Archive for February, 2010


Is Social Media Really Driving Online Sales

Posted February 9th, 2010 by Stephen Harvey-Franklin in Advertising, Microblogging, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking

Is Social Media all hype, or is it really delivering on the promise?

We keep hearing about Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. We even hear about big Social Media phenomenon: The Facebook Group set up to get “Rage against the Machine” to number one in the music charts, the spoiler to stop X-Factor winner Joe McElderry being the Christmas Number One. Dave Carroll’s song on You Tube viewed nearly 7,000,000 times that tells the tale about how United Airlines broke his guitar (Search for United Airlines on YouTube and Dave Carroll’s song comes top every time). Millions of people everyday use some form of Social Media every day; we hear of big company campaigns on Social Media, but does it have a commercial impact for local businesses? The short answer is Yes, very much so.

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Redirecting to Search Engine Friendly URLs

Posted February 9th, 2010 by Barnaby Knowles in Search Engine Optimisation, Website Development

Static URLs are preferable to dynamic URLs that contain variables such as the page ID where search engines are concerned. It’s worth investing the time and/or money in setting up URL rewriting on your website so that www.example.com/index.php?pageID=1 can now be viewed at www.example.com/page-1.htm or even better at www.example.com/page-name.htm. The latter two URLs appear to be static HTML pages but using Apache’s mod_rewrite module and an .htaccess file you can serve the same content as the first URL. The next step is to ensure that anyone accessing the original URL is redirected to the correct new URL with a 301 HTTP status code.

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Tweet Your Way to Success!

Posted February 8th, 2010 by Chris Mann in Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Twitter is one of the newest and most successful platforms to enter the social media arena in recent years.  Social Media Marketing is still a relatively new concept and many companies have yet to fully embrace the opportunities it offers.  Social Media Marketing if managed correctly can be a highly cost effective form of advertising.  Twitter in particular is proving it is both a great tool for building personal social networks but also as a highly effective marketing tool for building business relationships and attracting new prospective customers.

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Google Runs Commercial During the Superbowl

Posted February 8th, 2010 by Stephen Harvey-Franklin in Advertising, Google

Google ran its first ever advertisement during the Superbowl advertising. The 1 minute 52 second advert entitled “Parisian Love” is one of their “Search Stories” series of adverts and tells the story through search:

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E-Commerce Web Design 12 Quick Pointers

Posted February 2nd, 2010 by Stephen Harvey-Franklin in Web Design, Web Standards, Website Development

Here’s a quick list of pointers to consider when designing an e-commerce website

1-    If it is an e-commerce website, make sure it looks like one, display credit card signs, show a basket

2-    Display your main offers and products on the home page, don’t clutter the home page with your life story or mission statement.

3-    Don’t waste valuable space and prime search engine optimisation with “Welcome to Our Site”

4-    Always have a phone number clearly displayed so that people can contact you, don’t hide it on the contact page or in teh footer

5-    Ensure that prices and offers and taxes are clear

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E-Commerce Website Considerations

Posted February 1st, 2010 by Stephen Harvey-Franklin in Internet Consultancy, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Design

E-commerce Websites and Best Practice

There is a real danger when selecting a web design company that they don’t know what they are doing ! Harsh? Well possibly not.

Many companies are graphic designers first, which is fine as long as Graphic Design Agencies play to their strengths and develop effective partnerships with other online experts. A website of course should look great, but it also needs to get found on Google, Yahoo & Bing, it also vital that those designing websites, particularly e-commerce websites, design the website using best conversion practices, so that the traffic coming to the website is really maximised.

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