market expects. Indeed, as we see above, the people may actually be attracted to that kind of shop design if that's what they are looking for.

Have you identified with your target audience? Do you look too cheap, or too high brow? Perhaps some thought about how you use carpeting on your website will help!

Getting the Best Value for your Website Project

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:38:13 GMT

Without a doubt you'll want to make sure that the price you pay for your website design and development is as fair and competitive as possible. This article runs through some of the common mistakes and misunderstandings that people make when taking their first steps in this important area.

Value v Price

If I promised to sell you a Lamborghini Murcilago for £500 you'd be quite right to wonder what's wrong with it. Indeed, the low price would put most serious buyers off. However, people seem to lose this common sense when dealing with website costs.

When looking at a price that you are given for a website design or development it is vital that you read what you are getting for your money. Even if the price is still above your budget web designers aren't averse to a bit of horse trading to get the business!

Therefore make sure you appreciate that the value of the web project you are receiving is fully understood and it is that value which is being used to judge whether the price is good or not.

Not explaining your Business

There is no such thing as an off the shelf eCommerce system that suits every business. Not only does the design need to be mapped perfectly to your target audience but the checkout process complexity and the nature of the product all need to be taken into account.

Given that, it is surprising therefore how many companies ask for quotes for their website build without giving any details of what product or service they are offering. It is therefore not surprising that quote responses are at best vague and at worst a misleading impression of what will be delivered.

Be sure therefore to give at least a paragraph of information within your specification that relates to what you sell and what your target market is if possible.

Not Setting a Criteria list for Suppliers

Do you know the kind of web designer you want to work with? It's not something that is critical but if you have a preference then make it known. Do they need to be based near you? Perhaps they must have a portfolio of at least 3 sites in the last 2 years?

You'll save yourself a lot of time in reading responses that you're not willing to proceed with - not to mention saving web companies time in drafting proposals! - if you make this clear from the outset.

Poorly drawn up Specification

Perhaps the best request that we ever received for a website enhancement was to make a website "have a lot more zooosh!". Not surprisingly we didn't touch it with a barge pole. I'm sure other serious and professional companies didn't either.

Specifications that are not clear do not elicit good responses. You must therefore show that you are serious by setting out a serious specification for your web needs. This can be as simple as a bit about your company, the marketing strategy and a list of functionality.

Not Understanding the Price v Portfolio v Risk Trade Off

As a company, we do not compete on price alone. This is because we know that there is a connection between price, portfolio and risk. Because we have a good, strong portfolio we consider ourselves less of an engagement risk for any business and therefore feel justified charging more than a person with no portfolio.

Where does your business see itself? Are you willing to take a risk by engaging a company at a low price that has little or no portfolio? There's no right or wrong answer so long as you understand the risk implications.

Unrealistic Pricing

Setting a budget gives a guide to a web designer so that they can determine how much effort to put into the project. It is also a statement of how seriously you are taking the project. By far the bulk understand that it's a competitive tender situation and won't price above what they can realistically deliver the job for.

Unrealistic pricing can, however, simply turn good web designers off. We've received requests for eCommerce sites with every possible bell and whistle with a budget of £200. The customer is effectively wasting their time and will no doubt be disappointed with the end result of their site, they ever get that far.

Unrealistic Timelines

In a similar vein, timelines need to be realistic too. This is particularly the case if you are looking for bespoke development or design. Wanting it by the weekend just isn't possible.

If time really is key then be flexible on price and quality but also be ready to accept off-the-shelf and turnkey solutions. Many designers will be asking themselves why you and your business are in need of the project so urgently is this a taste of how the relationship will be in the long term

The Master and Slave relationship

And speaking of relationships, what kind of relationship do you want with your web designer? You probably appreciate the virtue of the long term relationship and the designer will too. However, this is best achieved by accepting that it's a two way street.

This means that you need to appreciate that your chosen designer has a level of expertise in web design and development (hopefully!) while they should acknowledge that you are the expert in your business field. It's probably correct when the designer advises you that a bright red background and yellow text isn't the way to get increased sales.

From the point of inception try to understand that the designer can be used to your advantage and you should seek their advice - even if you don't necessarily agree with it!

Not Answering Questions

If we have a question about a website that we're providing a quote for then we tend to ask it. Quite reasonable you might think. However, it's quite amazing how many people don't respond.

Of course questions themselves are a result of a less than perfect specification. If you're stuck at that stage it might be worth thinking about engaging a web consultant to help you draw up a perfect spec. Alternatively, invest some time informing those that want to provide you with a quote with the necessary details for them to get it right.

Crowdsourcing

Finally, a quick note on crowdsourcing. If you're not familiar with it, this is the use of websites that allow hundreds and perhaps thousands of people to respond to your requirements.

It sounds ideal but they only work in your favour if you have a half decent specification. Otherwise the bidders' interpretation of your needs will vary so wildly that the whole process will be worth very little.

It is also easy to be misled by people offering low prices and to accept the job on price alone. Keep the concept of risk and value in your mind when dealing with responses in this kind of arena.

Hopefully the above will help you identify how you can guide your own website tender process through to a satisfactory outcome for your business. Remember it doesn't mean paying over the odds for your site, it just means that putting a bit of effort in at the specification stage can reap rewards further down the line.

It's Positive to Be Critical

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:39:57 GMT

It is perhaps one of the most important traits of a project manager that they are able to listen to and discuss criticism and concern of the ongoing work without taking it personally and to then make a clear judgement on how to deal with it.

This is particularly the case within website project design and development work where project managers have to be responsive to a whole host of criticism that can come from a very wide range of stakeholders in any particular project.

As a project manager that is faced with criticism, firstly make sure that the full reason and detail of the critical analysis has been received and discussed. This may be hard to do because it's human nature for someone to want to cut short any comments that aren't positive. Doing so, however, allows the reasons behind the verdict to be understood and that can only help to come up with a satisfactory solution.

After the listening has been done, the next trap to avoid is of falling into a defensive position. This is often not the best way to come up with a sound and reasonable judgment on the actions to be taken from the feedback. Look at it from the customer point of view and through the user's eyes to see if there really is merit in what is being said.

Perhaps the hardest part of the job above and beyond the stages detailed above is to feedback to the critic that their comments, while justified, may be out of scope of the project or that it is not recommended in the expert opinion of the supplier. Making this retort aggressive and then not stating the reasons is a great way to start an argument and to embed negative feeling into the relationship - so avoid this approach at all costs.

Once project managers of all walks of life get into the habit of using this kind of approach there will be much less hostility in receiving feedback and, indeed, it may well be encouraged and welcomed as it is with us.

The login process: Angel or Demon?

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 09:50:49 GMT

As a business owner you will no doubt understand that the more you know about your customers the better you can serve them. Being able to provide marketing tailored to their buying habits and following up on purchases they have made all makes good business sense and helps to ensure repeat business.

As a web consultant and developer one of the ways that appears in a website specification without fail is the requirement for the website visitor to login. Whether this is to complete their purchase or to download information it is regularly seen within the site map as a requirement that is extremely important.

But why? Is this one of the site specification requirements that isn't thought through properly?

Login requires Registration

OK, so logging in is easy: You just need your email address and a password. But how were these obtained? Presumably the website visitor has had to complete a form on your website giving at least some details. There may even have been an email that they had to receive in order to validate their email address.

A Barrier to Interaction

Let us not forget, therefore, that we are not just adding a login step to our interaction process but a registration one too. For new customers in particular that's a lot of effort for them to go through.

What is Normal?

It has to be admitted that whether visitors are willing to go through the registration and login process depends a lot on what they are buying. Personally, if I were buying a pack of pens from you I would be a little annoyed if I had to give you my inside leg measurement in order to apply for an account in order for me to ultimately receive my pens.

Alternatively, if I was buying something of high value - a car, for example - then I would pretty much expect you to be asking some information about me. In fact I would in this case be put off buying if you didnt.

So it's necessary to work out what the normal operation is for your product, service and industry. Begin by looking at your competitors and follow up with some customer testing and then perhaps even some A/B testing on your website.

What's the alternative

Given that registration should be seen as optional rather than a requirement, consider offering a registration option in order to add value to your website. You may well offer incentives like an easier checkout system, the ability to keep products in the basket long term or even special discounts or offers.

