Website Design and Joined Up Thinking

• One of the harshest put-downs I’ve heard is the sarcastic riposte “Oh, very impressive! Joined-up talking!” Let's face it, though, joined-up anything is usually a good thing. Linking things together logically is almost always a key factor to success and this is particularly true when applied to business website design.
• The process of designing a new website is just one example where joined-up thinking doesn't just make good sense – it’s practically essential. But what is “Joined-up thinking?”
• Put another way it is “Thinking things all the way through” and whilst a good web design company can undoubtedly help with this, it is really more successful when a client does most of it by themself.
• The starting point in the thought process should be what you want from the site – and that’s not as dumb a question as it might seem. Is the site there to inform? Generate enquiries & leads? Generate direct sales and thus revenue? OR might you want it to do several or all of these things?
• It’s important to be clear on this point from the outset – and it will help if you can communicate clearly to your designers “I would like my site to…..”
• Immediately after this, though, needs to come the question “What will my customers/clients want to use the site for?” Hopefully the answer to this question will tie into the previous answer. For example: “They will visit the site to check availability of my products, place an order and make payment” ties in with “I’d like my site to generate revenue through sales”.
• But in addition, clients may wish to track the progress of their order. They may also wish to contact you with a query, make a return, or to ask about a product they’d like but cannot find.
• You the site owner, in the meantime, will need a site where you can fully manage your stock, track orders, add, change, delete listings and probably send out mailshots to customers periodically to boost sales.
• The trick to joined-up thinking is not to stop with the first, obvious answer to the two key questions but to explore them all the way through – until you have a detailed idea of what you want/need from the site and what your customers or clients want/need. Armed with this information, you are then in a position to give your web design company a clear brief which, when met, will leave you with a site that perfectly fits everyone’s needs.

• You can usually tell when a site has benefited from a joined-up thought process. It tends to be easy to use and to offer that little bit more – like a formal ladies wear website that offers a downloadable prom planning sheet and budget guide or a town council website that offers full minutes of all its meetings for public reference.
• So, to summarise, take that little bit extra thinking time because if you do, your design brief will be that much more focused and, ultimately, your website will be more successful.

Fresh accommodation on the Cotswold Way

• The Cotswold Way Accommodation Directory has seen the welcome addition of two new accommodation providers this month.
• The first new listing appears in the Guesthouses and B and B section of the directory. Needlehole Forge is the quintessential “secluded rural retreat”. It is tucked away close to seven Springs and provides a great overnight stopover point between Winchcombe and Painswick within reasonable distance of the iconic “Devil’s Chimney”.
• Needlehole offers twin and double accommodation with private shower and WC facilities for all guests. In addition to a delicious breakfast Needlehole Forge caters for evening meals, meaning that once you arrive you can completely relax.
• The second new listing can be found in the Hotels section of the directory. Charlton Kings HotelCotswold Way National Trail close to Cheltenham. It provides an ideal place to stop and relax, with spacious comfortable grounds, excellent food and a choice of single and double en suite rooms.
• Walkers find Charlton Kings Hotel convenient as it is less than a mile from the National Trail route. The hotel welcomes well behaved dogs.

These new listings are a further boost to this Connexions directory, which has 98 top 5 search term positions across the major search engines. With additional site upgrades due very shortly, we are confident that the Cotswold Way Accommodation Directory will continue to go from strength to strength and provide a very useful resource for walkers and visitors to the area.

How Social Networking can bring your business to life.

• When considering marketing through the medium of social networking, the initial reaction of many companies is lukewarm at best. Typical responses include:
• “Facebook is something you do at home – or try your best to stop your employees doing during work hours!”
• “Twitter is a faddy site inhabited by Stephen Fry and possibly one or two other celebrities.”
• “No-one can decide whether Twitter will be gone next week or will be the biggest thing in marketing since someone decided to sell bread pre-sliced.”
• Perhaps MY biggest “concern” was who on earth would find a business profile on a social media site worth joining? Who cares enough to want to receive a twitter about a business?
• But in asking - and answering - that question lies the secret of success. There ARE aspects of any business that are interesting. We all work (well, most of us!) and so we all share some common ground in terms of shared experiences. Also, there will be aspects of just about any business that are unique enough or interesting enough to be twitter-worthy or worth posting on a blog.
• For example, one of our clients who wanted to give social networking a go but was initially unsure about it has discovered that there are any number of aspects of a rural holiday park that lend themselves to social networking. This includes the challenge of bringing a new caravan onto a site (filmed and uploaded to youtube), local theatre performances and festivals (events posted to Facebook page) and the ever-changing local wildlife with new arrivals of birds and marinelife to the area, as well as some spectacular sea conditions sparked by high winds (the park blog and photo album on facebook).
• This same client has actively encouraged all their staff onto Facebook to post about the business, comment on the new flower beds as well as promote the page through their main website so guests can keep in touch with their favourite holiday destination all year round.
• Another client uses twitter to keep former guests updated with late availability offers at their hotels – and they have followers by the hundred. They promote Twitter through their regular newsletter as being the best way to be informed about the latest, best deals. They can also throw in the surfing conditions on Cornwall’s north coast for those considering a short weekend break for that purpose.
• So, alien and strange though it may seem at the start, promoting your business through Social networks is really just about sharing anything “fun, quirky, useful or interesting” from your day. The actual marketing (late offers, new products etc) happens by itself as part of this process once you become comfortable with sharing this type of information as news. It’s actually more fun than a lot of “work” and could lead to you booting your kids off Facebook or Blogger rather more frequently then they would wish!

SEO on a new website – Why make life hard?

• Whether you are re-launching an existing website or starting from scratch, the chances are that at some point in the evolution of any “new” website you are going to think about search engine visibility. The finest, most user-friendly, visually stunning website ever created still needs people to find it after all!
• From my experience, though, the “some point” that a lot of people consider this is several months after the site has gone live when the expected traffic and income hasn’t materialised.
• This can occur even when clients have been strongly advised at an early stage to consider SEO as part of the project. The problem, I think, is that when looking at a reasonably large and important project, which is not cheap, spending more money on something as “ethereal” as SEO doesn’t always seem attractive.
• But here’s the thing: If SEO is front and center of the design process from day one you get better and more sustained results – and so the return on your investment is much improved. There are some very good reasons for this.

1. In considering keywords at an early stage you also think in detail about target audience, the purpose of your site and from that you create relevant, keyword rich content.
2. The design team can integrate this into the site with relevant, intuitive navigation that draws the target audience into the site towards the desired conversion point (be that a sale or enquiry).
3. From this process comes a website that from day one is fully focused and relevant to the search terms for the business. Titles, tags and text seamlessly match to create a website with a clear, search engine friendly identity that also meets the exact needs of the target audience.

• The result is a site that is visible AND that performs. Linking to such a site is much easier then for one with little clear identity or, worse, a site that is attempting to be visible for one set of search terms when the content is geared to another.
• A well-thought-through website, with a clear identity ATTRACTS links. It attracts traffic, it ranks well because it is relevant, it is friendly to social media because people know what the site is about and, in turn, can market it for you by sharing with their friends.
• SEO isn’t just about traffic volumes, therefore, but something that can enhance the DESIGN outcomes of the project by generating a better end result. The fact that it also has a direct correlation to traffic volumes and so income generation (whether through leads or actual on-site sales) is just one more very good reason to think about it early on.
• So, why make it hard? Thinking about SEO from day one will pay dividends – leave it until later and you have a much harder task.