Equally your eCommerce website shouldn’t be messy and cheap looking – you need to build the customer’s trust for them to buy from you. Remember – competitors are only a few clicks away online, not a walk down a different street. Quite amusing video.

We sometimes get asked if we will do “a bit of SEO” for websites that look like they were put together by the owner’s youngest pimply offspring in 1995 and hardly touched since. Typically the website has the seasoned delights of: bad looking and pixellated images riddled with artifacts, unprofessional fonts (see “why you shouldn’t use comic sans“), coloured fonts, hopeless navigation, unbalanced elements, empty pages, broken links, cheesy clichés, boring, nasty, broken, slow, pretentious, confusing, etc, etc.

What I try to get across is that no amount of onsite SEO, offsite backlink building, or social engagement is going to alter the fact that the website is a criminally nasty and cheap design, if it can be called a design – more like a dog’s breakfast.

Should we subsequently and miraculously get the visually unaltered website to number one in Google for their chosen keywords – the bounce rate would be sky high and soon after Sir Google would likely execute the site’s page one visibility forthwith. The increased flow of visitors flocking via Google searches to the monstrosity of a website would feel nauseous within seconds – discouraged by the look of a “cheap classified ad” chock full of design crimes and naive wittering.

So before you think about trying to get your naff looking website to the holy grail number one position in Google search for that oh so lucrative search phrase, ask yourself honestly - does it deserve it?

When you acknowledge the answer is no – then dust off your company cheque book – pay for a complete overhaul of your website design – then we can discuss SEO and integrate it at the same time.

Should you decide to ignore The First Rule of SEO and alternatively be duped by one of the numerous “Outsourced SEO service” (Read: dodgy grey-hat backlink building service) spam emails doing the rounds with every business in England these days (I get about 50-100 a month) and engage an India based SEO ex-spurt to plaster the internet with thousands of incredibly weak backlinks to your own website, on websites with relevancy, neglect and abandonment issues, which have hundreds of other outbound links that dilute yours – and worse could actually penalise you in the eyes of Google and become impossible to remove – then remember, your website still looks shit.

At best you get an increase of visitors with “average time on site” hovering around 3 seconds, at worst your site is removed from Google databases.

As I step down from my soapbox, just think:

The First Rule of SEO – Deserved to be Liked by Google Search – Presentation before Promotion.

Use our Wake up Your Website Service, its for those with old, tired websites in need of an overhaul and some new visitor attention.

Roxbourne.com – Web Design and SEO Consultancy combined – with no outsourcing to India.

Call us now for a chat.

P.S. This post went to number one in Google for the search phrase “The first rule of SEO” within minutes of me posting it.

For customers there’s less disappointment now; as shows are always sell outs and late comers end up missing out – now they can book well in advance from their computers, mobiles, iPads, etc.

Online event ticket booking systems can handle sports, gyms, shows, gigs, running events, etc. They all have the ability to build up a database of customers – for emailing campaigns. And some have the option to add in extras to the buying process – E.G. sell other good at point of sale to increase average customer revenue  – t-shirts, posters, whatever customers might be interested in.

Points to watch out for are – the number of years it took for a new thingamajig to gain 50 million users :

• Radio 38 Years
• TV 13 years
• Internet 4 years
• AND Facebook only took one year to gain 200 million users!

WATCH THIS VIDEO :-

DID you know - Even The Royal Family not only have a Website, they have a YouTube Channel, a Flickr account and Twitter.

DID you know – Children are being named “Facebook” : -

As reported by CNN, a man in Egypt has named his baby daughter Facebook in honor of the role the social  network played in the recent revolution. Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram reports that Gamal Ibrahim gave his daughter the name “to express his joy at the achievements made by the youth.”

The following slideshow also conveys similar facts about the Social Media revolution, if you can call it that.

If you have more than 20 products you really need to have them detailed on an Excel spreadsheet; – top row – product number, name, full description, price, weight, product options, stock quantity, etc.

The spreadsheet data can then be imported into the eCommerce catalog, you then format the descriptions and set up the individual product options. And triple check everything.

The image on the left shows a sample product page – main product photo, title, description, price, optionals – some of which change the price, enlargeable thumbnails of extra photos. Click the image to see the actual webpage.

Work out your packaging and shipping costs for each product too. For the UK – FedEx have different rates for England, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Island, Channel Islands – there isn’t one UK rate.

Brands can make use of the existence of FOMO to fine-tune messaging, offers, contests and more to tap into fears of missing out. Altho there is no cure for the common FOMO, businesses, marketeers and brands can focus on easing it, escalating it, making light of it or even turning it into a positive.

Do you fear your business is missing out by not getting a better website and marketing online effectively? – If you think so – call me on +44 (0) 1543-415423

See the SLIDESHOW:

From www.jwtintelligence.com by Christine Miranda:

Our May 2011 trend report takes a close look at FOMO, a four-letter acronym that has come to so fittingly characterize our radically transparent, real-time, one-upping, hashtag-ridden and, let’s face it, generally overwhelming world.

For those unfamiliar with the expression, that’s Fear Of Missing Out, the uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling you’re missing out—that your peers are doing, in the know about or in possession of more or something better than you.

While we’ve always had a fear of missing out, today it’s exploding with the proliferation of real-time, location-based and social media tools. We’re exposed more than ever before to what others around us are doing, and we’re filled with a gnawing uncertainty about whether we’ve made the right choice about what to do or where to be—not just in a given moment but in stages of our lives as well. Our friends aren’t helping, touting their every FOMO-worthy move on the go.

