Tag Archive: Published Articles

Things to consider when redeveloping your website.

Website AdminSeptember 26, 2011

There comes a time when the corporate website that once met all your criteria starts looking a little like yesterday’s offerings design-wise and is now missing the mark from a marketing perspective. Tell-tale signs may be subtle such as the visitors bounce* rate increasing as the website fails to convince visitors that you are a worthy offering or the signs may be more obvious in that the website is just not up to date with expected content such as social media integration, compliance with popular browsers and standards or being ready for the mobile market place.

From experience the following is a consolidation of some of the points you may need to consider when undertaking the rework of your website.

Your Objectives

Define the objectives of having a website as once you’ve done this all the subsequent decisions you have to make fall in place as they are either in line with these objectives or they are not.

Your Blueprint

On large projects there can be much detail that really must be concluded before the project starts. Once concluded the entire web development team will understand exactly what has to be delivered and when, and as the website owner you will also know that it will meet your defined objectives.

The blueprinting process often opens up the minds to further specification improvements and content as it encourages all involved to review the finer detail of the website facilities.

Websites that are properly blueprinted have always turned out to be good performers and the relationship between the development team and the customer has been excellent.

Cost-wise; as the project runs to a mutually agreed plan there is far less scope for budget irregularities.

Your Current Website

When you put together your initial website, there would likely have been great thought and deliberation as to what was included and how. Despite the old website now looking dismal beside the competition’s new feature rich website, so many companies will totally disregard the good that is present in their old website. Be very careful not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater”. Apart from quality content that may need to transfer to the new website after reworking, the search engines and other referrers will have linked to the pages in your website.

Your Development Team.

In the past your website may well have required the basic skills of a developer and maybe a designer. Consider the content and your aspirations and ask yourself if your current incumbent team is complete and can offer you:

Web development that brings commercial return
A team of people with whom you are comfortable working
The resources you’ll need to grow your website including:
- Web coding so the fundamental HTML code is right
- Programming so the website facilities function to your specifications including Mobile standards and general fall back solutions where Flash and other resources are not supported on the visitor’s browser
- Copywriting that both fits your industry style and finds favour with the search engines
- Photography so you avoid poor images that so often degrade what could be a quality website; afford professional or quality photography
- Video as a powerful and effective way to engage the visitor and also finds favour with the search engines
- Search engine optimisation
- Search engine marketing
- Social media

The Internet marketing team you choose for the next part of your journey needs to have a lot more bases covered than was the case a few years ago if you are to rise above the bland mediocrity of basic websites and have a true commercial success.

The Creative Design

This is the most subjective of all the components. Having a professional creative team that understands both design for web and the norms of your market places will undoubtedly make for a professional result that wins business. So many creatives are stuck in the “design for print world” and do not engage with the dynamic medium of a website. With dynamic new technologies such as jQuery and AJAX, webpages are written to dynamically change according to input giving more efficient pages and a much improved customer experience.

The creative team will work with you and your developers to conclude the navigation tree so that your information is presented in the most effective fashion and in such a way that we lead the visitor through the punchy introduction via the convincers to the call to action. If that simple process is not instinctively engrained in the team’s approach then find someone else.

The Platform and Programming

Do not be wooed by a web development team that wants to build your website with some obscure technology. Stay mainstream with all your resources unless there is a very good reason why not to. If you go “off piste” then you’ll find that there are fewer developers prepared to take your website on with a technology that they do not support and fewer pre-developed resources online so you’ll be paying for bespoke development from scratch for new modules. Examples of mainstream solutions include Linux with PHP & MySQL or Microsoft with ASP & SQL.

Your Online Marketing

The possible routes to market online are now extensive and affordable to all. Have a sound plan in mind that will accommodate all channels including social media, newsletters/mailings, website news, blogging, article publication and other avenues that fit comfortably in your marketing mix. Importantly remember that your website and online marketing are not to be done in isolation and absolutely must seamlessly integrate with your internal systems and traditional marketing. Choose a web development team that understands the benefits of combining multiple channels of communication and better still offers them.

The opt-in newsletter/mailings can be extended further by adding an autoresponder series so that your worthy pre-prepared messages are delivered periodically to your schedule.

