Top 10 Mistakes Businesses Made in 2006

January 3, 2007, by No comments yet
  1. NOT UPDATING YOUR WEBSITE
    I see it every day and I understand that your website may not be at the top of your list of priorities when you’re meeting new clients, creating new widgets etc, but having news thats 3 months out of date (or more) is inexcusable! And this issue has been around for many years… c’mon guys. if you’re investing £x,000 in a website then why not spend 10 minutes updating it.
     
  2. NOT CREATING AN EMAIL LIST
    And im especially talking to the ecommerce site owners out there… theres no better way of increasing your revenue that by selling more to customers who already trust your website and products! Ask your web designers how your users can be prompted to give away their email addresses etc.
     
  3. UPDATING TO A CSS BASED DESIGN WITHOUT REALLY KNOWING WHY
    Yes CSS is kewl, and your designers probably talked you around by telling you the benefits but is your website really available across platforms (MOBILE / Accessible etc) or is it just the same as a table based design only done in CSS? (This is one of my major gripes)
     
  4. HAVING AN INACCESSIBLE WEBSITE
    The accessibility issue has been around for ages. and despite what you may have been told, you can have an accessible version of your website for a relatively low price… simply ask your web designers to investigate text only versions of your existing site. It is the law after all.
     
  5. HAVING A RE-DESIGN THAT MIMICS A COMPETITOR’S WEBSITE
    Im often shown websites by prospective clients that are ‘good’ just because they have similar information on them… My usual answer to this is to get clients to look at different industries because after all, an existing website is already OLD!
     
  6. RELYING ON YOUR WEBSITE TOO MUCH
    Again i see this all the time. A website is never going to be up and at them 100% of the time, as no hosting company guarantees 100% uptime and when this happens your opportunity to make money halts… and this is just a one off symptom of a larger issue. If you have a website thats working for you, great! just remember to plough some of the profit back into other methods of marketing your business. Keep releasing press releases, mail shotting customers, email marketing and having an annual brochure as in the long run these too will help to increase your profitability.
     
  7. RELYING ON ADWORDS
    Adwords is great at attracting new custom but this is a simple and costly solution to something that can be rectified. Invest in search engine marketing and have your website appear in the natural listings (left hand side)… and after 6 months or so you should be able to turn off adwords and keep more profit.
     
  8. NOT USING YOUR WEBSITE AS AN INTEGRATED MARKETING TOOL
    As everyone has Internet access it makes sense for you to use your website in the day to day marketing of your business, when you’re out and about. Why not upload presentations to your website, have special services and sales aids or retain up to the minute financial presentations displayable via your website… I do it all the time and its great!
     
  9. NO BLOG
    Blogging is great because its informal. You dont have to worry about pleasing everyone as theyre intended to be your personal opinion. Blogging is quick and enables you to react quickly to news, posting your own version of events and establishing you as a trusted expert in your respective industries.
     
  10. THINKING BIG AND BEING IMPERFECT WHEN BEING SMALL IS BETTER
    We’ve taken on a number of projects in the last 12 months where the client wants an all encompassing solution which has a lot off issues (too many to go into here) where we have advised on the development of a small solution that focuses on generating money and adding value for the users. So when you’ve got the next MYSPACE concept, first think, how small can i make this project in order to reduce overheads and make more money.
Top 10 Mistakes Businesses Made in 2006

Swarovski Rip Off

December 5, 2006, by 2 comments

The prices listed in Swarovski’s online shop for an item I intended to purchase is a full £5 more expensive than if I walked into one of their high street stores.

Now I wouldn’t normally be phased by this but doing some research on Froogle, Kelkoo and other price comparison websites shows that recently Swarovski’s prices were at the lower price which makes me think, has Swarovski hiked its online prices up by X% in time for Christmas?

So I contacted Swarovski about this. Its taken a full week for them to get back to me (in the mean time ive been to a shop and bought it at the lower price). Their response states that “we do not price match with the on-line shop”… this got me a little rilled up as I really have/had no intention of paying the new higher price stated in their online shop, they’d obviously not read my email fully or tried to comprehend my point…

If anyones interested, I’ll keep this bit updated.

(Also informed Comet.co.uk that they had a 512mb pen drive listed as a 512GB pen drive which would have been a massive bargain at only £10) The reply I received was great and prompt which is what I’d expect from a large retailer, Thumbs up Comet!

Swarovski Rip Off

My Little MySpace Jewellery Business Experiment

November 30, 2006, by No comments yet

Just setting up a myspace jewellery site to help promote my sideline silver jewellery business. Ill let those of you who are interested in on the results later.

By the way, save a poor web designer from starvation by buying jewellery from www.iosilver.co.uk :)

My Little MySpace Jewellery Business Experiment

CRT Vs TFT Monitors

November 28, 2006, by No comments yet

I’ve recently upgraded to a dual monitor system which combines both a CRT and TFT monitor. Ive done this, not as a financial decision, but because both types of monitors display images very differently and as a web designer it pays to be able to see a project from your customers point of view, whatever technology they’re using.

