On Tuesday 11th June me and fellow Activate Media colleague Adrian Austin ventured to Google Campus to attend an interesting presentation on “The Five Laws of Brand Design” by Jim Prior, CEO of WPP group branding agency The Partners. It was not only a chance to hear what one of the creative industry's greats had to say about branding (a subject close to our heart), but also a chance to observe the branding challenges faced by UK businesses.

5 Laws of Branding Design

Here's a round-up of 5 Laws of Branding Design, according to Jim Prior of The Partners. That's not to say that there are only 5 things to consider for successful branding design, it's more a case of not getting carried away and just selecting the main main ones. Here they are:

1. Find your idea
2. Defy convention
3. Make a difference
4. Keep the faith
5. Have fun

Audience Q&A's

I'm all up for audience participation, and the Q&A gave a real insight into some of the branding challenges and concerns faced by UK businesses. I've selected below some questions asked by the audience, with accompanying answers which added to the value of Jim's presentation.

Is there a difference between community and brand?

It depends on the brand size and type. For bigger brands like Nike, the brand is normally separate from the community. Nike might have an active and engaged community who they listen to, but they very much control their own branding. Conversely, there is less of a separation between community and brand for smaller or more socially led companies. One  socially led brand is Great Little Place in London, which started life as a Facebook community of people sharing recommendations of the most charming spots in London and quickly developed into a fully fledged business for it's creators. Even with a new website (which was crowdfunded) and sister communities around the world, for Great Little Place, the community and brand is interchangeable.

Are straplines still needed?

No because straplines are often meaningless. So many companies stuff create their straplines with little thought, stuffing them with words which have, over time, become cliched. Don't get distracted with the strapline and focus on communicating your brand message more clearly.

Doesn't branding consistency limit creativity?

Branding consistency doesn't need to be boring. All it means is that the idea, the message, and the experiences connected with your business should be consistent. It by no means mean that your brand cannot develop and change – so long as it consistently changes. Fairy Liquid (top UK washing detergent brand) has been consistently spreading the message of being kinder to hands and being more economical for over 50 years now, even though their adverting and approach has developed with the times. Even their recent run of TV ads, coining the term “Fairyeconomy” promotes their same message to a modern audience.  

How long should I give before evaluating branding success?

Brands need time to develop, nurture, and evaluate. If you have a good business model, you should give at least 3-5 years before evaluating your branding efforts. If, however you are unsure of your business model effectiveness, then it will equally be hard to measure if a failing brand is because of your business model or because of your branding. It could also be a failure with the quality of how your branding was executed. This highlights the importance of establishing your branding idea, and going through the branding process early on.

How can my business manage it's branding when it works with multiple agencies?

When your business works with more than one agency at a time (perhaps for PR, web development, branding, etc) and it comes to managing your branding, it could be a case of too many cooks spoil the broth. In a multi-agency environment like this, it's often a challenge to get the different agencies to work together, and getting this wrong can harm your business in various ways, with branding inconsistency being just one of the consequences.

One way to manage potential conflicts of interest in a multi-agency environment is to give one person the responsibility of managing the various agencies. Ideally this person would be somebody within your team who is an advocate of branding, e.g. the CEO, or Marketing Officer. Otherwise, it could be an external project manager, or one of the agencies you already work with. I think that in multi-agency environments with digital projects, digital agencies should lead the team because they're the ones who will know how best to apply the project to digital.

How can my business brand itself effectively across multiple-channels?

7 years ago businesses didn't consider iPads or iPhones in their branding because they simply didn't exist, and now they're mainstream and businesses can no longer afford to ignore multi channel branding.

With the opportunities that multi-channel branding brings, such as bringing your brand to life (beware, this link is not for the faint hearted!) with interactive and fun elements, comes the challenges of how to adapt your branding to different screen sizes and maintain consistency across multiple channels. Make sure you design for the device.

How about you, what questions do you have about branding?

At Activate Media we help our clients to plan, design and create for digital and we can help you too – just contact us for a free 2 hour digital review.  

This case study shows how to redesign a nonprofit website (or any other website for that matter) and instantly bring it up to date, using 4 website design techniques. Thank you to our client Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAP) for letting us share this case study.

The Brief

Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAP) wanted a complete overhaul of its current website's look and feel with a more modern looking website that also provides a smoother, better user experience that takes into account how their visitors actually use their website.

The previous site had become outdated and no longer reflected CAP's innovative approach to tackling underage alcohol misuse, and the audiences it was trying to engage with.

Here is how the website used to look:

CAP also wanted to be able to easily drive people to the key information on who they are, and what they are trying to achieve, whether they were accessing the website from home, office, or on the move.

A strong emphasis was placed on driving people to information on community alcohol partnerships in their own local area and on finding the information they needed to get involved or indeed establish their own similar communities, a large part of the organisation’s key objectives.