Once a website is launched the online marketing offered by your web development team should monitor performance in line with the client’s objectives and the Internet norms and in turn make website changes according to the feedback received. Continuous improvement and following marketing opportunities are key to keeping your website commercially successful for years to come. Keep testing, measuring and improving.

Your Website Hosting

Budget hosting should be avoided; slow servers that are maxed out for profit will cost you dearly. Slow delivery of website content not only turns visitors away but also has an effect on your Google ranking. Your web development marketing company should be monitoring this as one part of your search engine marketing they do for you.

These are just some of the key elements from 16 years of experience and worth considering when redeveloping your website.

About the Author

Simon Thomas of Toucan Internet LLP has 18 years direct marketing experience prior to embracing the new Internet marketing channels that emerged in 1995. He heads the multiple disciplinary team of professionals at Toucan Internet LLP supporting clients of all sizes and markets where the client is looking for a professional Internet marketing partner with a long proven track record.

To find out more about Toucan Internet LLP please feel free to contact Simon at the contact points

below.

t: +44 1279 871 694

e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk

w: www.toucanweb.co.uk

Business Wisdom, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web

Published Articles

Intellectual Property Rights (IP) and your website.

Website AdminNovember 11, 2010

Intellectual Property (“IP”) affects all businesses in one way or another. In most instances it will be the website that attracts IP protection of some description. IP covers trade marks, copyright, patents and designs. In the case of websites the most likely area that will be of interest to a business is trade mark and copyright. The Intellectual Property Office (“IPO”) website defines “Trade Marks” as;

“symbols (like logos and brand names) that distinguish goods and services in the marketplace.”

Trade marks can be protected in one of two ways, either by registration with the IPO or under the principle of passing off. Registration is a simple process that can be undertaken online via the IPO website and has better protection rights than passing off. Passing off is the common law action where provided you are able to show that, the mark is yours, a reputation has been built up around the mark and you have suffered loss, you gain protection. Obviously the registration of a trade mark makes enforcement much easier.

Copyright protects original work that is created using independent skill and effort and provides the owner of that work control over how it is used. Copyright extends to websites, pictures, articles etc. When creating a website you need to consider who owns the copyright. If it is created in house then the copyright is owned by the business. If the website is created by an external contractor then unless otherwise agreed contractor will own the copyright. You will need to make sure that any contractor who is creating a website for you checks the content of the website for any copyright infringement issues involving 3rd parties such as, the use of pictures or layout of the website.

Copyright only provides protection from someone copying the original works. Should it come to your attention that part of your copyright has been infringed your protection lies in the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. In order to protect copyrighted works through the Courts the first step is to show that there is access to the material in the first instance. In the case of a website this is easy to do. If the work is copied in its entirety then the proof is easy to evidence. In cases where part of the work has been copied or amended the Court will focus on the core of the material to determine whether there has been an infringement. It is a good idea to get a copy of the site you consider has infringed your copyright as it exists at the time, in most cases by printing off a copy. This is to protect against the potential for a site owner to change their site in the future.

For legal queries regarding IP, please contact the author of this article, Tim Carter, who is the
IP expert at Attwaters Solicitors.

t. 01279 638888
e: Tim.Carter@attwaters.co.uk
To find out more about how Toucan Internet LLP can influence your online success please feel free to contact Simon at the contact points below.

t: 01279 871 694
e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk

w: www.toucanweb.co.uk
Copyright Toucan Internet LLP 2010©. All rights reserved.

Business Wisdom, Web

Published Articles

Environmental Policy Published

Website AdminOctober 15, 2010

As a demonstration of Toucan’s stance towards sustainability and the environment it has published its Environmental Policy Statement. Any suppliers to Toucan Internet LLP or Toucan eMedia should be aware of the aims that the business has with regards to the environment, and through their own activities and supplies, further support Toucan’s environmental objectives.

Toucan’s full set of policies including the environmental policy is available at http://www.toucanweb.co.uk/ti_legal.php

Thank you to Jessica Ward of Addington Consultants for her professional assistance in preparing this policy. You can find out more about Addington Consultants at http://www.addingtonconsultants.com/

To find out more about Toucan Internet LLP please feel free to contact Simon at the contact points below.

t: 01279 871 694
e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk
w:www.toucanweb.co.uk
Copyright Toucan Internet LLP 2009©. All rights reserved.