When dealing with payments online keep in mind that certain Payment Solution Providers such as PayPal complete the transaction offsite and all you receive is the customer's delivery address and items once the transaction is complete. Tying the checkout process to the payment in this way helps reduce the number of steps and the overall process.

Make It Easy

In summary, and as always, don't add extra functionality to your website unless it is going to add real value to your visitor's experience. Look at your competitors and offer a better online service to enhance your conversion rate.

Barcode your data: An Introduction to QR codes

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:58:09 GMT

We're always very keen to make information transfer from one location to another as easy as possible. The idea of writing information down only to type it in somewhere else seems like an unnecessary amount of work.

You can imagine how pleased we are, therefore, to show you how you can utilise 2D bar code technology to make information on your website (or any other visible medium) transferrable to mobile phones.

Here's an example:

If you have a mobile phone to hand with a suitable bar-code reader installed you'll be able to point it at the screen and once it is lined up it will register the content of the code. In this case it is the location of our offices.

Here's another example the produces some text that shows how wonderful Emerging Innovations are:

And finally here's an example of a vCard embedded in a QR code. No writing down phone numbers and re-keying them in.

You can create QR codes yourself in a number of ways. The resulting image can be included in a document, name badge or on a website. Even advertisements are now starting to use them to make it easy for potential customers to insert the details into their mobile device.

Perhaps the best tool that we've come across is this QR code generator which provides all of the examples above. However, keep your eyes open for other instances of QR code generators being made available to you: Google's URL shorter goo.gl provides you with a shortened URL (e.g. http://goo.gl/nnKGg) that can be further converted to a QR code by adding .qr to the end of the shortened address.

I've a feeling we're going to hear and read much more about QR codes as they come to maturity so make sure you're aware and ready to use them for the convenience of your customers right now.

Automated Website Jobs

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:23:28 GMT

Do you find yourself logging on to your company website regularly to do the same tasks? Perhaps your customers only receive notification of their orders when you manually send them? Whatever system you have it is well worth you knowing about automated website jobs.

In its simplest form a web page displays when a visitor types in the correct address in their address bar. Not only does this display content to them but it might also trigger a script to run, perhaps updating a database or sending an email.

While manual triggers such as this are fine you may want your website to do things automatically, when a certain database value is found or at a certain time. These website tasks (called Cron jobs on Linux systems) are useful for you to know about.

We use them throughout the sites that we manage for customers and the tasks that they do range from updating stock status for products through to sending out Twitter and Facebook updates.

The power of such a system is enhanced when it has access to other data such as accounting systems or other databases. Payment reminders can automatically be sent out and supplier back-orders made.

Have a look at your systems that you use in house and ask whether an automated procedure may of use to you. Contact us for a discussion or for further information.

Maps on Your Website

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:15:18 GMT

Last week we wrote about APIs, what they are and how powerful they can be.

One of the APIs that was mentioned and that is worth saying a little bit more about is the powerful Google Maps API. Fancy an interactive map on your website? Well, this API is for you.

I'm sure we've all seen Google Maps while searching and have come to appreciate that they are very useful and can even provide driving (or walking) directions or flag up positions using little icon markers.

Being able to locate your office(s) or store(s) as a customer is sometimes a critical factor when deciding to make the trip, particularly if meetings are required or inspection of goods is needed before a purchase is made. By providing a map such as Google Maps on your site the potential customer is able to identify your exact location and decide for themselves when and how to visit.

Remember that by integrating maps with data you can provide dynamic mapping such as GPS positioning as well as static store location mapping. Have a think what your customers would like to see on your site that would help them with the process of engaging with you.

If you want to use Google Maps API then there is ample documentation or you can contact us and we'll get to work on implementing it.

API calls: What Are They?

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 12:15:18 GMT

You may hear web developers and programmers talking about API calls. This wonderful TLA (Three Letter Acronym) is the basis for a whole range of website functionality that you can benefit from and is the basis of the whole Cloud Computing concept.

While knowing that an API stands for Application Programming Interface is all very well it is useful to understand that it is an interface implemented by a software program in order to interact with another bit of software is all. So what?

In terms of web development there are certain things that some websites do that it would take an age (and cost a lot) for your web programmer to develop.

Here are a few examples:

Twitter takes your message and displays it on their timeline;
Facebook provides you with a page that can be displayed to your customers;
Google provides you with a tool to show a custom map;
Constant Contact sends out mailings on your behalf to email addresses that you specify.

Quite simply, using API calls allows your website to take advantage of all of this functionality without the need for any heavy programming on your site. So, you can:

Post an (automated) Twitter message;
Display how many Facebook followers you have on your site;
Display your nearest stores to a customer visiting your website;
Subscribe or unsubscribe a person from your Constant Contact mailing list.

Hopefully you can see the power of the API call and why web developers talk about them so much. As a manager, it should also mean you can specify your website requirements not just on what you think the developer can deliver but also what other websites are already delivering.

For help with APIs or development of your website please contact us.

Websites: If you're Under Construction you're not Open for Business

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:18:13 BST

When was the last time you walked into a shop in the high street that had its roof missing and had a swarm of builders and electricians still working to complete it? Judging by the use of Under Construction text and images on some websites one might think that this is a normal occurrence.

We already know that web visitors are fickle; they will change their surfing habits very quickly if they see something that they like or that they don't like. Being enticed into a website or web shop that isn't quite open for business is a complete waste of their time and they're likely never to come back.

So, what should you do if you demand a web presence but don't yet have the content or haven't yet had the time to complete the website build? Here are a few options:

Do nothing
It may seem odd but it needs to be said; sometimes having no website at all is better than having one that is incomplete, doesn't reflect your company's professional approach or doesn't work. By all means register the domains but have them point to a blank page if necessary.
Snare visitors for a Repeat Visit
With the website not yet ready, simply allow the visitor to enter their email address and promise to contact them when everything is up and running. For this to be effective take care with your wording and the message. Something like "our website isn't ready yet" doesn't really cut it but confident, professional statements like "we're on the verge of launching a website for our business that it going to save you money on your regular widget purchases" will allow people to see the benefit of them coming back.

Additionally, perhaps you could capture the visitor's address with a simple form and then let them know when the launch happens. Of course this won't net everyone but it's worth putting on the site, particularly if the web address is starting to get handed out in pre-printed brochures or business cards.
Use a Site Builder
Site builders such as those offered by 123-reg and 1and1 allow you to have a web presence that looks professional and that can be set up in a few hours at most. For a monthly fee the site will more than fulfill your web presence needs until you are ready to launch your website proper.

Don't fall into the trap of adding "coming soon" but promote your business in the normal way. Highlight alternative ways that people can obtain your product and services until the site is ready and, perhaps as a news article, promote the forthcoming website improvements and give benefits as to why the visitor should come back. Make it easy for them to bookmark the site or to sign up to be informed, as detailed in the point above.

All of the above are better than admitting that your store isn't ready and that the customer really is wasting their time by visiting. None of the options above take much time and can be delivered in less time than it takes to find that suitable animated graphic that you thought you needed.

Long Term Relationships - Part 3 - The eNewsletter

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 10:25:58 BST

We have already spoken about the importance of generating long term relationships and how social media such as Twitter can help you do that.

Many companies fail to use the power of e-newsletters effectively yet when done properly they can act as a wonderful reminder to customers that you are still there, have got some great opportunities for them and are ready to respond.

There are a few golden rules when sending e-newsletters and here are a few of them:

Only send to people that have agreed

This has to go on the top of the list. Don't just add email addresses that you have collected from the web or from other means to your distribution list. People should have agreed to receive your newsletters. The reasoning is simple: You're trying to create a good impression for your company, not of one that's desperate to shout to as many people as possible. Oh, and it's illegal. Don't do it.

Target the content of your e-newsletter effectively

Focusing your marketing efforts on one or more target audiences is always good. However, e-newsletter senders often fall into the trap of sending every piece of news to everybody. The relevence of most articles is therefore lost. Think about breaking down your e-newsletter into different lists reflecting the diverse range of audience types that you have.

List the benefits not the features of products and offers

Yes it's very nice that your widget comes in a green colour but how does that affect me? Point out the reasoning behind certain product or service features so that the benefits can easily be seen.

People may not want to buy immediately

One of the good things about taking a longer term view of marketing is that such newsletters can be used to build brand identity, good will, allegiance and awareness of a quality product or portfolio.