The Solution

Following a consultation period with the client, Activate Media set about designing a clean, modern site which would not only looked great, but delivered on functionality and easy navigation too.

Here are some of the major features introduced in the new website:

Technique #1: Responsive design

The web pages adjusts to fit the user's device. This means that visitors are accessing CAP's website from a mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop. Users are now able to enjoy a proportionately scaled down (or scaled up) version, automatically.

Technique #2: User friendly navigation

Activate focussed heavily on navigation, making sure that readers were seamlessly driven from one area to the next and pointed in the direction of the main information CAP wanted them to read and digest from their visit. One technique that was used to simplify the navigation experience was a fixed top menu, which is always in view even when scrolling down the page.

Technique #3: Clever use of colour

Activate worked with CAP's existing colour scheme for consistent branding, and ensured the key call to actions and messages were bold and visible.

Technique #4: Flexible, easy to manage CMS

Activate also designed a login area so that CAP website administrators, as well as members with access details, can login and control the website content.

The site was built using the robust Joomla CMS system allowing the team at CAP to update content easily and as often as required. It was essential that the CMS system was simple to use and tailored to people with all technical abilities so that updating they could take ownership of their site as well as enable them to share the responsibility of updating with anybody in their team, and not just their technical people.

The Results

The project was completed both on time and to budget, and to the satisfaction of CAP. Here is what the website looks like now:

 Here is what CAP had to say about the website redesign;

"The new website has a great clean, fresh look, is easy to navigate and has a really great CMS which is powerful and easy to use. We’ve already had lots of compliments on the new website. I've used Activate before, when I was Director of Campaigns at Drinkaware. I've found the team at Activate to be friendly, responsive and offer a great service at very cost effective rates- I would highly recommend them."

Kate Winstanley, CAP Programme Manager

The client achieved a responsive service and a website which fully met the original brief at a cost effective rate. The client has received extremely positive feedback on the new site, mainly its revamped look and its easy navigation.

About CAP

Community Alcohol Partnerships (CAP) is an Community Interest Community funded by alcohol retailers and producers with the aim of reducing alcohol misuse and associated anti-social behaviour in local communities.

SEO is changing. Recent changes by Google have made it increasingly difficult, and in some cases risky, to chase those all important rankings. Whether you have an agency or an internal team working on your SEO campaign, there are some vital questions that you need to ask, to ensure that the work that you are doing is on the right track.

Question 1: What is your content strategy?

SEO may be changing, but there is one thing that remains as important as it has ever been and that is content. You need to find out if your SEO team has:

• Good ideas for interesting, engaging and above all shareable content.
• The resource to create this content.
• Relationships that they can leverage for the publishing and sharing of this content.

Question 2: What is your policy on anchor text?

Anchor text refers to the word or phrase that links back to your site. Historically, many SEOs had a policy of using what is known as 'exact match' anchor text, which essentially meant that the exact term that you were looking to rank for would be linked.

Google has recently cracked down on this, penalising sites with a large number of exact match links, so it is now vital to ensure that links come from a variety of phrases, both branded and generic.

For example, ASOS' SEO team might use the following anchor text for their men's shoes page:

• men's shoes
• shoes for men
• latest range of men's shoes
• ASOS men's shoes
• buy men's shoes at ASOS

Question 3: How will you ensure that our link profile looks natural?

Having links from a variety of different types of website is increasingly important, so you need to ensure that your SEO team is staying under the radar by using several types of links, including but not limited to:

• Guest blog posts
• Editorial features
• Press releases
• Social media
• Quality directories

Question 4: What proprietary software are you using?

Competitive advantage is everything in SEO, so you should establish what software your SEO team is using that is unique to them and how they are going to use this to give you the edge.

Question 5: What is your plan B?

Interflora's recent SEO disaster demonstrated that there is a certain amount of vulnerability in all SEO activity. Therefore, you need to ensure that should you receive a penalty, there is a plan in place to recover rankings as quickly as possible.

Ask your SEO team about their experience in using the Disavow tool, re-inclusion requests and if all else fails, make sure that you have an Adwords campaign for your brand term and revenue-driving keywords set up and ready to go.

About the author

Martin Harrison is a director at Copify, one of the world's leading content marketing services. Copify supplies internet marketing agencies and ecommerce clients with quality content, written by a network of approved freelance copywriters.

Look what I dug out from our archives? A rare photo of Activate Media founder Greg Rice, and Director Elliot Kahan solving digital challenges in the '90's with...CD roms (innovative at the time!). Quick, enjoy this 90's fest before I get asked to pull it down... 

These day's we're solving digital challemges of a distinctly more modern nature for web, mobile and social - contact us for a free digital assessment.