Business Wisdom, Quality Suppliers

Announcements, Published Articles

11 factors that influence online success – Website performance markers

Website AdminJanuary 18, 2010

Original creative design that echoes your brand
The design should be in line with industry acceptability though pushing the norms so it’s not totally conformist. It must in every instance be immediately identifiable by any visitor as to what the site is about and have intuitive navigation whilst being avant-garde.
Proper Coding
Proper coding to W3C standards means the site will be compliant with accepted world standards. Further audience specific coding is important as additional code needs to be written for “broken” browsers that have their own stilted interpretation of the standards. Bloated sites and pages stuffed with poorly optimised images and video will hurt your rankings.
Properly Programmed
It’s no use using programming that is not supported by key sections of your market. If you are selling to institutions such as banking, you’ll find that their web browser security is set to “paranoid” which means it will block all but the most mundane code. Therefore any facilities on your site using Flash, Java or even humble Java Script must have fall back facilities using basic code. This is what we call degrading nicely. The majority of sites we see will not degrade nicely and in the worst cases page construction falls apart completely and the site becomes un-navigable as the menus disappear or become dysfunctional.
Properly Researched
The Internet thrives on search results and king of the search results is Google providing some 80% of the worlds domestic and business search traffic. Key to success here is to use the right keywords in the right place in the right manner and frequency. Ideally research the key terms for your business by quizzing the websites of your leading providers in your sector. Then rank all the terms you’ve gleaned against real world search usage to determine the most effective. Then optimise the site using these terms. This search engine optimisation routine is a complete science in itself, but is well founded with clear rules. The basics are for you include a bare minimum of 100 and preferably 300 words per page. Make sure the prime keywords are used in the page title, meta description and titling on the pages. Cross link on the prime key words and ensure the key word density is between 4 and 8% per page. That will get you a fair way to making a reasonably well optimised website.
Good content
Search engines are much cleverer now and, through what they call Symantec learning, know what constitutes a good site from a poor site and grades it accordingly. Don’t try and fool the search engines by overly keyword stuffing. A good SEO company will be able to optimise the site for both human and search engines without resorting to what are called Black Hat techniques that will ultimately get your site blacklisted. Google has expanded its algorithm that catalogues and ranks sites to include Video and PDF files so this is all valid content if used in the right way.
Relevancy
This word crops up all the time in the search engine optimisation world. Keep your website relevant and on target. This strengthens the message and makes it clear to the search engines what you are all about.
Keep it current
Stale websites eventually get side lined as they offer nothing new. Keep your site fresh with new and relevant articles. One way to do this with the minimum of effort is to have a blog running for all your news and take a feed from your blog to a news flash on every page. This way when you update your blog with a new article you also update every page on your website.
Link and Be Linked
One of the biggest performance markers is to have a goodly number of relevant back links to your website. Backlinks are links to your site from other websites. Even a handful will noticeably improve your rankings. We invariably advocate an exchange links programme to our clients and provide visiting webmasters the exact code we want them to use when linking to us so they use our chosen keywords how we want them to.
Social Media Marketing Shares
More than a complete seminar in itself is the boom phenomenon of SMM. If your clients Tweet, Facebook and alike, then add the SMM share buttons to all your pages so anyone can rebroadcast your pages to their followers. This way your interesting pages can be shared at a click with the viewers followers.
Correctly Hosted
When a site has been coded properly it will use the smallest files possible so that the site can be delivered quickly and give a great visitor experience. Google monitors and rates sites for performance. All the good coding work can be undone by simply hosting on budget servers that are maxed out for profit rather than performance. There are free tools available to performance rate your hosting for your site.
Marketing
Promote and monitor your website on a regular basis to all the key search engines, the niche market search engines and directories and the local gazette sites. Use Google Analytics to monitor your site traffic and work out where improvements can be made. Use Google Webmaster to tell you where improvements can be made to your site. Test and measure all the time.

That should give some additional considerations for getting you the best advantage for your website on the net and therefore getting a greater return.

About the Author.

This article was written by Simon Thomas who has been active on the Internet since 1995 and runs a number of commercially successful Internet projects. He supports the building of clients’ websites to the correct standards, not just SEO, and maintains on-going search engine marketing for clients that value high performing websites.