See it as part of your Marketing Mix

You must ensure - both from a design and content point of view - your e-newsletter fits in with your overall marketing strategy. Catalogues, events, advertising, websites all need to co-ordinate to provide joined-up promotions of your products and services.

Put some time into it

Sorry, but there's no substitute for putting some time into getting the content of your newsletter right. This includes reviewing comments, queries and even complaints about your product or service, researching current news and trends and (I'm going to underline this one) checking for grammar and spelling errors.

If done well that e-newsletters are yet another tool in your kit for ensuring your customers are kept as close as possible. You can generate your own, perhaps bespoke, e-newsletters or you can use companies such as Constant Contact or Graphic Mail to customise and send email on your behalf for a monthly fee.

Good luck with your continued marketing efforts. Get in touch with us if we can be of any help in providing help with any of the above.

Favicons: Brand Identity in the Address Bar

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:19:13 BST

If brand identity means a lot to your company it should be strong in the website too, as part of the marketing mix.

You can provide an enhancement to brand identity by having your logo or image next to the website address as it displays in the website browser or in the tab, depending on the browser. Not only does this lead to more exposure for your image but it also lets people identify the image with your company, particularly when navigating tabs.

In addition, the icon is stored alongside the name of the page should a user bookmark the website or save it to their favourites.

The images and logos that we're referring to in the context are called favicons. They are simple, square, images of either 16, 32 or 64 pixel in size and they can be designed and displayed on your website relatively simply.

If you want to add a favicon to your website check out this tool (we love the definition of a favicon that it gives but I don't think it will win too many prizes for accuracy).

Google Arrow Points The Way

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 12:18:03 BST

If you've done a Google search in the last few weeks you may have noticed a small blue arrow that has appeared next to the top search result. Depending on which version of the Google results page you're viewing (rollouts can take a few weeks to complete) you may be scratching you head as to what it is.

It is all part of the Google Instant upgrade. Results are displayed immediately beneath the search box as you type. Obviously as this means your hands are on the keyboard there needs to be an easy way for you to choose the result that you want without having to reach for the mouse, saving time that could add up to minutes across an entire working day (!).

But seriously, using the up and down cursor keys is of course much more user friendly and indeed the blue arrow courteously jumps down the list of results as they are pressed. Give it a try and then press Enter to follow the link.

For those that having listings on Google - including paid listings - one has to ask the question on the effect all this will have on click-through rates (OK, Key-through-rates) on listings. Uses may indeed choose to follow the top listings through ease rather than seeking what they want.

Our advice is to keep a close eye on your tracking over the next few weeks to make sure, particularly with paid adverts, that you are not seeing a sharp increase in bounce rate or drop in conversion rate.

Taking a Simple Screenshot

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 10:44:39 BST

A number of our website customers often need to send us a picture of what they are seeing on their browser. Perhaps they need to have some additional functionality added to a certain page and need us to know exactly where. Perhaps something isn't displaying quite as it should.

Either way, it's quite easy for a user to email us with a screenshot of what they are seeing, and here's how it is done:

For Windows:

Press the Print Screen key. This key can be found between the alpha and number keypad and to the right of the F12 key.
Open an email and type your message. As the screenshot has been saved to the clipboard you can simply paste it into your message.

For Mac Users (OS/X):

Press Command-Control-Shift-3, which saves the file on the desktop.
Send that file to us as an attachment to your email.

If you're encountering a problem with your website (whether we built it or not) I'm sure we'll be able to help resolve it so please get in touch.

The new Twitter Interface: Why did they bother?

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 10:04:55 BST

Despite the title this isn't an attack on the new interface that Twitter - at the time of writing - is rolling out. Some people have been dismissive of the change whilst other are saying it is definitely the best thing since ... well, Twitter.

Whatever your thoughts it is worth considering the concept of change and the need for it. How often do you go into your favourite store to find they've moved things around, or driven on a familiar route to find that traffic priorities have been changed? Like it or not change is part of everything we encounter.

When it comes to websites such as Twitter there are a number of considerations that might motivate the change. First and foremost is the consideration of technological improvement. Even a website written a year ago won't be taking advantage of the letest and best functionality and widgets that are available today.

More than that, however, website design - both within your industry and within the web community as a whole - move on as fashions and usability considerations change. For example look at the BBC website from 1996. How would you feel about using that today? It is has change and review that has lead to what it is today.

So Twitter is just following the normal route that any company that has an online presence should take: Look at both external and internal factors and relate them to improvements to the product, service, image and marketing.

Now to get to grips with all these new Twitter buttons

Popups: Not What they Once Were

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 10:37:05 BST

It used to be a policy that any potential customer that made mention of popups during discussions about how their website should work would be politely steered away from and such thoughts. But now, things have changed.

While the use of popup windows themselves are still very much frowned upon, there are viable alternatives that do not cause as much inconvenience to the users. These are blocks of text and images that can overlay the content on the site and appear within the browser windows of the website visitor. This is the key factor that makes them different from popup windows, which open in a new browser window and therefore can appear anywhere on the screen of the user, even underneath the browser window that they are looking at (so called "pop unders").

Indeed you've more than likely come across these in your surfing. Whether you're being invited to participate in a survey, asked to give feedback about the site, an extention to a smaller advert on the page or just to give you more information they are now everywhere.

For your own site they are certainly an option, no long being a pariah of the design world. However, as with all things they should be used only when necessary and when they do not interfere with the thought process of the website visitor. They should be used to enhance and add to the goals of the website.

If you feel as though a website review of your business would be beneficial then please let us know and we'll take a look, including consideration of these new style popups.

Optimising your Website through Split Testing

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:37:05 BST

Hopefully as a website owner you have already come to appreciate that the website you build or commission is not for you; it is for your customers. With this understood it is important to be able to think like your website visitors in order to provide them with the information and interface that they are expecting.

You may well sit down and have a hard think yourself about the kind of information required. An effort to empathise with the prospects will take you so far. Perhaps in addition you will also undertake some market research to quantify and classify the level of understanding of product and the kind of thing that they want to see.

Even with that done however there may be an optimal way to display the information or wording for the introductory paragraph. If only we could test various versions to see which one works best.

Using Split Testing (and it's big brother Multivariate Testing) you can have more than one version of your website available to visitors. While each individual visitor will only see one version, the success of each version is recorded allowing you to decide from the real world stats which version is performing better.

Of course it is necessary for you to set up clear performance goals before you start. These might be number of click throughs, number of contacts made, number of products purchased or something similar and relevant to your site.

There are many companies that offer this kind of split testing, some are free and some are paid. There are also organisations that provide interpretation and recommendations based on the results.

Be sure to use split testing on your site as a way of continually improving the quality and relevance of the information that it displays to the user.

Sound like a good idea?

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 10:36:28 BST

If you are like me then visiting a website that plays sound or even a video automatically often causes me to quickly move somewhere else. Not only is it an uninvited intrusion to my office silence (OK, my radio listening) but it often provides little or no information that is relevant to my specific needs.

While there are certain exceptions by far the majority of website should not employ sound or video that runs automatically upon loading. Yes, it's fine to offer the visitor a choice of whether to play the audio or video or not but you will find that they will do that only after reading any relevant information and/or assessing your overall website effectiveness.

Remember that website visitors' needs will be different and shouting and broadcasting one message to everyone simply isn't worthwhile. As soon as we get down to the specific pages and we know what we're selling to whom we can offer (note the italics!) to provide audio or video accompaniment to perhaps tell or demonstration more about that product.

If you are determined to offer sound and video then at least offer a mute button to protect my dignity amongst the others in my office.

Sometimes not every bit of functionality that a website can do for you is is something you want to pursue.

Why Website Counters Count for Nothing

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:23:18 BST

It is quite surprising how many websites that claim to be "professional" still have website counters visible on their home page. Responding to page views, these numbers proudly presented often give a bad impression of both website success and its popularity.

Often these counters are used by people who have either built the website themselves and are ignorant of professional ways of tracking visitors to their website. For a customer, being visitor 56 to a website would suggest that not many people visit. How would you feel about going into a shop that nobody ever seems to go into? It's not a good start to the customer relationship.

Professional solutions are provided by companies such as Google with their Analytics programme. However, almost all website hosting packages allow for statistics to be generated which include things like visits, bounce rates etc.

