Web Design Bolton & Internet Marketing Bolton by Jigsaw Internet Solutions

Case Study: Web Standards Redesign with Proven Benefits!

2008-12-04T11:51:11Z

Mike Wayne is an excellent independent driving instructor in Bolton. After knowing Mike for a while I would definitely recommend him to anybody considering learning to drive and I only wish i’d known him when I learnt myself.

Amateur Web Designer

As well as being a great driving instructor, Mike is also a keen amateur web designer. Upon taking a look at Mikes original website I was very impressed with what I saw.

( VIEW ORIGINAL WEBSITE )

Mike obviously has a good understanding of how to put a website together and his content in-particular was excellent which for somebody with no training or professional experience is a credit to him.

Fast Moving Industry

Web design is such a fast moving industry that it’s almost impossible to keep up with all of the latest technologies and practices. Many experienced web design agencies are still using dated techniques so it’s no disrespect to Mike that the one major problem with his website was the way it is coded (constructed ‘under the hood’). The website was built using HTML tables, which were never intended to be used for laying out pages and should only be used for displaying tabular data.

Web Standards

Around 4 or 5 years ago a new and much improved method of building websites became possible. Web standards as they are called are now the only way websites should be created for several reasons including accessibility, search engine optimisation and speed. I won’t go into detail here but please read my blog post on The Benefits Of Web Standards for more information.

Search Engine Benefits

After discussing with Mike the importance of web standards and particularly the benefits he would receive in terms of much higher rankings in search engines (Mike had been having difficulty getting his site listed highly in Google due to the site being built with tables) it was agreed that I would rebuild the website from scratch using web standards.

As I mentioned earlier, I was genuinely impressed with much of Mikes website, particularly his content. I was also conscious of the fact that Mike had put a lot of time and effort into it and was rightly proud of his work.

For that reason we agreed that the redesign would closely match the existing site. Although it was a good opportunity to include some minor improvements and optimise the pages better for the search engines.

Some of these improvements include:-

Switch the sidebar from left to right side. Improving the look of the page and more importantly, as people read from left to right making the content more prominent on the left.
Remove repeated navigation from the bottom of the page. A common practice years ago before users were as comfortable scrolling up and down. These days there are much more benefits to be gained from including important information in the footer instead, such as..
Contact information in footer. From experience and studying site stats I have found that phone numbers and particularly email addresses in footers are very popular with users. Saving them the need to access a separate Contact page.
Retain the sidebar on every page. Mike only displayed the sidebar on the homepage, for design consistency I felt it was important that the other pages had a sidebar too.
Creating a favicon. Favicons are the small logos which appear next to the website address in the bar at the top of your web browser and in the tab bar of browsers like Firefox.

Others included, removing the borders around the main content area to give the page a much cleaner feel, cleaning and simplifying the top navigation bar, moving the image of the L plates in the bin to the bottom of the sidebar and reordering the content to make it flow better and give the page more structure.

( VIEW NEW DESIGN ) or ( VIEW NEW WEBSITE )

Agree To Disagree

Thankfully Mike was happy to agree to all of these changes, unfortunately, the one area we disagreed on was the dotted background. Personally I feel it makes the site look dated and rather than add anything positive to the site, actually distracts attention away from the page itself. But as it’s a minor issue and I was grateful that Mike had accepted all of my other suggestions I was happy to give up on this one point.

Immediate Benefits - Proven Search Engine Results

The benefits of the redesign are already obvious. Less than 2 weeks after making the new website live Mike is already receiving much higher search engine rankings. When I first tried looking for Mikes old website I could only find it by searching for his own name and even then he was only just on page one of Google.

Now a search for ‘Mike Wayne’ returns a much more respectable second position on the front page and the site is already making page 2 for several important search phrases such as ‘driving lessons bolton’ and ‘driving instructor bolton’. This is incredibly fast as search engines work very slowly and it’s usually between 4 - 6 months that maximum benefit from search engine optimisation is seen,

I can confidently predict that Mike will be on the front page for our chosen search terms by early next year, though off current progress probably much sooner.

The Future - Blogs

When discussing web standards with Mike, I also explained how beneficial a blog can be, both for search engine rankings and for building a relationship between his customers and potential new customers. In the end the blog didn’t get finished but I designed the website so that it can (and hopefully will) be easily and cheaply added at a later date.

It was a pleasure to work on Mikes website with him. I’m pleased the the results are immediately obvious and expect them to continue improving. I’m hopeful that the idea of a blog will grow on him as I believe he has lots of great content to offer.

In the mean time, if you are considering learning to drive in the Bolton area you know where to go!

Internet Consultant - Now Available

2008-12-04T11:52:37Z

Recently I realised something which has now opened up exciting new ventures for me and my business.

Web Design Agency - Limitations

I realised that as a relatively small web design agency, we are sometimes limited in the services that we can provide for our clients. Instead of taking on the work anyway and then outsourcing it I felt a better approach for both myself and the client would be to work with them as an independent internet consultant.

The Role Of An Internet Consultant

As an internet consultant I can act independently on behalf of clients. It can be very difficult for clients to identify potential suppliers. Using my experience and contacts I can guide them through their websites development process.

