Ingrid says, “A massive congratulations to Bristol-based Zoe Hoskins, who stepped out of the corporate world 4 years ago, to set up her own web design and online marketing business, Skills on Toast. She now concentrates her expertise on website design, trouble shooting and SEO for established businesses, and the business has grown a massive 300% since only January of this year.

“Zoe has been designing websites for over fifteen years, and passionately believes in never bamboozling her clients with techy speak, and will explain every stage of the process in plain English and goes out of her way to give her clients peace of mind. She is often the one to be called when there are emergency problems that need to be fixed. We could all do with our own expert “Website Whisperer” eh?“

Naturally we at SoT are thrilled with this write up and want to thank Ingrid and everyone at the Entrepreneur’s Circle for their continued support.  You can read the full article on the Business Growth Advisor website.

The post Bristol’s Expert “Website Whisperer” appeared first on Skills on Toast.

Ruth said that, ‘just as one may share their personal impressions of a place by sending a visual postcard, Audio Postcards offers an alternative audio method of sharing impressions of places’.

So far she has put two websites together – Bristol Audio Postcards and Brooklyn Audio Postcards – where you can listen to the ‘3D sonic elements of these binaural audio postcards’, select the one you want to send, record your message, which is added on to the sound clip, and then enter an email address to send your postcard.  The recipient receives an email with a link to listen to the whole thing.

Here at Skills on Toast we absolutely jumped at the chance to be involved in such an original project.  We worked with Ruth on her first website, www.ruthfarrar.com, designed by Laura Hepburn, and we were thrilled to do it all again!

Zoe Hoskins, who led the project for SoT said, ‘It’s not very often that you read a website brief and think, wow, I really want to make this happen!’

So what does the future hold for Ruth Farrar?

After travelling from Bristol to Brooklyn in search of soundmarks (an audio equivalent of landmarks), Ruth is now looking forward to presenting her research findings this year at SBU’s Soundscapes and Territories Conference in New York and the British Association for American Studies Conference in Exeter. She is also currently creating a commissioned sound design piece to celebrate the 800th story of StoryMap – a charming app which maps out Dublin by its stories.

The post Bristol Audio Postcards Launches appeared first on Skills on Toast.

Bring the content up to date



Have you sat down and read the content on your website recently? Is it still accurate and relevant?

Outdated content can quickly put a visitor off. Something as simple as the date on the copyright message can mean the difference between looking fresh and up to date or behind the times, or even defunct!

Think about what message you want to get across and what action you want your site visitors to take when they are there, whether it’s making a purchase or picking up the phone. Then ask yourself as you read through your site, is your message getting across?



Update your images

Change the images on your homepage – make them topical, interesting and relevant. New visitors will be more inclined to have a look and returning visitors will have their attention drawn in that direction.

A really good image can instantly take a dated website from drab to fab!

Check your links

Click on all the links on your site and make sure they go where they are supposed to! Websites get moved and taken down all the time, so make sure none of your links are dead.

Update your software

The chances are that your website uses a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, etc. Make sure all your data is properly backed up and update all the software (CMS and plugins) used on your site. This will help keep it up to date, functioning and keep it secure. Vulnerabilities from older versions of website software are an easy way in for hackers, so keep your site safe and update everything!

Clear the clutter

Delete outdated blog entries, information about old events, the files on your server for that client two years ago – if it’s not being used, get rid of it! 

Have a look through your website menu and see if there’s anything in there that can go or be organised more intuitively. When it comes to menus, the old adage is absolutely correct; less is more!

Help is at hand!

If you want to refresh your website and need a little help, call us today on 0117 230 3322 or email contact@skillsontoast.co.uk.

The post 5 easy ways to give your website a spring clean appeared first on Skills on Toast.

But search engine rankings are not the most important thing when it comes to your website… If that statement comes as a shock, then read on!

If your site doesn’t engage your visitors, if it doesn’t take them by the hand, show them what to do and get them to take some kind of action, be it contacting you or buying from you, then what use is the top spot on Google?  Very little…

So what can you do about it?  Here are three suggestions that could help:

1. Improve your website speed

This is great for your users and the search engines.  Did you know that there is a direct correlation between how long it takes your site to load and how many people leave it straight away?  This great illustration by KissMetrics explains it beautifully.  And Google tends to reward those sites that load quickly.  One way you can test this is using Google PageSpeed Insights – you should be aiming for a score of 80+ and they will recommend changes you can make to improve your score.

2. Use call to action buttons and links

A ‘call to action’ is any statement that makes your user do something – it calls them to take action.  Amazon are masters at this; ‘Order before 12pm and you’ll have this item tomorrow!’ You might already have a great call to action on your homepage, but if it doesn’t sing out to your site visitors, it’s not doing its job.  Try using a different font or colour or making it bold, and use words that get people interested.  They came to your site to do something, you just have to make them do it!

3. Use natural language

Try and make the writing on your site as natural as possible.  In times gone by, you would engineer every sentence to be optimal for those crawlers, to try and make sure they ranked you on the search engines.  That was great for search engines but rubbish for users; now it’s rubbish for both.  Write for your website as you would for any other form of marketing and keep the spammy keywords out of it.  This will ensure that Google views you as a quality site and, more importantly, it’ll make sure you get your message across.

Those are three of our top tips to get people onto your site and engaging and we’ve got lots more where those came from!

Contact us today to talk about your website, or for a free review of how your site is performing*.  Email contact@skillsontoast.co.uk or call 0117 230 3322.

*We’ll only do it for the first 20 requests, so get yours in sharpish!

The post Three ways to make your website work for you appeared first on Skills on Toast.

Web Product Manager, Philippe Dubost has created an online CV in the form of an Amazon page – it’s witty, original and makes you want to instantly pick up the phone and offer him a job.

Take a look for yourself! >>

He’s created quite a buzz and is updating the page constantly – a message has just appeared thanking people for the overwhelming responses he’s had – and his Twitter feed is on fire!

All in all we think this is one of the best pieces of web promotion we’ve seen for a long time – bravo Phillip Dubost!

The post Bravo Philippe Dubost – Working the Web! appeared first on Skills on Toast.