For more information.

t: 01279 871 694

e: simon@toucanweb.co.ukw: www.toucanweb.co.uk

Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation

Add new tag, Published Articles, SE Marketing, SEO

11 FAQs on Search Engine Marketing

Website AdminDecember 15, 2009

Having a commercially successful website is ever increasingly important to businesses as the website moves centre stage in delivering corporate communications, be that the sale of products or services, liaison with suppliers, customers, after sales support or integration with back office systems for integrated accounts and stock handling.

However if your website is not showing highly in the top search engine results for your prime search phrases your business is missing out. This is shark infested waters for businesses looking for quality honest suppliers to provide effective and affordable optimisation of their websites so it is found by the search engines with their chosen key terms. There are companies that promise results and either fail to deliver, fail to deliver consistently or use techniques that could ultimately damage your reputation or brand online by having your web domain blacklisted.

Below are a few basic questions that are routinely asked to help you fill in the blanks when considering how to make your website work harder for you.

1. What is Search Engine Optimisation or SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It encompasses a raft of techniques and approaches to increase the readiness of your website to be understood and therefore categorised by the search engines.

2. What is an Organic listing?

An organic listing is the listing of one of your web pages in a search engine and it is included and ranked based on the search engines perceived merits of your web page and website. More and more it is apparent that the good quality websites that deliver great content and play by the rules are finding favour with the search engines.

3. What is Ethical Search Engine Optimisation?

Ethical Search Engine Optimisation or White Hat SEO is simply the use of good optimisation techniques that brings real benefit to the possible visitors to your site. The programmes that assess your site are getting ever more cleverer about rating what is good and penalising what could be seen as trying to take unfair advantage.

4. What are Black Hat techniques?

These are techniques that can be employed to spoof the search engines into thinking that your site is better than it actually is. Whilst we perceive that good SEO techniques should push the envelope, we strongly recommend stopping short of Black Hat techniques since should you be found to have used techniques, or have engaged someone who has used such techniques on your website, it can result in your page being penalised or even excluded from some or all of the major search engines.

5. Why does my website not show in the search results?

There is a raft of different reasons when this may be the case and here are a few for consideration:

You may not have a search engine optimised design. Many designers create brilliant designs, but do not team up with equivalently skilled web partners who know how to write the code that delivers the site to the web browser.
The site may not be written to be adequately readable by the search engines that you want to engender.
The site or web pages could have missing or incongruous elements such that the search engine is confused about the content and purpose of the site.
You or your web engineer may have strayed into inadvertently using Black Hat Techniques. And the site has been downgraded in response. You may not have submitted the site adequately as part of your post launch search engine marketing. (See http://blog.toucan-group.com/?p=17 for an extensive SEM program) .

6. What is Keyword research?

Keyword research is finding the right words that will deliver the highest number of visitors to your website possible. Believe me, a single “S” going from a singular to a plural can mean a tenfold difference in visitors.

To get to the optimum keywords the routine is to start with your instinctive choices, extract key words from top competing sites, then rank all those terms in order of real world usage. Then, by applying some instinctive personal understanding of the market place, together with an eye to how much the term is contended, draw up your final list. How this list is subsequently used is down to the skills of your web coder and copywriter who should work “hand in glove”.

7. How do I get recognised or ranked for specific keywords?

Apart from putting the right keywords in the right places you have to have the right keywords selected in the first place. Once the site is optimised and launched into the big wide world it needs to be promoted and this is where a comprehensive Search Engine Marketing programme needs to be put in place so the site is promoted and monitored properly. It not only needs to be promoted to the obvious search engines but also the niche directories and local gazetteer sites.

8. What is search engine friendly design?

The way a design is converted to a web page can be the make or break of a site’s search engine performance; a friendly design is readable and an unfriendly design is far less so. Certain techniques hamper search engines from understanding your site and some can stop a search engine from even looking at your pages. This is where you need a good web construction partner who you trust to understand what can be done and also to get the best out of the creative design provided by the designer. Here you start to see that web coder, creative designer and copywriter have to work as one for a website that stands any chance of success against the every rising bar of other quality websites.

Cheap doesn’t work – no matter how pretty the design.

9. Are Meta tags useful?

Absolutely, Google may ignore Meta Tag Keywords, but the properly written Meta Description is paramount to good SEO.

10.How can I achieve a top 10 result?

Follow all the rules, do the research and keep the site current and relevant. Promote under a structured Search Engine Marketing programme and respond to the feedback that the SEM campaign gives you.