One of the things I was most looking forward to at Digital Shoreditch, was the chance to socialise and connect with like-minded attendees. The festival's theme this year was “making meaningful connections”, so with that spirit in mind, here's my personal assessment of the social experience at Digital Shoreditch.

A 1 hour networking session that dedicated 5 minutes to, er, actually network. And this wasn't the biggest crime – at least this particular session actually addressed the concept of networking, as most of the sessions didn't allocate any time for this at all. Apart from one particularly fun and informative session from the guys at SwishThinking, which made participants split into bring to life a marketing brief. And I'm not just saying that because my team won the coveted “Bonkers” idea award either. It helped though.

The social festival app, Lanyrd, was anything but social. Though it had an “interested in meeting” feature, the app wasn't well publicised, even on the day. Those that knew about it would probably have struggled with the complicated user interface. I also think the app would have been better if it had a feature notifying you if the person you wanted to meet was within range. Ok, maybe that might be slightly stalker-ish for some, but I think it would have simplified the task of locating who you wanted to meet.

You can't hold a communications gal down for long. Despite the lack of formal opportunities to network with fellow Digital Shoreditch attendees, I did in fact meet a few interesting people on the day. Shout out to my new Shoreditch besties: Rhoda Campbell from British Columbia , Erika Bianco from Data Art, Karel Kumar from The Liquid Way, and Stephanie Hughes from SwishThinking. It's good to talk.

My parting thoughts. All in all, Digital Shoreditch 2013 was a good day out to get out of the office and meet digital enthusiasts, hear some discussions on the the direction of the industry, and (if you make the extra effort) meet a few nice folks. It was an interesting experience!

Although Digital Shoreditch is drawing to a close, Activate Media can give advice on how best to implement digital technologies to your business. We've even got a secret gift in store for anyone that contacts us and quotes Digi13 in their message. 

Thank you very much Cocosa for feeding my shoe habit one Friday morning on my commute to work. This is a cautionary tale of shopping on your mobile.

It seems nowhere is safe for a shoe-aholic like me. Not even on the deepest darkest London Underground, below the busy morning traffic in Oxford Circus. Special mention also goes out to Virgin Media for helping to feed my habit that fateful morning, by providing Wi-fi access to the tube network in the first place.

Due to easy access to the internet and a tempting offer (cute shoes at a big discount – see images), it was all too easy for me to go from innocently checking my emails, to owning two pairs of Melissa shoes in under 4 minutes before hopping on the tube! Such is the power of mobile commerce.

Internet access + a mobile optimised website + a short payment process = opportunities for retailers and danger for shopaholics. You have been warned.

Why should you? You can write can’t you? Here’s why you should do all your writing yourself, and forget about those overpaid, underworked, keyboard-tapping wastrels who call themselves copywriters.

1. You can do it yourself.

Of course you can, everyone can write, right? But do you have time to focus on the messages you need to get across for every piece of communication you need to write, from website to blog post to press release and brochure?

A good copywriter will have the skills and the experience to get your key messages across in the best way to the people you want to reach.

2. You know your business better than anyone else.

No argument there. But does that mean you’re best placed to convey the best sales messages and benefits to potential customers? Or do you tend to get a bit bogged down in the detail, and occasionally have difficulty seeing the wood for the trees?

A good copywriter is used to looking at the big picture. They’re accustomed to absorbing information quickly and bring an outsider’s view to the benefits you should be preaching.

3. The copy you already have is fine.

It may well be, but how long have you had it? Trends and marketing approaches move extremely quickly these days, and what once looked cutting edge can quickly seem tired and ‘so last year’. Your product may not have changed for a while, but your methods for selling it should, and fairly often, if you plan to stay ahead of your competitors.

A good copywriter will suggest alternative marketing angles and find new ways to present your product or service. They’ll also do additional research to see how your competitors are presenting themselves and develop a way to do it better.

4. Copywriters are so expensive.

Smaller businesses often regard copywriters as the sort of thing only big companies can afford. But chances are that someone in your organisation has to take time out from their standard duties to write your marketing copy, possibly even charging overtime as a result. And if writing isn’t their core skill, what they’re writing could be ineffective or even counterproductive.

A good copywriter will produce copy to your exact specifications quickly and efficiently for an agreed fee. You’ll get what you need, no more, no less, and without eating into your staff’s main duties.

5. You’re thinking about hiring a writer full time.

That’s fine, if you really need the commitment of another salary, benefits and employment package. Of course, that depends on how much writing you need – is it really a full-time commitment, or could a dedicated writer on a retainer manage it in two or three days a week?

For a good copywriter, time is money, and they’ll deliver each job to your prearranged deadline. If you need one at your beck and call you can often negotiate a cheaper day rate with an extended contract for a set number of days per week.

6. Your marketing agency writes your copy.

If that’s so, who’s doing your marketing? Some agencies employ very good writers, but many leave the writing to a junior employee who fills in the gaps beneath the headlines.

