Category

Website

Nov 03
Love0

One Page Websites – Web Trend 2015

By Design, web design, Website No Comments

Websites are becoming more simple as we go into late 2015. They are becoming less but more. Once, you needed a page for everything but now it seems you only need 1.

A lot of sites today put all their content on the landing page and have it scroll to reveal it all. Its also common with this approach to make the site more interactive and feature more animations and movement as there is not much else for you to click on. This technique can be very effective and can work great for curtain companies and fields.

When appropriate, we really like this style and below are some examples of websites using the style to the best of it’s abilities.

Oct 08
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Storytelling – Web Trend 2015

By Design, web design, Website No Comments

A website is a great tool for reaching a wider audience and drawing people in for a product, a place, or a person. There are many ways to keep people interested once they land on your website, but if we have learned anything from books it’s that a good story can keep us hooked for hours.

In 2015 great stories have crept in to the world of websites and now it’s a great way to keep people on your page whether it’s a visual story, a written one, or a combination of the two. Most designers utilize the scroll feature to tell the story; leading you through the site. The story is rarely pointless as usually it gets to the point in the end and tries to sell you something or advertise someone’s abilities or work but what else are websites for?

When appropriate, we really like this style and below are some examples of websites using the style to the best of it’s abilities.

Sep 24
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Three Dimensional Space – Web Trend 2015

By web design, Website No Comments

Flat website designs are not a thing of the past yet, but we are seeing the 3D designs take over…

A 3D design adds so much depth to a site. It makes it more of an adventure, rather than the basic scroll up/scroll down. The more fun and interesting the design is, the more you are going to remember it and that’s why the 3D designs are starting to dominate.

It’s not very often that a business focused company like a bank or an insurance company would use this style, it’s more for websites trying to send a message or make their site more interactive. There is nothing worse than a static webpage that doesn’t stand out and does nothing to engage the viewer.

When appropriate, we really like this style and below are some examples of websites using the style to the best of it’s abilities.

Jul 20
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TCmarketing SEO

SEO For Brighton Business – It’s All or Nothing

By Design, SEO, Website No Comments

One of the main problems with online marketing is that it is often an “all or nothing” game. The best Brighton business websites will get the deal and all other competing websites will get nothing, no matter how good they are.

For example, suppose someone wants to buy a new mobile phone. The person searches Google, takes a look at the top 10 results and then decides to buy something on one of the sites. That means that one site gets the sale and the other sites get nothing.

If you make the change from being one of the discarded sites to the site that is chosen by the searcher then obviously your sales will increase dramatically. You’ll make the change from getting nothing to getting everything. How can you do that? Here are a few pointers:

  1. Choose slightly better keywords

Being better than your competitors starts with choosing the right keywords. If you target keywords that are not being used by the people who want to buy then you might get a lot of visitors but no sales.

Your web pages should be optimised for the keywords that attract people who are looking for the products and services that you sell on your website and who are ready to buy.

Thorough keyword research is the key and we can help.

  1. Get slightly better rankings

While it is important to target the right keywords, your website must also be found on the first few entries on page one of the search results page if you are to attract customers.

Most people only take a look at the top 5 or 6 results on the first page of the search results. If your website cannot be found in these first few results for your keywords then potential customers are far less likely to find your website.

We can help you put in pace an organic SEO strategy to achieve a high page one ranking.

  1. Be slightly more convincing

It’s not enough just to be listed on the first search engine result page either. Your Brighton business website must also be fit for purpose. It should offer exactly what the customer is looking for, it should have a professional design and it should make it as easy as possible for the customer to buy from you.

That is why it is so important to improve the conversion rate of your web pages. With a higher conversion rate, you can generate more money with the same number of website visitors.

A trustworthy and professionally designed website for your Brighton business with a good conversion rate also has positive side-effects. Your customers will probably buy time and time again from your company and people are more likely to link to your website which is still great for SEO.