Why Splash Screens give you Nothing

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:03:37 BST

With one or two exceptions, splash screens will not give your website any kind of boost whatsoever. In fact, it may well harm the sites conversion and click-through rate.

Splash screens are those introductory screens that appear in place of the websites home page. There is the need to click through or sometimes wait for a video or animation to complete before you are given entry to the site proper.

The question is, as a website owner, what possible benefits could this provide you with? You are making the customer click or making them wait for absolutely no reason. How many shops have you been in that make you wait outside or watch a corporate video before you can go in?

The only exceptions are if the website is being used as a pure marketing tool. That is, the interactivity of it is based upon users wanting to experience your product rather than buy it. There, different rules apply.

For the rest of us, however, steer clear of any kind of Splash Screen and make sure you customers get a proper website experience and you get the benefit of a high conversion rate.

Website Translation Tools

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:57:37 BST

For many websites the accessibility of content to readers other than English is an important consideration. There are a number of online tools that provide free widgets that website owners can incorporate to make their content accessible.

For users of Google website browser Chrome, the translation option is automatically made available when a website is delivered that isnt written in the viewers native language. Simply use the dropdown to confirm the source language and the web page will be re-displayed in the native language.

Google also offer a simple widget for any website content to be translated. Google Translate lets you translate simple lines of text or complete web pages by posting the text or URL.

Of course with all computer-based translation services the meaning and context may be lost in translation but it is better than nothing. However, the Lingro service provides an interesting translation tool that simply translates the words that the visitor wants. Simply visit the Lingro link and point at the words for a pop-up definition and translation to other languages.

How are you Defining that?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:35:23 BST

We all sometimes need a concise definition of a term or acronym for our work.

Google has a very useful term that displays definitions of words or phrases straight from the search bar; simply append it with define:

So, define:css or define:emerging show a simple list of results taken from the web.

Be careful not to put spaces around your colon : symbol.

Present Your Company ... But Don't Forget The Facts!

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:17:52 BST

EI were privileged to be involved in the selection of a web development supplier for a company that were providing consultancy work for. Our role was to ensure that the technical prowess of the companies that were bidding was genuine and to make sure that no smoke and mirrors were used to win the contract.

It was interesting to see how the companies took different approaches to the presentation itself. We had a wide range of methods ranging from the sit-down and chat with us to the formal presentation with handouts etc.

Its certainly the case that while there was no wrong way of presenting it did give us an insight into how the relationship might develop, should that company be appointed. Were we looking for a master and slave relationship or one that allowed for a more conversational, perhaps even casual way of working?

Whatever your presentation style and in whatever sector and industry, it is important to allow your companys ethos to shine through. However, it is just as important that your the key product, service, facts and answers are given in the presentation too a couple of slick presentations slipped up on that!

What is the Value of Customers?

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:59:17 BST

As business people we all know that customers are valuable but do we know just how valuable they are?

Putting a figure on the average, or median, amount of income you generate when a customer uses your product or service is a necessary step along the path of understanding how your marketing can be costed.

You may already think quite rightly that marketing is a return on investment. For every pound you spend on marketing, you want something in return in this case sales. While the investment amount is easily calculated by taking the total amount that you have spent on marketing, the return amount is a little more nebulous.

Look back through your client spending data (income to you!) and see how much on average a customer might spend. This will give you the return amount that you could expect.

The only other factor to then take into consideration is the conversion rate. Lets say that an advert attracts 10 visits to my website for each 1,000 displays. Those 10 visits cost me £10 (hey, lets keep the maths simple!). For every 10 visits I get 1 sale and make on average - £50 through the lifetime of that customer.

So, my return of 50 is based on an investment of 10, a return of 5:1. Not bad.

Perhaps I should think of increasing my marketing spend, eh?

The Breadcrumb Trail

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:36:27 BST

One of the simplest yet most often overlooked aid to navigation is the breadcrumb trail.

Named after the trail of crumbs left behind by a traveller in such tails as Hansel and Gretel the breadcrumb trail on a website simply shows what page the web visitor is on by virtue of the path they have taken to get there.

For eCommerce websites this is an invaluable way of allowing users to see which department they are in and providing them with an easy way avoiding the necessity of the back button to get back to an index or category higher up the tree.

The breadcrumb trail is also invaluable for ensuring users that have landed on a web page within your main site are aware of their landing location. Search engines rarely direct users to the home page (nor should they!) but to the page of most relevance. To avoid feeling lost, provision of a breadcrumb trail will ensure the potential customer feels confident to move about the website and find out more about you and your products.

Know and list Your Product and Services

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:07:32 BST

As a website visitor it is quite understandable that you try to find exactly what you want when you are browsing. It is a fair assumption that if what youre looking for isnt shown on the site then youll go elsewhere to try and find it. Occasionally you might use the search facility, even more occasionally you might fire off an email to the website owner to make an enquiry.

Website owners need to understand this behaviour of their website visitors. Take an example washing machine supply company that sells washing machines online. If a customer were to visit the website the site owner is pretty confident that they would find the ideal washing machine at a great price.

After running the site for a month or so the owner might be a bit confused by the customers average behaviour: Customers visit the website, look at details of a various machines and perhaps even add one to their basket but then leave the site.

What the website owner has failed to realise as many webmasters do is that the customer is looking for further services and products to complete their wants and which they would expect to find from your online store. In our example they may want to see delivery, installation service options; perhaps even an option for you to take their old existing washing machine away.

The sting for the website owner in addition to losing a customer is that they may well already provide these services they just arent shown on the website! Argh!

It is therefore very important that you understand and are able to list every single product and service that you are able to provide. Make sure you have a page for each one and direct potential customers to it so they know you do it otherwise they will assume you dont and simply go elsewhere.

New users for EI's 360 Assessment Product

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:12:16 BST

Emerging Innovations are pleased to be supporting the latest tranche of 70 users onto its Review 360 Assessment programme. With coaching and support provided by the Training Team Ltd EI ensure that the My Review 360 portal delivers exactly what the customer wants.

If you're interested in finding out how the Review 360 programme can help you and your staff then please contact either EI or TTT Ltd.

World Cup Marketing: How you can benefit

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:39:12 BST

So long as you haven't been living under a rock for the last few months you will be aware that the football world cup starts today. It's been very interesting (and sometimes very entertaining) seeing how companies are piggy-backing this to enhance their sales.

A walk around your local supermarket is enough to make you appreciate how everything from crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks through to oil and airlines are getting in on the act.

Even though you might not be a formal sponsor (or even a supporter!) of the world cup it's worth taking the opportunity to understand that probably every one of you customers will have an opinion on the world cup and that this connection can be exploited in your emails and website.

Have a think about other events that might provide you with a connection to your target audience. This can then be used to enhance your company's profile as a like-minded supplier.

Do YOU know where your cat is?

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:39:12 BST

A collar for your cat that acts as a life blog by tweeting photos and messages that we mentioned recently seemed to catch your attention. For us, this demonstrates the endless possibilities that connecting IT systems can create and the opportunities that they present.

OK, we wouldn't go as far as to say that having a cat collar that takes pictures periodically is life changing but thing about safety and security implications for mobile security guards or even your own car journey.

EI are always keen to read about and explore the different harmonies that exist by bringing different technologies together and we found the story very interesting indeed, even if we found it funny at the same time.

An Easy Guide to Twitter

Fri, 28 May 2010 12:12:46 BST

For those that haven't already worked this out, we're fans of social media but only when it supports your business and helps you interact with new and existing customers.

This is why it was nice to come across this easy to read guide on using Twitter from Twitter themselves. It takes you through the steps involved in setting up and account all the way through to ideas and case studies on how it has helped businesses generate more leads.

Worth a read with your coffee today in our opinion.

Things Website Owners Should Know: SideWiki

Fri, 21 May 2010 12:12:46 BST

Heard of Google SideWiki? If you haven't, and you own a website then you really should find out read on and find out more about it.

In a nutshell, SideWiki allows website visitors to post comments about the page that they are viewing for others to see. Yes, this means that your blog, services page or product page might be receiving reviews without your knowledge.

The first thing you should do is to be aware of what is being written. While there are a number of ways of viewing the information perhaps the easiest is to install the Google Toolbar and, whilst looking at your site's pages, click the SideWiki button.

The other thing you can do is to register your domain with Google Webmaster Tools. This allows Google to acknowledge you as the domain owner and you can, amongst other things, post comments that appear on every page. Here's some more information from Google.