A good copywriter will enhance the work of your agency, and will have experience in working with multiple groups and organisations. The difference is that you’ll know their focus will be on the words, the core of your message.

The point:

If you’ve got this far, you’ll know that the headline was deliberately misleading. Of course you should hire a copywriter. A good copywriter is the difference between communication that’s okay and communication that really works. Learn from the mistakes of others, and hire a writer who will convey your message, promote your brand and sell your assets. You won’t regret it.

About the author

Dave Oliver is director and lead writer of Farsight Media, a UK-based copywriting agency offering copywriting and editorial services for technology-related brands and agencies.

Buyer-behaviour is of interest to many different types of businesses, whether you provide products or services, are selling tangible goods, or intangible ideas / opinions. As long as you are selling something , there are always psychological reasons for people buying or not buying into your offer. The helpful folks at Help Scout display this below with their infographic 10 Ways to Convert More Customers (using Psychology).

How do your prospects view your website? Contact us for a free website assessment which will include useful tips and tricks covering:

• User Experience & User Interface
  
• Design
  
• Mobile
  

Or get an overview on what we do here.

The Agile approach was originally created to speed up software development, as an innovative response to the traditional waterfall method.

It takes a lean, customer-centric approach to creative projects. The Agile principle can be successfully applied to other creative projects, even Google has embraced this methodology and has started promoting Agile Creativity.

Going back to software development, what exactly is the Agile method and how would it benefit your creative project? Let's start by looking at how it was done before, then how we would approach creative projects with the Agile approach.

The Old Waterfall Method

The old method took a grand approach to projects, dividing labour between departments (or "silos") that work on big chunks of the project, while following a linear process scheduled over a long period of time.

The aim was to launch and deliver a "perfect" product to the end user or customer, who had very little participation in the process.

The problem was, after all the time and resources poured into the making of the final product, it still could end up disappointing the user, for one simple reason:

It's a product the developers or the company stakeholders *thought* the users wanted.

At this stage, it would have been already too late to make quick modifications to please the user.

The Agile Method

By contrast, the Agile method follows a more flexible approach:

• It adapts to sudden changes
• Tests repeatedly
• Values interaction amongst the people involved, and
• Puts the satisfaction of the end user or customer as its utmost goal.

The Agile method aims to get a minimum functional product as fast as possible into the hands of the end user, who is asked to actively give feedback.

Then the entire process is repeated (or "iterated") to keep improving the product until the customer is ultimately satisfied, and everyone is happy.

The Agile Team Structure

Agile also does away with big (often squabbling and ineffective) departments and complex, tedious documentation.

To keep the people working on the project quick on their feet, agile teams are a small, versatile mix of management, business, and technical people, involving only those who have a direct role on the project.

Each member is made accountable for a task committed to with frequent “standup” meetings. To shorten the development cycle, the team works on the barest requirements that would get the product available the soonest.

The Agile Method in Practice

In a creative setting, let's take the example of an e-commerce website.

The old way

The first step is to plan the website, then the developers and designers build it, then the content people fill it with content, then the marketing people promote it, and so forth.

This takes a lot of time, and if there’s a bottleneck, say, with the developers, the marketers can never begin their work.

The Agile Way

With the Agile method, all these people work on the same team, and instead of working for months for a live, perfectly working site, they turn in a basic functional site that could start processing orders right away.

The users of the website are asked for their feedback which is acted upon. This allows for quick tweaks and troubleshooting, and even an overhaul if required. There is continual testing and improvement.

How do you become agile yourself?

There are many ways the Agile method is implemented, and Agile Marketing is still being defined. But however you eventually adopt it, it is important to get the commitment first of everyone involved in your project.

Agile Tips to Take Away

Consider with your team how you could translate the following Agile values into your own practices

1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools - How do you improve on how you collaborate on projects? Would you like a more dynamic cooperation between your writers, designers, social media community manager, developer, etc? Is everyone working towards a common goal.
2. Working software [or prototype] over comprehensive documentation - What is your most important output? Does it work? How fast can you give it to your customer or end-user
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation - Are you really in touch with your customer? How and how soon do you respond to their concerns?
4. Responding to change over following a plan - Do you rigidly follow a marketing plan, or are you flexible to respond to unexpected issues?

Could your digital media project benefit from the Agile approach? Contact us for a free consultation to discuss your project requirements. Or get an overview of what we do here.

From a handful of people in a room above a pub to one of the most renowned SEO conferences in the world, Brighton SEO has become an essential date in the calendar for SEO professionals.

The conference is the brainchild of Kelvin Newman, who initially arranged a meeting of SEOs from the South East to discuss the ins and outs of the industry back in 2009.

The take up of interest has grown rapidly and the event now takes place over three venues.