This report identifies which cohort is most prone to FOMO and how they respond to it, spotlights how FOMO is manifesting in the zeitgeist, and looks at the wide-ranging potential for brands seeking to tap into FOMO.

The report includes insights from interviews with experts and influencers in technology and academia and results of a quantitative study conducted in the U.S. and the U.K. Using SONAR™, JWT’s proprietary online tool, the survey was conducted from March 4-15, 2011, among 590 Americans and 434 Britons aged 18-plus; we also polled 87 teens aged 13-17 residing in the homes of adults surveyed. We also consulted our internal Bing team, who had carried out its own strategic exploration of FOMO back in February.

Masai / Omega manufacture a range of high quality Land Rover accessories. In addition to web and graphic design Masai wanted an instructional video, an eCommerce system and some copy writing too.

KP Events needed their old website modernised – in fact both clients took advantage of our excellent Wake Up Your Website Service.

The KP Events website now looks radically different and the owners are 100% happy. The brief was basically – make it blue, lively, modern, neat, clearer navigation, and make the back-end easier to use too.

For both sites we did a lot work in Photoshop – cleaning up photos, making graphics, cleaning logos, making sprites and route maps, etc. Also created a few PDFs.

For both website designs we used the highly customisable and flexible WordPress content management system, and we manage all these site on an ongoing basis – regularly adding new content, new events, new products, updates, etc.

Let’s use the analogy of custom building a desirable house……

If you wanted an impressive and desirable custom designed home – you’d hire an Architect to design and manage the project.

• You would need to set out a realistic financial budget capable of producing the desired results
• You would have to decide on and provide an extensive project brief and get involved in ongoing discussions.
• Realise that there’s plenty to do – crucial research, comparison, compromises and decisions over cost, quality, practicality, efficiency and improvements.
• Understand that some things cannot be controlled by either you or the Architect/Manager e.g. the weather, 3rd party contractor reliability, availability, etc – so you should be prepared for delays and re-adjusted costs, consider and deal with amendments and corrections.

So if you have high expectations for your website -

1. Decide what exactly you want your website to achieve
2. Write a Marketing Plan with a SWOT analysis
3. Prioritise
4. Work out a realistic budget
5. Hire a hard-working, pro-active and dynamic web designer/manager
6. Provide detailed, effective and ongoing briefing
7. Be flexible

In my written instructions for each application, boxes you need to click for each step are in italics.

1. General Internet Speed: You can tweak your windows registry using TCP Optimizer.

a) SpeedGuide.net TCP Optimizer *Doesnt need Installing.
Direct DL Link: http://www.speedguide.net/files/TCPOptimizer.exe
Website: http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

Once it’s open, click Modify All Network Adapters then click the bubble next to optimal settings. Then Slide the connection speed to your match your approximate broadband speed. If you don’t know your broadband speed go to www.speedtest.net. Once done, click apply and reset your computer. (A quick note to remember, all these settings are applied to your specific broadband connection.)

b) Disable QoS Packet Scheduler

This reserves 20% of your bandwidth to windows to download updates etc. It’s not really needed. Go to control panel and then network connections. Right click the connection you’re using for your internet. (It will be “local area connection” if you’re using a cable and “wireless area connection” if you’re using wireless.)  Then click properties. Untick “QoS Packet Scheduler” and click ok.

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2. Torrent Downloading: The best torrent client by far is uTorrent.

a) Download uTorrent 3.1.3 (3.2 Beta gave me very slow download speeds, I’d wait until it’s fully released before you try it)
Direct DL Link: http://www.filehippo.com (Download the latest version)
Website: http://www.utorrent.com/

Go to www.speedtest.net and click “begin test”. You should then get a result like this:
Keep it as a reference to set some options as below.

b) Advanced uTorrent Settings

Get into Preferences (Ctrl + P)  and then go to these sections and make sure the following are ticked:

1. Connection
- Enable UPnP port mapping
- Enable NAT-PMP port mapping
- Add Windows Firewall exception

2. Bandwidth
- Maximum Upload Rate – Set to 80% of your maximum upload so as to not bottleneck your internet when you’re browsing etc.

In my example: Mine speed test came back as 13.21Mbps for upload. So a good upload setting based on that is 1200kB/s which leaves enough for browsing the internet or for other users etc.

Further examples of good settings:
2Mbps – 100-150kb/s
4Mbps – 250-300kb/s
8Mbps – 600-700kb/s

- Number of Connections:
Global

3. Bittorrent
ALL Ticked except “Limit local peer bandwidth”
- Protocol Encryption set to Outgoing: Enabled or Forced. (Play around with this setting) It depends on whether your ISP throttles peer to peer traffic or not.
- Allow incoming legacy connections

4. Advanced
- net.max_halfopen – set it to 80 from 8 and click set.
- peer.disconnect_inactive_interval – set it to 600 from 300 and click set.

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3. Internet Browsing: Stop using Internet Explorer, and get used to a much better, much faster browser. That being Google Chrome.

Google Chrome 18 Beta (Avoid Dev Versions)
Direct DL Link: http://www.filehippo.com
Website: http://www.google.com/chrome

Note*: Alternatively you could try out Firefox, however it is a little slower to run on older computers. On the plus side, it’s very customisable when it comes to add-ons etc.

Firefox 12 Beta
Direct DL Link: http://www.filehippo.com
Website: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html