Remember that social media such as Wikis can be a double edged sword so make sure you keep an eye on what is being said and respond if and when appropriate.

Staff Management made Easy

Fri, 14 May 2010 12:12:46 BST

If you're running a small to medium sized business then you'll know that management and training of staff is an issue that needs constant attention. One method of ensuring that you have a good understanding of your staff's commitment and dynamism within the company is continue to an assessment of them.

Because it is necessary to get the input of their peers, managers, sub-ordinates (and customers as well if possible) we call this a 360° assessment. Emerging Innovations have been working with The Training Team Limited to produce a product that allows companies such as yours to sign up and roll-out this kind of assessment in an online context.

If you're interested in piloting or knowing more about the product you can contact us or visit the Review 360° website for more details.

The Importance of a Marketing Strategy

Fri, 07 May 2010 12:12:46 BST

We've just been commissioned to do a simple - but important! - website design for a company that wants a strong and effective web presence on a limited budget. One of things that really makes this project a joy to work with is the fact that the company has a documented marketing strategy along with clear identification of its target audiences.

Not only it is far more expedient to come up with a design that will target those audiences but we know that the website will be effective from day one ... no making tweaks over the coming months to try and seek out the desired target.

If you are considering a new website or a website upgrade it is well worth spending a few days to document marketing strategy and target audience types.

Pay per Click Warning

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:10:57 BST

Not every search engine visitor will act the same way. One important difference that searchers have is their propensity to click on sponsored links. Nearly 2 out of 3 visitors in a recent study preferred the organic listing over the paid listing slot.

Logically, if you're focusing entirely on a paid listing system to promote your business you may want to start putting some time and effort into search engine optimisation in order to get a decent position on the organic listings.

That said, there are some time when paid listings can be very useful: Time limited special offers and event sign ups are two examples where the ease with which adverts can be added and removed works in your favour.

23rd April 2010

You may already be familiar with Facebook and may already have a personal or business profile on it. Even if you haven't, it's worth reading on to understand how Facebook's latest update allows you to lever the power of social networking for your business.

Facebook API

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:10:57 BST

Some term it web 3.0 but whatever you call it Facebook's latest API update provides developers - and, through them, your business - with a great way to contribute to and to draw data from Facebook.

Applications using this technology are already out there and include the ability for your website visitor to "Like" your page by adding it to their profile or for you to write on a visitor's Facebook Wall. You can also draw down information such as a list of profiles for people attending a certain event or friends associated with the profile of the visitor.

If you're keen to start to lever the integration that social networking allows then why not contact us for a chat.

Long Term Relationships - part 2

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:10:57 BST

We were writing a few posts ago about ways to ensure that you get a long term relationship with your clients. Achieving this can have a dramatic effect on visitor conversion rates.

Twitter is an excellent way to broadcast your activities to those people that are genuinely interested in what you've got to say (your followers). It's also useful for listening but we'll talk about that in a later post.

If you haven't got a Twitter account then setting one up takes less than two minutes and you'll be surprised how quickly - with a suitably accurate profile description - you get picked up and befriended by people. Make regular, informative and focused tweets when you can. For busy people it's also possible to set this tweet-feed to be generated automatically, although for obvious reasons that isn't as good as doing it manually.

Once you've set up your account be sure to befriend einnovations and we'll follow you back!

Google Base

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:10:57 BST

Getting potential customers to find you so that they can buy your products is a standard business priority. For companies trading online then presenting your products to users of search engines is a must.

Although good website optimisation will enhance your listing for standard searches it is advisable to check out Google Base which provides a way for web businesses to upload their product catalogue so that it is shown against Google Base searches. Sometimes these Base searches show up on the standard Google results page, greatly enhancing your exposure.

There is plenty of information and support on using Google Base as a merchant but if you need any assistance with this or automation to ensure your product base stays up to date please contact us.

Stakeholders Are Key

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:10:57 BST

Emerging Innovations have just finished delivering a piece of consultation work for a large national charity. The work itself was to produce an invitation to tender document that will be circulated in the next few months.

It was interesting to know how invasive the whole operation was. Not only did EI speak with all the key stakeholders (staff as well as service users and the public) but it also asked some quite searching questions about policy and future strategy of the organisation.

All this just goes to re-enforce the fact that websites - whether for businesses or charities - are now wholly interwoven with the fabric of the way the organisation operates.

Don't let your organisation's website drift from your operational needs through inaction; make sure you keep a close eye on the contribution that it is making to your operation.

Generating Long Term Relationships

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:28:28 GMT

While a lot of time goes into telling website owners how to lever that extra pound from their website visitors the fact is often missed that it's difficult enough to get any money from people that come to your website!

There are a few ways to counter this and to make it work in your favour. Firstly, if you appreciate that web visitors will rarely buy the first time they visit your website the bounce rate that you're seeing may not seem so bad.

Furthermore, understand that your website visitors - as you do - will often buy from companies that they feel they have a relationship with. Generating that relationship for the long term may well be the key to ensuring long term sales through good conversion rates.

We'll blog shortly on some ideas on how to ensure you're maximising the potential of your company in achieving its long term customer relationship goals.

Internet Explorer 9 On The Way

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:28:28 GMT

Microsoft has now set the unstoppable train that is called "Internet Explorer 9" (IE9) in motion. While it is still many months from launch stage the company has already set its direction and strategy with the new browser.

With some users still using the universally-loathed-by-web-designers IE6 it's fair to say that not everyone will immediately be upgrading to IE9 when it launches. However, it does provide an exciting direction for websites as a whole by allowing JavaScript to run faster, HTML5 and CSS3 full support.

You can read a more in depth IE9 report here.

End to End Project Management in Web Development

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:28:28 GMT

As a web consultant it is often advisable to take a broader view of your customer's operations. This allows you to understand the workflow, staff structure, website needs and a whole host of other stuff that impacts hugely on the nature of the website that they need.

This may seem fairly obvious at the beginning of the consultancy period but it must also be remembered at the end of the process, so that at or near the web development end that same workflow process and key staff members are offered full support in adopting the new system.

This change management approach aims to minimise rejection of the product and maximise its efficiency. It can often produce strong advocates of the change who feel that they have been consulted, included and facilitated in their uptake and use of the project.

EI provide end to end project management solutions that have the above as a golden rule so if you are considering a web project build or review see if we can get involved in order to help your project.

URL Shortening Services

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:28:28 GMT

You may have heard of URL shortening services. These are web pages that allow you type in a long website link (eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8537616.stm) and to receive in return a short link (such as, in this case bit.ly/99EmKX).

There are many around but we tend to use bit.ly which adds value to the service by allowing you see the number of clicks that your link has received. As this information is provided in realtime it makes it ideal for using with fast moving social media such as Twitter; post your link, and switch to bit.ly in order to see how many people found it of interest.

Of course you can use the link anywhere you want; e-newsletters, links to customers and even on your own website. Some people even argue that it provides a clearer picture of traffic than larger dedicated systems such as Google Analytics.

Next time your evaluating your online marketing activities keep in mind bit.ly for tracking visitors.

Small Businesses Should Not Fear The Big Players

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:28:28 GMT

When you start off in business you might feel as though you are up against some pretty big players. Depending upon which industry you are in there may already be blue chip companies and others that have been in the field for far longer than you and that you consider to be a threat to your business. However, as this article from the BBC makes clear small businesses - if they target their market correctly - have nothing to fear.

A website that acts as your shop window to the world of potential customers is perhaps the most important statement that you can make when competing on non price territory. Being able to persuade visitors that you have that personal touch or can provide niche markets can be done easily with a well designed website.

If you consider that you are up against some hard competition from big players then speak to EI to see if our web marketing support consultancy may be of help.

Do You Need to Know What Multipart MIME is?

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:28:28 GMT

Telling a customer that email sent from their website is delivered in multipart MIME format doesn't really help us with our zero-jargon approach to consultancy. However, it's an important point that website owners need to understand to make sure their email is getting through to their customers.

In straight-forward language any multipart MIME email that is sent actually contains two emails. Each email can stand on its own but they are sent together for a very important reason. To understand why you must understand that the software that people view email messages (the email client) varies.

Some people use MS Outlook, some use webmail, others might use Thunderbird. There are hundreds of others. Even more importantly users might have a visual impairment or other disability that means they need to receive plain text rather than colourful HTML emails.