This year’s conference takes place on Friday April 12, and features a wide selection of top SEOs from across the globe. Guest speakers this year include Kelvin himself, Fili Weise (Founder at Blackpixels in Germany), Alfredo Pulvirenti (SEO team leader at StepStone Group) and Paul Madden (Partner at Manual Link Building). Overall there will be around 50 speakers with years of expertise in the SEO industry.

A series of workshops are also taking place the day before the main event, which spans across Brighton Dome Concert Hall, the Corn Exchange and the Dome Studio Theatre. As well as talks and training sessions there will be a host of exhibitors providing networking opportunities.

Networking

Brighton SEO does not just offer those attending the chance to learn more about the industry, it also provides an excellent opportunity to network with similar organisations and individuals, so make sure you have plenty of business cards with you and more importantly ensure that your LinkedIn page is up to date. Mobile networking is becoming increasingly popular and will enable you to put a face to a name when you get back to the office.

It is also a good plan to follow #BrightonSEO on Twitter to check out what other SEOs are talking about prior to and during the conference.

Workshops

Another key part of the conference is the innovative workshops available. These range from SEO tips and techniques to in-depth analytics strategies.

Head of insight at FreshEgg, Dara Fitzgerald will be delivering his workshop, ‘Advanced Google Analytics Training’ on Thursday, discussing detailed monitoring of campaigns and the ins and outs of the more detailed functions of the monitoring tool.

Further workshops include:

• Advanced Link Building Training with James Agate, founder of SkyRocket SEO

• Local SEO Training with Kevin Mullaney, head of search marketing at Render Positive

• Mobile SEO Training with Aleyda Solis, international SEO at SEER Interactive

• Google Penalty Recovery Training with Tim Grice, head of search at Branded3

• Video SEO Training with Carla Marshall, SEO director at ReelSEO

Who to See

Depending on your field of expertise, there will be certain talks or experts that will be of special relevance to you.

Here is the guide of what not to miss from link builders to social media marketers.

Link Building – If hunting for links is your primary role then make sure you see Pete Wailes from SEO Gadget. He is giving a talk entitled: ‘The Link is Dead, Long Live the Link’ from 10am on Friday at the Dome Studio Theatre. Pete is operations director at SEO Gadget and has worked on websites across a range of industries from start-ups to large scale global players.

PPC and Analytics – Spreadsheets, pie charts and monitoring campaigns. If this is just another day in your line of work then Anna Lewis’ talk, ‘Google Analytics Tool Box’ is a must see. Anna is a digital marketing executive at Koozai with five years of search marketing experience. She is no stranger to speaking at conferences and her experience will be vital if you are a budding PPC enthusiast. Anna’s talk takes place on Friday from 11.30am at the Corn Exchange.

Content – Fresh content is key in today’s world of SEO and ‘7 Secret Weapons of Successful Content & Outreach’ will help you keep ahead of the game. The talk is being given by Lexi Mills, who is head of digital at Dynamo PR at 11.30am on Friday in the Dome Concert Hall.

Finale

Following the conference on Friday there will be a drink at the Corn Exchange, before a post event party in the pub’s Foyer bar.

If you can’t make it to this event, don’t panic as all talks are being filmed and will be uploaded to view. The next Brighton SEO conference takes place in September so you have not got long to wait.

Author Bio

Ben Walker is a SEO thought-leader at vouchercloud, who specialises in digital content, relationship management and other SEO strategies.

Shopping comparison websites have contributed to a boost in mobile commerce amongst consumers. This has changed the way that consumers make purchasing decisions, not only online but also at bricks and mortar shops. Retailers especially should be aware of the threats and opportunities that easy access to the mobile web brings -- your customers can now search, compare prices, and find the nearest location for your products and services much easier than ever.

Is your retail business equipped to handle the mobile shopping trend? Although the data in the video below refers to the US consumer market, there is a similar trend emerging in the UK.

If you’re getting into the details of search engine optimization, you’ve most likely run across the term breadcrumbs at some point. Breadcrumbs refers to a linking strategy that is excellent for search engine optimization and that has the added benefit of also being excellent for your users.

This is one of the search engine optimization strategies that lie at the happy nexus between providing excellent customer service and making certain that the search engines are able to easily index and correctly categorize your site. Here are the basics of how it works and how you should implement it on your WordPress site.

Check Your Theme First

The first thing you want to do is to look at your WordPress theme. Many professional WordPress themes have built-in features that make it easy for you to set up breadcrumb links across your website. If these features are built in, all you have to do is activate them and the breadcrumb links will appear on your page.

When you’re adding breadcrumb links to your WordPress theme manually, you can do so with any of a variety of different plug-ins, one of the most popular being quite logically called “breadcrumbs”.

Once you have the technical aspects taken care of, you still need to think about the organizational scheme on your site to make certain that your breadcrumb links are as useful as possible.