Be slightly better and you get everything

It takes some time to optimise your web pages correctly, but it is worth the effort. Even small changes can have a huge impact on the number of sales that you achieve. Make the change from being one of the discarded sites to the site that gets the sale and your sales will go through the roof.

Remember that your competitors are also working on their websites. Even if you are better than your competitors you have to continue with the optimisation to stay ahead in the game.

For more information about out Professional web design and SEO services for Brighton businesses please leave a comment below or call us on 01273 328877

May 11
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Why You Should Use Podcasts to Market your Business

By Marketing, Website

It’s been a well known fact that blogging is a seriously cost-effective way to gain solid exposure on your brand. Blogging is a great way to market your business because when implemented correctly, it’s a natural process where visitors want to spread your content to their friends and followers and the it works great.

Marketers who have prioritised blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy positive ROI

Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website

So what is it exactly which separates this blogging phenomenon from other marketing methods? Advertising, while generally a more invasive format can still be highly informative, relevant and valuable to a user – particularly online.

We’ve all been in the situation where you have been looking out for a shirt on Amazon only to find on the next few websites you visit a whole load of brands advertising their shirts. Sure, it might feel like they are interrupting your browsing experience but sometimes that ad can be exactly what you’re looking for.

The real secret to the success of Blogging is that content can feel great to share. Sharing content which has valuable statistics or useful information from a credible source puts you in a respectable position. Likewise sharing entertaining or funny content makes you yourself look witty. Sharing great content is cool. People are much less inclined to share an advert, unless it really is truly exceptional.

However, for all the great success stories there are with blogging there are plenty of failures too. Yes, not every Blog is given the time it deserves. Yes, web traffic can fluctuate so you’ll not necessarily gain the consistent numbers you have earned.

But ultimately, some Bloggers are just simply not good enough at writing or do not have the time to devote to good writing. That’s why if you are not having the success you are looking for I think that it’s worth seriously considering Podcasting.

Podcasting has many of the same qualities as Blogging. It is still a shareable, entertaining and potentially resourceful platform. Remember, there’s no shame in being a poor writer or even a podcaster. What’s important is to cater your marketing to what skills you do have and to develop those skills over time. If you’re going to do this properly it won’t feel like a chore that’s when you’ll know you’ve found the best platform for you.

67% of podcast listeners don’t mind sponsorship messages and occasionally find them useful, compared to 6% of television or commercial radio listeners.

During an annual survey, 15% of adults listened to a podcast in the month prior to the survey in 2014, up from 9% in 2008.

Podcast consumers index very highly for social networking behaviors.

Only 3% of marketers use podcasting in social media marketing, but 32% have a desire to learn how to use podcasting and 23% have plans to increase podcasting.

While it’s definitely true that more people tend to read blogs than listen to podcasts, it’s still fair to say that podcasting is booming right now. Not to mention that the volume of content created in the podcasting space is significantly less than blogging. Yes there are less listener’s than readers but you have a lot less competition in the space to make up for it.

So if you decide podcasting is for you what’s the best way to go about it? SoundCloud seems the obvious choice with over 175 million monthly listeners and over 200 countries listening each hour there is definitely the potential to shift huge volumes of traffic from SoundCloud.

Not to mention the service is free, is easy to set up, has a solid infrastructure due to the large organisation behind it and comes with deep, detailed built-in analytics. When it comes to making some noise in the podcasting space, SoundCloud is the clear choice.

Hopefully this will be useful for those of you out there who understand that digital marketing is a highly effective route to generating leads but just isn’t comfortable with writing a blog.

Of course there are other means of marketing digitally but pod-casting is one of the cheapest in the long term, much like blogging.

Feb 14
Love0

Magento Go Alternatives

By Design, Marketing, Website, Wordpress

Magento Go is a CMS system with the purpose of allowing users to build their own online stores completely free. Magento Go was aimed at small businesses and as such had a relatively simple builder allowing people to setup shop – fast.