It is for this reason that multi-part MIME messages are such a good idea: Of the two messages that are sent out, one is in plain text and the other is in HTML. The email client that the viewer is using can decide which one to display. Giving the email client the choice prevents them from displaying meaningless code to the user.

So, check that your website email is being sent in multipart MIME in order to ensure your clients are able to read - not just receive - your messages.

EI Help National Charity with Their Web Presence

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:28:28 GMT

Emerging Innovations are pleased to be working with a national charity in the UK to help them upgrade their web presence. As part of the project a comprehensive review of the existing site will be made and a study of what members and website users like and dislike will be made. The consultancy goes all the way to the formulation of an Invitation to Tender document for the website and will be completed by April 2010.

Search Engines: Decision Engines

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:28:28 GMT

There is a short video from Google that is definitely worth a few minutes of your time. While you might think it a little over the top it is a very good demonstration from Google on how we use search engines to help us make decisions.

Watching the video it is clear that the decisions in this example weren't necessarily about specific products and services but more general lifestyle decisions: The user was looking for help and assistance in their search.

As a business you've more than likely got a listing on Google and, whether it is a paid for listing or an organic listing, there is value in keeping in mind that your potential visitors are looking for their problems to be solved or their desired to be satisfied. We call this the "need or greed" concept of marketing.

Even if those initial wants or problems seem a bit nebulous it's really worth writing up a page or a blog entry about them in order to attract traffic. After all, if you let just one more person know that something they thought was impossible can happen then you've already increased your marketing chances.

Speak to EI about search engine keyword mapping and assistance for your business.

Importance of End-to-End Web Process

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:28:28 GMT

EI visited London yesterday for a meeting with a new client for web development work. Although we won the business, it was interesting to take note of what they were looking for in their chosen web supplier; it wasn't someone to only produce a nice looking website and make it functional.

Foremost in their mind was that they needed a company to take on and manage the whole web process, within guidelines and to work with them to make sure that their website becomes part of their marketing mix and meets its customer's needs.

This kind of thinking from a customer might start to ring some alarm bells around clarity of scope and open ended contracts and if managed wrongly it can lead to problems. However, knowing and understanding how your supplier (and indeed client) wants the relationship to evolve is a great way to ensure that what you are doing for them now has a place in their long term thinking. It also helps to avoid the horrible master/slave relationship that benefits neither party particularly well.

For our part, we left with a full understanding of their business and that we were to lead the process with them contributing whatever was required in terms of direction and content. So, try to talk outside of contract terms and get to know your client in order to provide them with great long term, appropriate, service.

Remind your customers to buy from you

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:53:58 GMT

Having just finished implementing a simple email reminder system on a client's website we thought it worthwhile sharing this with our other customers as an idea that may lead to an increase in customer return visits and ultimately sales.

Of course it's success depends on the conditions within your market; A user may simply go to another website to buy the product if you are out of stock. However, having such a reminder system reinforces the message that your particular company offers added value which the buyer then might be willing to wait to receive.

Make sure the sign up process is simple and unobtrusive. If the user is already logged in then make sure that their email and name is already displayed in the reminder box, you don't want them to type it in again. Why not also tie in the emails to your tracking system to see what kind of click through response you get from your reminder emails?

Attracting customers is one think but giving them good reason to return is something that this facility helps to encourage.

Importance of Disaster Recovery

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 08:53:58 GMT

Nobody likes to think of what might go wrong but disaster recovery is an important part of business planning and review. Fortunately, proper preparation can minimise the disruption caused by events that are out of your control. Contingency planning in the form of a disaster recovery plan gives you the potential to cope in a crisis. If you combine this with the automation that IT systems can provide you should never be without an adequate recovery plan in times of failure.

When working through your first disaster recovery plan be sure to think around various business interruptions that would have an affect on your bottom line; everything from power cuts through adverse weather to staff problems.

Acknowledge that there are limitations in what you can do but try your best to mitigate the problems that might arise from them; for example keeping customers informed is something that automated (and perhaps remote) IT systems can achieve for you. If you're going to be late in the delivery of a product or service then notification is not only a courtesy but may be a critical factor for your customer.

Once implemented make sure that your automated procedures integrate with your key decisions. For example you should store your recovery data remotely, securely (and make sure you can retrieve it!).

If disaster strikes one of the best coping methods is to have planned for it.

You Know More Than You Think

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:53:58 GMT

What intrigued us about this short video was that it is so easy to forget how other people outside your industry think and what they know and don't know. The video demonstrates how little technical knowledge the person on the street has, in this case, about something close to our heart which is website browsers.

Thinking further than that it is vital that in all of your communications with prospective customers (and of course existing customers to some extent) you never assume knowledge and make sure that the person understands your product and service fully.

Often it's so easy to forget how much you know about a subject.

The Year Just Gone

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:53:58 GMT

With the start of a New Year everyone looks forward and not many look back. Perhaps that's how it should be but it's certainly worth considering how 2009 can be built upon. As news of the recession starts to become less prevalent and even an economic upturn is considered possible it is worth taking time now to make sure you can cope with increased demand in the year to come.

Think through your processes for order placing and accounts management and spot any inefficient areas of work: Are people entering the same data more than once (one of my pet hates!) or are IT systems causing your staff a headache because of their complexity?

Spotting these problems doesn't necessarily mean coming up with an immediate answer but it does give you an opportunity to investigate possible solutions. And you don't want to be doing that when you're busy with new orders, do you!

Eurostar and Lack of Communication

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:28:39 GMT

What seems like mayhem at the St Pancras Eurostar terminal boils down to passengers not being given the information that they crave. We all know that decision making is based on the quality of the information that we received. So why are the people that know what is happening not communicating this down to the people that count - the customers?

Judging by news reports, the number of people that can be seen with mobile phones either in their hands or at their ears suggests that there is a simple way to get the message out. The use of established social networking such as Twitter would be a great way to update the waiting customer by the minute as to what is going on.

I am sure that appreciation of the efforts that the engineers are putting in to solve the root cause of the problem is deserved, but how do we know theyre working hard? Have we been told? Looking at the angry faces in line at St Pancras it doesnt look like the customers have been.

Google's Browser Size Tool

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:28:39 GMT

The run of new tools and features launched by Google continues apace. One that is of particular interest to website owners is the Browser Size tool. This simple screen display shows your chosen website (enter the URL) overlaid with the number of viewers (expressed in percentage terms) that can see different parts of the site.

It goes a step further than the concept of "Above the Fold" - a suggestion that the most important content should be on the screen that the visitor sees without scrolling - and also makes you aware that content on the right hand side might be missed in some cases. Take a look for yourself at the Browser Size tool and enter your own website's URL to see how it fairs.

The Importance of Validation

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:28:39 GMT

The first port of call for any web developer once their site is labelled as Beta is to head for the website validator http://validator.w3.org/. Or at least it should be!

As a customer of a website designer you too might want to take advantage of this free service. The validator checks the specific page and tells you whether all of the mark-up (the code used to write the site) is valid. If it isn't, it tells you how it should be corrected.

Ensuring your website is valid in this way is a great achievement and worth it in terms of user accessibility and search engine optimisation.

Professional SEO Advice

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:28:39 GMT

Back in the good old days when optimising websites for search engines it was a simple case of making sure your META tags had the correct keywords and - in most cases - repeating the page keywords hundreds of times on a matching foreground and background colour. Thankfully, times have changed.

SEO is now an extremely complex science (and some would even argue "art") where one simple method is not enough to carry the day. Indeed news is filtering through that Google are now looking at factors such as speed of page loading to influence your position on the search engine rankings.

When faced with some a bewildering array of methods it is important that you take professional advice for your optimisation strategy. Be sure to get different people involved and compare both quoted prices and also ways of working to make sure you get the best deal. Remember that it's return on investment that is critical, not simply the outlay of the initial cost or monthly fees.

The Next Big Thing

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:19:13 GMT

Of course you don't have to be a web guru to come up with new website ideas and ways of working. While many are trying to emulate the success of Facebook and Twitter it is perhaps easiest to ask yourself what your key skills or core competences are and then how they can be brought together to improve an existing web service or to create a new one.

In that respect, new web ideas come from people that are focused not on following what has gone before but what their own skills and competences produce. Make a list of your individual or company skills and competencies and then start to blend them with either new website ideas, ways of working or even existing technologies.