11. Is cheap hosting a good idea?

Absolutely not! Taking Google as the market leading search provider; it rates websites on performance. Performance is measured a number of ways, some will be as a result of how the site was built and some by how it is delivered. Cheap servers deliver sites in a measurably slower manner for any number of reasons and your site will be ranked accordingly. There is free software on the Internet to monitor website performance and you want to be sure that you’re not “saving” on hosting but missing out on good rankings – it’s a false economy to do so.

About the Author.

For more information.

t: 01279 871 694

e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk

w: www.toucanweb.co.uk

Business Wisdom, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation

Published Articles, SE Marketing, SEO

Web of Deceit

Website AdminOctober 20, 2009

What to do if you become a victim of online fraud

Routine online shopping and banking transactions should not pose any problems for people using the Internet, however the World Wide Web has vast scope for criminality, and fraudsters have been quick to exploit the opportunities it provides.

Here are some of the risks:

Emails purporting to be from banks, credit card companies or other financial institutions such as PayPal, that direct you to fake websites where they try to extract essential security information from you, (known as Phishing)
ADVICE: Never follow links in emails. Instead go to the official site and login as usual.
Emails, that contain attachments that carry a virus or Trojan payload.
ADVICE: If you don’t know the sender, never open an attachment.
Websites that download tracking cookies, adware, Malware or viruses directly onto your computer.
ADVICE: Install antivirus software that will check all sites you visit.
Transactions with strangers via Ebay that turn out to be fraudulent.
ADVICE: Never, ever send money via Western Union or other transfer service. Never allow a buyer to pay more for an item than expected, and never send them the ‘change’, as their original payment will always bounce.

Always install good Anti virus, firewalls and anti-phishing software on your computers and activate email-scanning too.

If you think you have been de-frauded online, report it to your local police station. Essex police has a fraud department that will liaise on your behalf with the appropriate authorities and internet companies to try and bring the criminals to justice. This includes foreign forces and Interpol.

Ebay and PayPal also have their own dispute resolution services and offer some protection to their users.

Peter Caulfield, Uttlesford Crime Reduction Advisor & Architectural Liaison Officer
Essex police, East Street, Saffron Walden, CB10 1LX 01376 556233
General Non-Emergency Number – 0300 333 4444 and ask for the person or department you require.

toucan-beak-tag-150

For more information on Toucan and how we could help develop your business

please call us for a chat.

t: 01279 871 694

e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk

w: www.toucanweb.co.uk

Business Wisdom

Announcements, Published Articles

Be Web Wise – as published in NBA Passport Sept 2009

Website AdminOctober 6, 2009

nba_article-image Simon Thomas, from Toucan Internet LLP, talks us through
his experiences.

Most businesses want to hang onto their cash and investigate what gives them the best bang for their buck; something we should all be doing all of the time, but brought into focus as the recession squeezes our cash.

Nothing could emphasis this more when we see the upturn in investment by businesses that have analysed their ROI’s and have woken up to the fact that the Net is in many cases the quickest, cheapest and most effective route to market and has been either ignored or played with without serious intent in the past. Many clients have realigned budgets, giving significantly less or no spend for space advertising and sales people in favour of online marketing.

For example it is possible to build an administrative system that will run all the courses for a national swim school for £5,000. David Cartwright, MD of the Cartwrights Swim School said “It was a big leap of faith for us to move from traditional paper based systems. We knew it would be the quickest way to communicate with the hundreds of clients we have on courses all around the country and would also be the automated administrative centre.”

It’s a fairly simple job to identify from where best business rewards will come when reviewing a business m.o. and their current marketing. Don’t subscribe to the philosophy that if it’s simple it doesn’t work.

Pat Fox, MD of Aralia Garden Design, noted: “Over a couple of weeks this summer, our site generated three orders totalling £63,000.”

Article published in Passport the Newport Business Association monthly business publication

For details of the Newport Business Association – www.newportbusinessassociation.co.uk

The full September issue of Passport is available in PDF format here >>>.

For more information on Toucan and how we could help develop your business
please call us for a chat.

toucan-beak-tag-150 t: 01279 871 694
e: simon@toucanweb.co.uk
w: www.toucanweb.co.uk

Business Wisdom, Web

Published Articles