I should really calibrate both monitors using some expensive calibration tools, but because the lay person doesn’t have access to this technology, so i’m not going to.

The main different I’ve noticed is that my TFT monitor (a Ryoku 19″) is much brighter, displaying gray on black with significant contrast even when the gray / black is almost identical. This particular piece of artwork when viewed on CRT just looks black.

CRT Vs TFT Monitors

Sneaker Pimps

November 10, 2006, by No comments yet

www.davewhite.me.uk/index.jsp?navSelect=sneakers&page=2

Heres some simply stunning "sneaker art" from artist Dave White. Its simply amazing… i love the tonal backgrounds and sharp contrasting accent which demonstrates a really stylish sense of colour.

I’m also attracted by the abstract nature in which these images are painted – Nike should definitely do something with these guys as all i have in my head is some amazing 3d twist on whats shown here (i wish i had the talent, not just the vision for these things.)

Sneaker Pimps

Image Labeler the Google Image Tag Game

October 3, 2006, by No comments yet

Google have created a new online game called Google Imager. This game pits you against another random contestant giving images keywords. Its a good game, quick to play and rewarding, tho i suspect many other people playing are a little slow witted as they take AGES to add in their terms and pass on some really easy images without trying.

Why would Google invest the time, bandwidth and money in such a game? I think they’re experimenting with tag clouds and meta data for their Google image search which currently relies heavily on alt tags for representation. Keep your eyes peeled for developments in Google images, Picassa and other maybe new products?

http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

Image Labeler the Google Image Tag Game

CSS – Center Unordered List UL/LI Based Menu

September 28, 2006, by 35 comments

Call me stupid, but i’ve always been told that you can’t center the contents of an unordered list as used in the footer menu for many websites (maybe that goes to show that many people don’t know what they’re on about?) the solution just popped into my head – try it for your self!

styles:

#footer{text-align:center;list-style:none}
#footer li{display:inline}

HTML

<ul id=”footer”>
<li><a href=”1.asp”>Link 1</a></li>
<li><a href=”2n.asp”>Link 2</a></li>
<li><a href=”3.asp”>Link 3</a></li>
</ul>

Simple stuff indeed!

CSS Center Unordered List UL/LI Based Menu

Googles SEO Trainer Tells SEO’s Not to Attend His Classes

September 7, 2006, by No comments yet

In the US Google is offering SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) courses for just $30. Wow, amazing you might think, but actually you’d be wrong.
Googles’ own SEO trainer, Adam Lasnik, has posted on webmasterworld.com (login required), that the training on offer covers very basic seo techniques.

“I think that the generally very-tech-savvy WebmasterWorld audience would be disappointed with the depth and focus of information presented. The primary emphasis will be on accessibility, not ranking, and the needs (and limitations) of government sites are often quite distinct from those of for-profit sites.”

So despite the advertisement of SEO, what they’re actually teaching is how to design a better, more functional and usable website, nothing to do with SEO / SEM at all!

So the general census is that you should all save your $30 and spend it on Adwords!

Googles SEO Trainer Tells SEOs Not to Attend His Classes

Internet Security: Browzar – the portable web browser that secures your privacy

September 1, 2006, by No comments yet

There’s (yet another) web browser in town, this time, instead of being feature packed, it has most popular features stripped out of it. Why? Because its main function is to allow you to surf the net when you’re out and about without leaving tracks on the host computer. So theres no cookies, no history, no auto fill, no… well pretty much anything apart from bare bones web surfing.

So whats the use?

Well, for a starter, its portable, contained in one small downloadable file that leaves more than enough space on your USB Pen-drive for whatever, and because its portable, it doesn’t need installing, meaning it can be run straight from the pen-drive (or whatever).

It also means that whilst your over at work/mums/girlfriends house/cybercafe you can quickly check your private email, log into your online bank or whatever else without leaving data on the computer.

What it doesn’t do is hide your tracks online, so if you’re up to no good, then the authoraties can still trace back to you.

If you’re interested download it for free, its spyware free and all the other usual assurances from browzar.com

Internet Security: Browzar the portable web browser that secures your privacy

Web Design Tip : Design it all on one page

August 25, 2006, by No comments yet

Heres a handy tip that has saved me hours of to-ing and fro-ing.

When you’re putting together a website from content supplied (content not home page) do it all in one page using H1 tags (or whatever you feel is appropriate) to separate the capsules of content (pages) create all the navigation inline, stack the content on top of each other and create all the forms to create ONE VERY LONG PAGE.

Whilst you’re doing this, split out all the chunks of data related to sections (i.e. navigation) and add them in as include files, again stacked on top of each other, create all of the javascript and input all of the design, then once you’re happy, simply break it down into its constituant pages.

You’ll find it helps retain consistency of the design throughout the site, helps uniformalise and minimise the css.

When you get some amendments (this could be months later) again open your content template, make the changes and split out the new sections… You’ll find it makes creating and amending websites really simple!

Web Design Tip : Design it all on one page