It’s About Navigation

Putting search engine optimization aside for a moment, the real purpose of breadcrumb links is to make it as easy and convenient as possible for people to navigate through your content.

If you happen to be developing a very content heavy site, breadcrumb links are vital. Breadcrumb links work by providing the user with a visual list of the various sections of your hierarchy that they have gone through to get to the content that they’re reading at the moment.

For example, if they had gone from your homepage to your section on auto repair to your section on checking tire pressure, the breadcrumb links at the top of the page might read something along the lines of: Home, Auto repair, Tire pressure.

With these links provided on the page, the user can easily navigate back to the auto repair section or to the homepage without having to use their back button and without having to use the site’s main menus, either of which may not provide quite as precise a level of navigation.

Categorize Correctly

The importance of breadcrumb links to search engine optimization should make it readily apparent why it’s so important for you to categorize and organize your content correctly.

By doing so, you make your site more useful and, to a great degree, that is exactly what search engines are looking for when they decide to add a site to their indexes. Sloppily laid out and sloppily organized sites seldom get good search engine position, simply because they fail to meet the needs of the visitors that go to them looking for information.

When you start adding content to your site, make certain that you are putting it on your site in a very logical fashion. The more disorganized your site is, the less value that breadcrumb links will have for your visitors. If you have great breadcrumb links, it’s very easy for search engine crawlers to follow your content and to index it correctly, which means that you stand a better chance of getting good positioning in the search engine results.

It also, just as importantly, means that anybody visiting your site will likely hang around a bit longer, as they’ll keep finding new information by using your hierarchical organization scheme and the easy way to get through that scheme that you have provided for them.

About author

Anny Solway is a dedicated writer at ThemeFuse – a leader in the Premium WordPress Themes area. She likes to discover new ideas about internet marketing, social media and blogging.

This infographic “Is Mobile Marketing Worth it For UK Businesses” explores how we live in an increasingly mobile world and the web being everywhere will impact how UK businesses in particular, will cope with this change. The fact is, mobile is no longer confined to our desktop computers (remember those?) or even laptops.

The growth of smartphones, tablets, and now “phablets” (smartphone/tablet hybrids) has made the web literally just a click away, which not only presents opportunities for consumers, but also presents various opportunities for businesses.

It's not too late to make mobile work for your business. Contact us for a free mobile-ready assessment which will include recommendations of the most suitable mobile solutions for your business. Or get an overview of our mobile solutions here.

Remember when tablets meant pills. You should, it was only a few years ago, but you'd be forgiven in thinking it was longer ago than that. Thanks primarily to the iPad, tablets are indeed taking over their laptop and desktop counterparts.

Why?

Because not only are they used for their intended purpose – as a portable computer, tablets have taken on a life of their own and are now multi-media objects with more functions than was even imagined by their makers! Tablets have contributed to the rise in the mobile web.

This infographic shows the many ways in which tablets have indeed taken over...

The Tablet Takeover infographic

Is your business website tablet ready? Contact us for a free mobile-ready assessment which will include recommendations of the most suitable mobile solutions for your business. Or get an overview of our mobile solutions here.

Here are some recent headlines spotted in UK newspapers:

• In-app purchases to top $3bn by 2016

• Gartner: 25% of enterprises will use corporate app stores by 2017

• Dennis Publishing invests in app start-up Padify

• Schoolcomms communication app could save schools £millions

It’s no surprise that as a result, many business owners are enticed by the profits from app development. They want to know how they can “get an app done” for their business.

This is one of the more common requests we receive. In fact, the word “app” is just thrown around as a request, most of the time without a real understanding of what it means.

While the word “app” generally means any piece of software, these days people use this word to refer to software that runs on mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and other handheld gadgets.

In the US, mobile app usage (94 minutes per day) had already beaten internet usage (72 minutes per day). It’s also projected that by 2014, mobile web usage will overtake desktop web usage - which means that consumers will be increasingly dependent on their mobile devices to access the internet.

Naturally these impressive numbers makes it tempting for organisations to want to jump in on the trend. But not so fast - is a mobile app really crucial to your business? The answer to that is not always a ‘yes’.

An app is simply a marketing tool. Like any tool, it’s useful for some businesses, but not all. It can help you reach some of your objectives, but it’s not a quick-fix for all of them.

So if you’re considering getting an app built for your business, it’s best to ask these questions first:

Who is your target market?

Determining who you want to reach will help you see if an app is a wise investment or not. Take note that the majority of smartphone users (62%) are aged 25 to 34 years old. If you want to reach this specific age group, then an app could be a good investment.

But you also need to assess specifically how many of your 25-34 year old customers actually use smart phones. Plus, you need to know what they use it for and which platforms they are using. This could be done easily with a customer survey.

Unless you have the necessary facts about your target customers’ mobile usage, it would be unwise to assume that they would want to use your app.