Owned by Google, Magento has been frequently used by successful eBay users. Giving them an impression of a more reputable and established store.

However, now that Magento Go is closing down we thought we’d recommend the best online stores to replace your Magento Go Store with:

Magento Community Edition

NikeMagento

Magento allows a business to scale up quickly if you already have the groundworks in place and know your business will be a success. However the development costs are high and can take some time. We would not recommend Magento on a small budget.

Pros:

  • Premier Store Management – Magento is a feature rich online store solution, allowing users to manage multiple store front as well as simple multi-language and currency support.
  • Intuitive back-end – Navigation for store management features. Meaning that site owners have flexibility with their store.
  • Plugins Galore – Magento is a very successful ecommerce CMS and with over 240,000 merchants comes a lot of extensions and plugins. This makes Magento a very versatile theme.
  • Highly Customisable Design – Magento’s template allows a lot of customisable features meaning your store is limited only by the skill of your developers and designers.
  • Scalable – Magento is just as competent for enterprises as it is for startups, meaning your website can grow with you.

Cons:

  • Lack of Developers – As a web developer Magento can be a challenging prospect – If your looking to really make the most of Magento you’re going to need an experienced Magento developer which can be expensive.
  • Hosting – Unless hosted on a dedicated server Magento can create a slow and frustrating experience for users.
  • Time – Magento has a lot more options and flexibility than most other CMS systems however this means that development can be relatively complex. Expect Magento websites to take more time than other CMS solutions.

OpenCart

MultiStoreOpenCart

OpenCart is a free and open source software which allows you to create your own online store you can select from free and premium themes from which to design your store generally premium themes will give you a lot more versatility and features to customise your website with.

Pros:

  • Lightweight – OpenCart is a easy to download and silky smooth for customers to use. Whereas Magento is very demanding for both developers and hosting.
  • Simple customisation – OpenCart in comparison with other eCommerce solutions, is less complicated and does not require technical skills.
  • Short Development Time – OpenCart is perfect for startups as it requires minimal investment and will allow you to open your store in a short amount of time.
  • Support – OpenCart’s support team and community are very helpful with any issues you may have and

Cons:

  • Relative Lack of Extensions and Plugins – OpenCart does not have as large a userbase as some other eCommerce solutions and therefore doesn’t have the same amount of support in terms of addons.
  • Poor SEO – OpenCart does not generate SEO friendly URLs.
  • Weaker Store Management – OpenCart has less features with the purpose of improving the customer experience. Features like order history, recently reviewed products and tagging items are not available in OpenCart.

Shopify

GreatsShopify

Choose one of three monthly packages from 29$ a month to $179.

Whereas Magento provides the opportunity to scale up into a large enterprise sized business, Shopify focuses on the small to medium sized business.

Shopify will effectively handle everything for you; hosting, design, analytics, SSL certificates etc. While this is useful in the sense that you won’t have to worry about setup it also means that Shopify is incredibly limiting in any actual choices you want to make for your store.

Plus, with the rolling monthly costs, it’s not cheap either. That said, Shopify is still a strong solution for creating your online store.

WordPress WooCommerce

NicHarry

The most obvious benefit of WooCommerce is that it’s not only open source and free to attain, but the CMS you’ll be running it on is also open source. This means that when you choose to use WooCommerce you’ll gain access to the wealth of features, themes, plugins etc. Which come with WordPress.

That’s a really strong pro, because WordPress is already a highly tuned and powerful system, while having the bonus of being easy to use. However with that benefit also comes the cons, WooCommerce is only available through WordPress so if for whatever reason you don’t want to go in this direction it won’t be available to you. The other flaw is that while WordPress has an almost unlimited amount of options available some of them are premium, and if you want a highly polished, professional site you’re going to need them.

If you’re looking to replace your Magento Go ecommerce website, hopefully you’ve found some interesting information which you can use to make the change.

If you’re still not sure what kind of CMS you’d like to use for your website, don’t hesitate to give us a call on 01273 328877