2008 May | Norfolk-web-marketing-blog

Archive for May, 2008

How to choose your website designer – introduction

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

Choosing a web design company to take your idea and business forward can be, for most, a daunting and worrying task. There are literally thousands to choose from. It’s so easy these days for someone to get free software, knock up a few web pages and call themselves a web designer so where do you start?

How do you cut the wheat from chaff? How do you make sure you’ve hired the right people? Well if we’re honest there’s no 100% full proof method but here are a few pointers to help you along the way. We’ll try to cover some points in greater depth later on on our blog.

1. Do you know anyone else who has had a professional website built? Do they have a recommendation for you?

2. If not and you’re looking for a local design company then look at other websites that are local to you but not in the same line of work as yours. At the bottom of the site should be a link to the company that designed the site so you can look at the web design company’s own website.

3. Does the company look professional? Does it instil confidence in you? Does their website feel honest or is it just one long sales pitch?

4. Look at portfolios of work, look at their other websites. Is there consistency in design? Do they all look professional?

5. Does the design company display customer testimonials? This is a good sign but of course companies will only show the best comments so email or call other clients listed in the portfolio and ask how they found the company you’re vetting and how was doing business with them, were there any problems etc?

6. Do this with as many web design companies as you feel you need to and perhaps produce a short list of 2 or 3 and then contact them by phone or email to make a first response. Are they keen to help you and listen to you or are they keen to try and sell you something you maybe don’t need?

7. Don’t expect a price immediately. Every website is different and any company that rushes in to give you a price probably doesn’t 100% understand what it is you need and that might be a warning sign. This really depends on the complexity of your project of course. A simple site is easy to price for example.

8. How busy are your short listed companies? Don’t expect that people can fit you in right away, In fact a busy company is a good sign. There are exceptions of course but if a company can fit you in right away why is this so? Why are they not busy with lots of other clients work? A busy company is a good sign of a good company.

9. Companies that don’t advertise is a good sign. Don’t reach for the yellow pages to find a company. Companies that get the majority of their business through recommendations don’t need to advertise in yellow pages but are harder to find.

10. Make sure you feel you can work with the company and the nominated contact. Even if they are recommended to you at the end of the day you just might not get on with them and that’s not good for you or the web design company.

11. Do the short listed companies use separate specialists or are all (or just one) the staff multi skilled? It’s better to have a designer to do the design and a developer to do the programming, each with his own specialist knowledge.

12. Ask your short listed companies if they are aware of validated standards of programming and if they are aware and comply with the accessibility standards?

13. Do make sure you are open about your budget, this isn’t an exercise to get eh cheapest quote it’s an exercise to get the best value for money and get you the best website for your money to get as your business will rely on it. If your short listed companies seem price focused and ready to match and beat quotes then maybe they aren’t the right one. Company should be confident in their price and that it matches the service they offer. Your other research with contacting past customers will confirm whether the service is good or not.

Working with your web design company doesn’t need to be a chore and taxing. It should be pleasant and fun, to a degree. Do expect to work with your chosen company, providing input and also listening to their advice. They, after all, are the experts. Trust in them like you would your accountant or solicitor.

When you have yoru shortlist then perhaps ask the advice of friends or family who can be a little more objective and maybe give some vital input and advice that you may of overlooked. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what looks great to you might look bad to someone else so straw polls can be valuable.

Posted in Web Design, Web Marketing | Comments Off

Creospace's regional based search engine results

Monday, May 12th, 2008

People often ask ‘Well if they are so good at getting people high in the search engines why aren’t they high up themselves’ and that of course is a very good question. After all proof of the pudding is in the eating isn’t it?

Since our new site launch back in February we have been using our own expertise to make sure our own site gets good results for the keywords that we think will get us the right sort of business we want. That is both regional and national work for the services that we offer.

Of course to get prime keywords such as ‘web design’ , graphic design’ etc up on page one for a national search we are in for the long haul and it’s simply not reasonable to expect results in such a short time. Besides through our networking and existing client base we already get recommendations from across the country for our web design service and more, in fact we even have clients around the world. What we don’t have are many clients in our own county of Norfolk.

So what we have done is concentrated our SEO efforts on a regional basis for Norfolk. Regional results can be often overlooked and can be a very lucrative source of business form search engines so never forget to get optimised for your region if it’s appropriate to do so.

Ok so as it stands today here’s where we stand in google and where we were before.

Norfolk Web design

Before:Page 2 17th – Now: Page 1 3rd

Norfolk copywriting

Before: Nowhere – Now:Page 1 1st (uk search page 1 4th)

Norfolk PR

Before: nowhere – Now: Page 1 5th ; Bear in mind this is not our main business.

Norfolk Admin

Before: nowhere – Now Page 1 3rd; This is for our adminstration systems.

Norfolk SEO

Before nowhere – Now page 1 3rd

So as you can see our hard work and expertise is paying off and getting good results. We’re continue to monitor and improve some others we’re working on as well. Over time we’re sure that those reults will improve as it does take time and patience to get good seo results.

If you are interested in improving your search engine placings for regional results then get in touch and we’ll see what we can do for you.

NB: Google positions may vary from day to day

Posted in Company Information, Internet, SEO | Comments Off

Making the leap to operating as a paperless business

Wednesday, May 7th, 2008

Becoming a paperless operation might seem like a dream or even a nightmare but there are many reasons for easing the burden that paper puts on your business operation.

The alternative to paper of course is a computer. There maybe many reasons why the thought of using a computer or introducing more computers into your business can seem daunting or expensive etc etc.

Well if we look at the latter problem of expense first of all. did you know that most computers only get used for 10% of what they can actually do? So that’s 90% of a computer’s resources wasted. Most businesses are slaves to their computers not masters and so computers seem expensive when compared to the labour they are saving.

Computers working for you.

Computers and software that control and carry out adminstration tasks can store huge amounts of data these days and what’s more they can store it securely away from people who shouldn’t see it. Security is a whole different topic that we can cover in a seperate post as it’s very important. With the ability to store all this data you no longer have to store paper files as copies of paper can be stored on a computer and simple text that was once printed out to store can now be saved in a database and easily accessed by anyone authorised to do so.

Then you can start to think about the daily administrative routines and chores that have to be performed so things such as preparing lists of things to do , chasing diary reminders, late bills, sales calls can all be held in a database and called on a screen. Orders can be completed, invoices raised (pdf invoicing), customers updated by email.

Salesmen can look at their diaries, telesales agents can be entering prospects, managers can be viewing performance figures and compiling useful reports and so on and so on.

The main point is that not one piece of paper has been used or printed off to do any of these tasks. It’s all on screen and in the computer database system. Even incoming paper can be scanned and then stored digitally on a system so you can recall it on screen whenever you need it.

Virtually any administrative and managerial task can be carried out using a computer and good system software.

How much does this all cost?

Well of course there has to be some investment but when you look at the return of saving many many hours a week and the increased efficiency of your business operation then the investment will soon pay for itself many times over.

It might not cost as much as you want and of course cutting down on paper also reduces the need to use paper.

Think about this…

How much paper do you use that’s not required?

How many administrative tasks does your business undertake that doesn’t 100% involve a computer?

What % of the computers resources do you use?

How efficient is your business operation and could it be improved?

Creospace provide consultancy to get your business paper free and working efficiently by getting all your company’s administrative tasks dealt with by a bespoke computer system that doesn’t need to cost the earth but goes some way to saving the resources of the earth by cutting out paper.

More information about business adminstration systems can be found here

Posted in Internet, Software as a Service | Comments Off