When you're ready to take your web idea to the next level get a competent website consultant on board (after getting an NDA signed of course) and take it from there. Perhaps today can be the day to turn a dream into a reality?

Marketing: Tell It Like It Is

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:19:13 GMT

With coming up to a quarter of a million views when we last looked at it, nothing demonstrates better than this short video how you can get great exposure by cutting the sales patter and telling it like it is.

Once your grin fades away, however, it's worth thinking about whether your business marketing is giving the customer the information that they are looking for and recognising the type of person that they are. This kind of advert makes it clear that if I asked the owner a question I'm sure going to get a straight answer, whether I like it or not! That immediately makes me feel secure in my purchasing, useful when parting with quite a bit of money.

Some of the most successful sales (and best client relationships) that EI can boast come from telling it like it is at the outset; this might been telling the CEO that the website he loves isn't serving his customers needs or a department manager that their stock control system isn't fit for purpose.

Like our friend in the video, telling it like it easy can really pay dividends.

Christmas Office Closure

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:19:13 GMT

The office will be closed from Wednesday 23rd December and re-open on Monday 4th January. If there are any critical or urgent issues during the closure support will be available and these should be notified by email.

Free v Paid Website Design

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:19:13 GMT

Read our latest article on understanding the value that professional web developers add to your business. Importantly, how you should take cost into account when deciding whether to appoint a professional or take the offer from a high school graduate for a low cost site.

Failed orders don't necessarily mean failed sales

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:19:13 GMT

Do you follow up failed orders? This simple approach may well be worth adopting as it can significantly increase the conversion rate of your online shop.

Many people are happy to add items to their shopping basket and you will be surprised at the number that actually proceed to post their details on your checkout form but then - for a whole variety of reasons - decline to continue. Perhaps they haven't got their credit card to hand, perhaps they have forgotten their PayPal password, or just ran out of time!

Gaining access to these "failed baskets" allows you - either manually or automatically - to follow up on orders and see if there is anything you can do for the customer. A timely phone call or email not only shows great customer care but also provides an opportunity to potentially help with other queries or problems that the customer might have.

New Training Company Website Launched

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:36:17 GMT

The new website for our partner company The Training Team has now been put live. Designed and developed by Emerging Innovations the site provides both a corporate front for the company as well as providing detailed information about the products and training events that it offers.

Written to be dynamic, all of the content can be updated by The Training Team using the secure administration area. EI are now working with TTT to optimise the website for search engines.

Online Learning for Managers Website Launched

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:36:17 BST

Emerging Innovations, working with The Training Team, have just launched their flagship online learning product called Online Learning Managers. The product delivers interactive, tailored training via the browser and is also available to other training providers on a license basis. Visit the website for a free demonstration or contact us for more details.

Postal Strike: An Opportunity

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:36:17 BST

With the threat of a postal strike on the way now is an excellent time to review the processes that you have in place for communicating with your customers. Savings both in terms of avoiding any postal delays and in increased efficiency will pay dividends.

For example, are your internal customer systems linked up to email and account packages that can deliver invoices and dispatch notices automatically? Are you maximising your e-marketing to reduce delivery overheads and increase product relevancy? We have numerous consultative ideas so do feel free to get in touch for a chat to see how IT can help with this up and coming problem.

Article: Realising the Business Benefits

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:36:17 BST

Ever wondered whether you are leveraging the most from your business website? Read our guide to planning your website to ensure it maximised its marketing potential on visitors.

MS Project Training Online

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:36:17 BST

EI will soon be rolling out its popular MS Project course online which means you can get to grips with this powerful piece of software in your own office. We'll post more information here as things move forward but don't forget you can also follow our announcements on Twitter or sign up for our monthly newsletter.

Social Distractions

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:36:17 BST

It is fair to say that communication is seamless and constant which is a great boon for business. However, from an employee point of view the availability of distractions has been increasing exponentially for the past few years. This tongue in cheek chart demonstrates the variety and type of distraction that now faces the average worker, whether clerical or managerial. Ensuring that your communications are managed effectively is becoming a task in its own right.

Online graphics editor

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:53:19 BST

As part of running an e-commerce system, particularly ones which allow control of product details and images, many of our customers are often stuck for a suitable graphics editor. An easy to use and inexpensive editor is ideal for converting images to different formats, cropping or in other ways making the image more suitable for your site.

We direct our customers in need of such a tool to Picnik which is an online (and free!) tool that allows you to do most things that you will need to do to your images. Try it out for yourself when you've got a few minutes and I'll think you'll be pleased with how easy and quick it is to use.

EI also do training

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:53:19 BST

Emerging Innovations also offer a range of IT Training throughout the Southeast, East Anglia and East Midlands area. While we've written often about MS Project tips and tricks, don't forget that MS Excel and other MS office suite applications are also available at competitive day rates whether on 1:1 or group basis. Have a chat with us if you would like to know more about how to increase your staff's efficiency through training.

Remote Working with Twiddla

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:53:19 BST

Remote working or working at a distance from your colleague or customer can be a reality if you want it to be. Take this very simple to use website called Twiddla as an example. It lets you and anyone else in the world contribute on a whiteboard screen with or without a website template beneath. You can text or voice chat in realtime. Oh, and although premium pricing is available for corporate users it is free to use; you don't even have to register.

Have a look at it and see if it can help you understand the needs of your customers a little better, even while you're sitting at your desk.

Browser as a word processor

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:53:19 BST

And now - as they say - for something a little different. Javascript is a programming language that runs on your website browser and makes events happen while you are viewing a web page. For example, the Bookmark Page link at the top of this screen allows you to add this page to your favourites list. For a bit of fun, try pasting the following link into the address bar of a new browser window:

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

Hey Presto! A completely non-featured word processor, right on your browser!

On a serious note, JavaScript (not be confused with Java) forms a key part of the interactive websites that EI build. Contact us for more information on getting interactivity onto your website.

Forget it lets go somewhere else!

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:53:19 BST

HEMA is a Dutch company that supplies domestic household items. Have a look at their website and see what you think. It makes for interesting viewing but from a customer point of view has serious flaws ... like how do I buy something! To be fair, it is not their main website but it does demonstrate a very important point about website expectations. If the customer's needs are not met quickly and with the minimum of diversion they will leave and go elsewhere.

Ace Envelopes Website Launched

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:53:19 BST

Our latest project has just gone live. The e-commerce website for Ace Envelopes includes a customer registration facility as well as a very easy to use envelope search system to let you find the envelopes that you need.

EI Delivering Business Training

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:53:19 BST

Emerging Innovations are pleased to be providing a range of Business Link workshops on website planning and optimisation from October to March next year. Delivering on behalf of The Training Team the events are not only a good opportunity for you to meet other people who are at the same stage of website development as you but also to learn some tips and tricks of the trade. The events are free and you can search for events near you (EI are doing the Essex based ones only).

We look forward to seeing you there!

Follow EI on Twitter

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:00:00 BST

You can now following Emerging Innovations on Twitter.

Whether or not you have a Twitter account visit twitter.com/einnovations/ for occassional business IT tips.

New Training Website Launched

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:00:00 BST

We've just put out latest project live; a training website for first aid, health and safety and food hygiene. It's a straight forward design and site but care has been taken to ensure that the site has lots of potential for optimisation over the coming months.

One way in which we've done this is to plan and structure the site based on both services (the left hand side menu) and the type of user (from the home page). By structuring the site before the build not only is the content much easier to write but your conversion rate will be higher.

The higher conversion rate comes from website visitors being able to see the product or service that they are interested in as well as identifying themselves from the home page. You can visit the site at http://www.criticaltraining.com/<

Why Click Here is Not a Good Idea for a Link

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:00:00 BST

At a website optimisation seminar last week, Peter Slegg came up with an excellent example to demonstrate the importance of inbound links to any website.

Good website optimisation relies on having web links that have a description or keywords as their text and not the ubiquitous click here. Links that are formed this way add value to the page that they are pointing to. Peter's demonstration is to do a search for click here in Google. See the Adobe Acrobat Reader download page at the top, right?

For years Adobe have been distributing their Reader download with click here as the link ... and you can see the effect! Well done Peter for an excellent example of how inbound link wording is key to search engine optimisation.