What do you want to achieve?

Apps are versatile, but this doesn’t mean that your app should be able to do everything at once. For simplicity, design it only to achieve one or two of your major business goals. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• Brand recognition. Do you want the app to be a way to promote your brand, and make yourselves stand out from your competition?

• Maintain customer loyalty. Do you want the app to encourage recurring visits, purchases, or revenue from customers?

• Encourage direct mobile purchase. Do you want your customers and users to buy your products/services more easily through their phones?

• Spark social media interaction. Do you want the app to encourage users to share your content - and therefore, your branding - with the friends, family, and other connections they have on social media?

• Additional source of revenue. Are you planning on releasing the app as a separate paid product by itself?

Just pick one or two from the list above and focus on that. Otherwise your app might be too bloated or worse, too complicated for your customers to use.

What benefits can your app offer to your target customers?

People download and use apps only if they find value in it. What value can your app give them? How will it enrich their lives, solve their problems, or help them reach their goals?

As an organisation, you need to know the answer to that before you invest in an app. Here are some possible benefits that your customers may be looking for:

• Convenience is the main advantage customers want from transactional apps, which allow them to purchase products directly from their mobile device. The smoother and easier the transaction, the more valuable your app is.

• Getting on-the-go entertainment is another reason, so if your business is relevant to entertainment, an app would be a good way to capitalise on that.

• Receiving up to date information and real time news, whether it’s about your product, your community, and/or other topics important to your customers.

• Getting customised content is also important to users. The more tailored an app’s content is to their needs and preferences, the more likely they are to find it useful.

Do you have the budget for it?


There are many things to consider when setting aside a budget for app development. A simple game application can cost at least $10,000 (£7,000). A simple table or database-related application can cost you much less. A fully branded app with social media integration, full-features, and rich graphics can even reach up to $250,000 (£166,000).

Platform compatibility also affects an app’s cost. Which devices will your app run on? Some of the main options are iOS devices, Android, and Blackberry devices. You also need to consider other platforms such as Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung if you want a wider reach, but this will increase your costs. Better to start with one or two key platforms and see if there’s a demand for compatibility with others.

Mobile Websites Versus Apps

Before spending on developing an app, you might consider creating a mobile version of your website instead. Sometimes it can be more practical to do so.

Mobile websites are easier to recreate and a lot cheaper. If you don’t have the budget to develop an app, then test out this format first. Besides, if your website already answers the basic needs of your customers as it is, then there’s hardly a reason to shift to an app platform.

Businesses That Got it Right

Starbucks created an app in 2011 that combines a mobile payment system and a loyalty rewards programme. Customers are given a digital wallet that allows them to get a cup of coffee cashless at any Starbucks branch. They also get a star for every cup they buy that can be accumulated and exchanged for a reward. The app generated 26 million transactions which amounted to $110.5 million (£73.2 million) in revenue in less than 12 months.

Travel website TripAdvisor also came up with a successful app called SeatGuru. This app allows travellers to search for flights, check flight status and pick the best seat via a high resolution seat map. The app is available to anyone and can be downloaded at no cost, yet its official site (SeatGuru.com) is generating around $500 (£330) a day in advertisement revenue alone.

Audi naturally picked a car racing game app to establish its brand in the automobile world. Gamers tilt their phone like a steering wheel to get through all five racing courses. The idea is to give users the rush and the taste of what it is like driving an Audi A4. The Audi A4 Driving Challenge app has been downloaded by more than 3.5 million users.

As you can see, an app could greatly improve your typical customer experience, broaden your company’s branding, and may even raise your profits. But the best way to ensure these positive results is to get to know your customers deeply, and then plan an app that they’ll find extremely valuable.

Could your business can benefit from an app? Contact us for a free mobile-ready assessment which will include recommendations of the most suitable mobile solutions for your business. Or get an overview of our mobile solutions here.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a huge role in getting your website a good placement on Google's search results. You invest time in putting in the right keywords into your heading, titles, and anchor texts. Apart from providing high-quality articles, you also publish videos and images just to vary your content.

The question is, “Are these efforts enough to get your site listed in the first page of Google's search results?”

Although what you do ON your website matters, desired results can be achieved by pairing it with strategies that need to be performed OFF your site.

Here are some off-page SEO techniques that you can look into:

1) Guest blogging

Writing for another blog is a great way to build relationships with people within your niche. Apart from that, here are other reasons that make this type of activity worth your while:

• It allows you to reach a larger audience. You may have a set of loyal followers who eagerly anticipate what you are going to put out next. Posting on another person's blog helps expand your audience beyond those who regularly read your content. Who knows, maybe you could even gain new followers through your guest blogging efforts.

• It drives traffic to your website. Reaching a new set of people by writing for another blog is a great way to increase the number of visitors to your site. Hence, it is important to write about topics that are informative, engaging, and relevant. Doing this boosts the chances of driving traffic your way.