Let a CMS Help You Avoid Designer Costs

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:00:00 BST

Making a living out of website design and development means you have to charge customers for website updates, even the most simple wording changes. Yet customers are always being told that having fresh content on their websites is very important for getting a good listing in the search engines.

One way to avoid the stream of payments to your web designer is to have a content management system (CMS) on your site. Whether or not you've got a dynamic site it's worth talking to us to see if it can easily be converted to accept a CMS.

The CMS allows you to edit the page just like your favourite word processor and by pressing save your site is updated. How quick was that? Instant. And how much did you pay the designer? Nothing. If it appeals, get in touch with us or you can now take a test drive of a sample CMS on our website.

PPC Advertising Wont Net Everyone

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:00:00 BST

At the website training seminars that EI deliver we are often telling delegates that pay-per-click advertising for Google and Yahoo! etc works but that they should be aware that some of the audience will never ever ever click on them.

While this may seem strange to some, it appears that maybe half of you reading this newsletter will feel the same. A recent question from Martin Lewis' Money Saving Expert forum brought it home just how many don't trust these paid-for promotions. Reading through the comments on the forum was equally as enlightening.

So it appears that the main search results (the "organic" ones) are really important which is why EI are trying to get their message across that spending time and effort optimizing your site for the organic listing is time well spent.

Talk to us if you'd like some help or guidance on search engine optimisation for your business.

The Safety of Your Domain Name

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:00:00 BST

We've had a number of customers contact us over the past month concerned about the security of their domain name. The content of the email is similar and many come from HongKong Net Center; all warn that the property of the domain name is to be transferred to a client of theirs unless you respond.

Of course the first thing to realise is that this is a just another form of illegal unsolicited spam so do not reply, otherwise you'll be tagged as a "live contact" and will open the floodgates to other spam messages.

If you want to check the validity of your domain name registration then you can visit www.who.is (there are others) and type in your domain name. Check the "Registered until" date to make sure you haven't missed any renewal from your registrar.

It is not permitted for the domain to change ownership without your express permission (and to otherwise is illegal and can result in some pretty heavy penalties).

Relax, the law and the system is on your side.

Easy Online Web Quote

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:15:12 BST

Feedback from our customers has led us to understand that sometimes - as part of the mystery surrounding website design and development - that it's difficult to know what information we might need to provide a quote or that might be asked for when contacting us.

To help get around that problem we've today launched our online website design quote request form which can be completed in a few minutes and provides us with all of the information we need to give you at least an estimate of cost and timeline.

It costs nothing to use and you might be surprised as how design and development costs have come down in recent years so if you've got a web project you've been meaning to tackle for a while why not give it a go now?

The Folly of Web TV

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:15:12 BST

After we detailed a few days ago how we're not getting any more than 57% of our broadband speed on average, it seems that providers are still very much committed to putting more services down it. Of note is the desire from the BBC Trust to take control of web TV ... that's the bit that's going to deliver broadband TV to your home in the not too distant future.

Already web players like the BBCs iPlayer and ITV Player (there are lots of others) make access to previously broadcast material easier and it seems that may providers are unhappy that the potential money making possibilities of this in a more formal hardware set-top box might be curtailed by the control from the BBC.

You can read more about the current row between Google, Sky, Virgin et al and the BBC here. For our part, a web enabled TV is still the most versatile solution to all of their problems!

Download Speed

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:15:12 BST

A recent study found that on average broadband download speeds were only 57% of the advertised rate. So, if you're on an 8Mbit/s download you may only be getting 4.7Mbit/s. Different providers seem to be able to offer different speeds and you can check yours here for free.

You can read more about the report here along with seeing the differences between the major suppliers. While it admits there isn't much that the consumer can do about it, the Government is already committed to improving this figure through various programmes.

Just keep in mind that if you are considering swapping from one provider to another a) The rate you receive probably won't be as high as their "up to" advertised figure and b) It may not be any better than the broadband provider you are using at the moment.

A Combined Search Engine Threat

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:15:12 BST

After we commented on Bing last month it seems that the advice is not to get too friendly with it. The reason for the caution comes from the news that Yahoo! and Microsoft may well be joining forces to provide a combined effort search engine that will rival Google. Apparently, the deal is in the final stages of negotiation.

For most people this will mean they will be on the receiving end of a concerted effort to get them to switch from Google to the new entity, so stand by for some serious marketing.

Is Your Site Optimised?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:15:12 BST

It's difficult to know how well your website is optimised for ranking in search engines and whether it's worth taking the time or commissioning someone to improve it for you. For those of you in that situation it's worth checking out WebsiteGrader from HubSpot.

This simple to use utility (you only need to enter your website address!) does a comprehensive analysis of your site and tells you where things could be improved. Interestingly, it also shows you how you rank compared to the other websites that it has looked at!

The next steps are then up to you but keep in mind that EI offer web optimisation packages that can greatly enhance your exposure to search engines by both addressing the issues raised via WebsiteGrader and other techniques.

The Software should Meet YOUR needs

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:15:12 BST

On Friday EI were called in to provide some help to a company that was using an off the shelf package for some very important project management that they were doing. With 3m plus worth of contracts riding on the successful use of the software it was important to get it right!

As it happened, the software didn't exactly meet their requirements but during the day we managed to do some customisation and shoe-horning to give them roughly what was required.

That said, it's worth keeping in mind the mantra that EI uses with all of their consultancy: The IT is there to support your way of working, not the other way around. While bespoke applications may sound more hassle than buying the latest product from the big supplier it often provides massively improved efficiency savings for your own way of working.

Keep your place in a PDF

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:15:12 BST

Portable Document Format (PDF) has long been established as an excellent medium for the web - particularly when layout, security or size are factors. Indeed, many of the applications that EI write generate custom PDFs which give the end user the ability download and keep the document in a much nicer way than simply saving the web page.

I have been reading through an eBook in PDF format which I keep coming back to and found a useful feature in Adobe PDF Reader 9 that stores the last page you were on - like a bookmark - when you close the document.

To activate this feature all you need to do is click on Edit > Preferences and then select Documents from the menu on the left. Finally, put a tick in the first option Restore last view settings when reopening documents. I promise, it will save you hours of scrolling!

Woolworths Back Online

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:15:12 BST

What great news about one of Britain's best loved high street names. In case you haven't heard, Woolworths is back but this time trading as an online entity. It's good to see this valued name finally appreciating the importance of online trading which was an areas sorely neglected in its previous business model. No matter what business you're in it is important to consider the online presence that customers now expect and to ensure you keep up to date with their needs.

EI New Site Launched

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:15:12 BST

We've finally gone live with our new website design. We feel that the new design reflects the professional design skills we have in-house and is more contemporary. We had ease of navigation for our potential customers at the forefront of our mind so have used a nice categorised search menu on the left hand side. We all worked hard to get the site up as soon as possible and managed it in less than three weeks which we're all very proud of. We hope you like it and would welcome your comments and feedback.

English Language School Website Launched

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:15:12 BST

After a number of months of development and testing the website for Studio School in Cambridge has gone live. The site contains the latest incarnation of our page content management system which incorporates improved image management and browser compliance. It also includes an innovative enrolment form that takes the complexity of the enrolment process and converts it into a number of simple but appropriate questions.

Digital Exclusion

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:15:12 BST

All of the reports that I have researched have identified Digital Exclusion is an important factor in ensuring that communities and individuals are able to partake of services and opportunities. It's good to see that the sentiment is underlined by the UK Government's report on its digital strategy which was published yesterday.

The affect that this increase in broadband penetration is going to have on the possibility of delivering services to previously excluded areas can not be ignored. At the moment, EI are working on a project which is due for launch shortly that helps with transport planning in rural areas. We hope to see more of these kinds of projects in the future.

Bing! It On

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:15:12 BST

The new search engine from Microsoft that has replaced its Live! search was launched this month with only a tiny fraction of the £100 million budget spent. Despite that, Bing has swiftly come the second most popular search engine behind Google. Whether this trend continues or can just be put down to people being curious about how it works only time will tell.

In the meantime, you might like to check out Bing's features with an eye to using it for your searches. Importantly, if you have a website then you might also want to check that your website has been indexed properly and is showing all of your pages. Microsoft say they are still tweaking the search algorithm and welcome feedback.

For our part, EI are working with search engine optimisation partners to make sure that we're able to continue to build websites that are able to be optimised for all of the major search engines. We're also feeding back to Microsoft on usability and ranking.