• It builds your reputation within your sector. Sharing your ideas and tips on industry-related subjects helps people see you as a reliable source of information. Through this, you can get new followers who would want to read the next article you put out.

• It helps build links to your site. Earning links is vital in achieving high rankings on search engines. This is why it is crucial to come up with posts that provide useful information to increase its chances of it being accepted as a guest post.

2) Blog commenting

Apart from writing your own content, it helps to visit other blogs in your niche. Take time to read the posts and leave a comment to show your appreciation or add value to it.

The last bit is particularly useful in cases where a lot of conversation has already taken place. If you have something of substance to add, don't hesitate to share this through the comments.

Furthermore, if you have articles with content relevant to the discussion, provide a link back to it along with your response.

Doing this is a great way to build relationships with those who share your interests. Apart from that, it allows you to gain new followers as well.
 

3) Forum posting

There are lots of things you can do on forums within your industry, and here are just a few of them:

• Participate in existing discussions. There are hundreds of topics posted in forums. Find one that you can contribute to and browse through what has been shared. If you can add value to the discussion, go ahead and post a reply.

• Provide solutions to problems. There are people who turn to forums for answers to their questions. If you know how to solve their dilemma, don't think twice about sharing the solution. The answers you provide will not only be appreciated by the person you helped, but by others who might encounter the same problem in the future.

• Start a new topic. There are instances when you want to talk about an industry-related matter yet no thread has been started about it. You can start the discussion by creating a thread and encouraging others to participate.

Make sure you include a link to your website in your forum signature to lead interested parties back to your website. Even better, they can use the information provided in your signature to link back to your site.

4) Directory submissions

Being listed in top directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo Directories helps you get high-quality backlinks to your site. It is also important to provide meaty descriptions for your website to increase the chances of being accepted. In addition, be sure to choose an appropriate category to make the listing more relevant.
 

5) Social bookmarking

Submitting your site or any of your content to sites such as Delicious, Digg, and StumbleUpon is a great way to get traffic and backlinks. Always remember to use the right category when sharing content on these sites to make it more meaningful. Plus, do not forget to use the appropriate tags so users can easily find what you shared through the keywords you provided.

Lastly, it is important to add social media efforts into the mix. Popular networking sites, like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter, help boost your online presence. Plus, social signals such as +1's, likes, shares, and retweets help get your site to the top of search results. So, sharing frequently through social media channels increases the chances of getting a good position on Google's results pages.
 

Parting thoughts

Driving traffic to your website and being linked to by other sites are great ways to get a good placement on Google. The strategies mentioned above are just a few of the methods you can use to achieve high rankings. Although it may take time to see desired results, starting as early as possible slowly takes you there.
 

About the Author

Richard Eaves is a Digital Marketing Specialist who oversees more than 300 campaigns for Smart Traffic, a London SEO company that offers search-marketing strategies for various companies.

A slow loading website is annoying for obvious reasons. But for websites with a business purpose site speed becomes no laughing matter. A slow website increases bounce rate, frustrates visitors (of the human variety as well as search engines), and should be dealt with sooner rather than later.

With that said, there are many ways you can increase website speed, some of them simpler than others, and this infographic below lists most of them. Some techniques you might have heard of, some you haven't. Either way, implementing these techniques will increase your website speed.

What Makes a Website Fast? infographic

Here is where you will find regular news, opinions, and insights into the wonderful world of web. Some posts will be written by us, some will be contributions from guest authors. If you are interested in contributing to our blog please read on...

Become a Guest Author

If you are interested in becoming a guest author and contribute wonderful content to our blog, please read the instructions below:

1. We are currently only accepting guest posts on these topics:

• • Web design
  • Website usability
  • Website conversions
  • Web trends
  • SEO

2. 
The post must be original and unique to this website. This means it cannot be published anywhere else online, even on your own sites. We will check this with Copyscape.

3. We allow relevant, contextual back links to other sites, please do not abuse this and include obvious promotion which is not useful to the topic. We reserve the right to remove inappropriate links from your post.

4. We will have exclusive publication rights.

5. Posts must be a minimum of 600 words long. This does not apply to infographics, but they must include a unique summary.

6. We reserve the right to do some light editing on spelling or grammar, etc before publishing. If your post needs more than light editing you will be asked to make the appropriate amendments.

7. To increase the likelihood of your post being accepted we recommend you follow the guidelines and read 9 Ways to Become an Exceptional Guest Poster on ProBlogger.

Benefits of Guest Posting

1. Increased exposure to a new audience
2. Author bio promotional links from a respectable PR4 blog
3. Guest posts will be shared to our social media communities on Twitter, Google Plus and LinkedIn.

Ready to get started? Contact us with your guest post or guest post suggestion.