Proven Track Record

I’ve been working as an internet consultant for the past few months and have got a proven track record of improving the websites I work on. I believe this is due to my..

13 years experience online
Skills and experiences from running my agency are easily transferable to role as a consultant
Passion for keeping up to date with the latest trends and technologies
Specialist in blogs and social media as mentioned above
Contacts in many specialised areas due to extensive networking

How I Can Help

If you hire me as a consultant, here are some of the things I can help you with

New and social media
Internet Strategy / Website Strategy
Internet Marketing Strategy
Website Appraisals
Blog Integration
Search Engine Optimisation
Link building
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Website Analytics
Website Design
Development / Bespoke Coding
Training
Affiliate Marketing
E-mail Marketing
Viral Marketing

If you are interested in hiring me as a consultant please contact me here and i’ll be happy to discuss your requirements or answer any further questions.

How Will A Blog Benefit My Business

2008-12-04T11:54:43Z

Blogs are proving to be an amazingly powerful tool for almost all businesses, large and small.

Blogs benefit businesses in a variety of ways including search engine optimisation and branding. Perhaps the most important things a blog brings is a change to build a unique relationship with your customers, allowing them to interact with your business and products/services.

Here are some of the benefits blogging can bring to your business.

Relationship building

A blog is an excellent communication tool between you and your customers. A blog allows you to directly interact with your customers in a modern, personal and approachable way.

Product development

The relationship a blog builds between you and your customers is the better than any customer research money could buy. Your readers will leave you comments and feedback which you can use to develop your product or service.

Offer support

A blog could be used to provide technical support for customers. As they are fully searchable users can find and view help to similar problems in the past, meaning they may never need to contact you. Often other users will help out in the comments as well.

Branding

A blog is perceived as a more genuine, authentic voice for your business and not just ‘marketing speak’. Blogs are ideal for demonstrating yourself as an expert in your industry and giving your business transparency.

Viral Marketing

Blogs are perfect for word-of-mouth marketing. Posts generate responses from readers comments and also other bloggers who will often link to your site. There are many large news sites which exist purely displaying and promoting other peoples blog posts.

Search Engine Optimisation

Blogs are excellent for SEO and always achieve high rankings in Google and other search engines. This is mainly because of the constantly updated fresh content that regular posting and an active community brings. The amount of inbound links you could receive and listings in blog directories and social media sites are all great SEO tools.

We specialise in creating custom designed blogs or integrating a blog into the design of your current website. If you are interested or would like further information please click here for more details or contact us now!

Back! Sorry for the downtime!

2008-07-15T08:07:55Z

I need to make a serious apology to readers of this blog, clients of the main website and anybody else that couldn’t access it on Sunday & Monday.

Digg

This was caused by a totally unexpected and massive spike in traffic to my personal blog fluffypig.com after an article i wrote made it onto the front page of popular social news site Digg.

Please resend email

The servers just could not handle this huge surge in traffic and it was effecting the performance of other sites (including our clients!) stored on the same server. The only fair and sensible thing to do was to take the sites down until the traffic calmed. This also took our email down unfortunately, so if anybody sent anything in the past 48 hours it has not arrived and I would appreciate if you would resend it.

I apologise to anybody that was inconvenienced during this time and will be putting measures into place to ensure that it never happens again.

Read the article

If you would like to read the article in question, it was regarding Apple’s new iPhone Apps and you can read it here.

Upgrade NOW! BBC said so!

2008-07-08T10:09:04Z

Following my last post regarding upgrading from Internet Explorer 6, there is a good related article on the BBC website.

It claims that Internet Explorer users are the slowest to update to the latest version which is proving to be a major security risk. Firefox users are the most likely to keep up to date! (yay!)

According to their figures..

“More than 83% of Firefox users were using the latest, most secure browser version, compared to 65% of Safari users, 56% of Opera users and 47% of Internet Explorer users.”

It’s quite an interesting read and I’m very hopeful that this will convince even more people to finally upgrade from IE6!

You can read the entire article here.

Help Put Internet Explorer 6 Out Of It’s Misery. Please!

2008-06-26T13:36:15Z

If you know any web designers, the chances are you’ve heard them moaning about Internet Explorer 6. It’s one of our favourite pastimes.

The Solution

Lets be a little backwards here and discuss the solution before the problem

Install Any Other Web Browser

That’s it. All you have to do is install ANY other web browser. They are all free and all much better than Internet Explorer 6 (find out how/why later).

You could try Opera, Apple’s Safari or even upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 from Microsoft. Which you can now do even with a ‘slightly not legal’ copy of Windows XP as Microsoft have kindly make it a priority upgrade, even for pirated copies.

Firefox

Any of those choices would be an improvement. Personally I find Firefox to be the best web browser by far. It’s fast, reliable, secure and has the ability too add loads of useful plugins.

So that’s how simple it is. If everybody took just a couple of minutes of their time to install one of these browsers instead of IE6 the internet would be a much better place.

So What’s Wrong With IE6?

Firstly, to be fair to Microsoft, IE6 is 7 years old. Technology has changed drastically in the last 7 years and the web browser is no different. I don’t have a computer from 7 years ago, or a TV or DVD player, so expecting a 7 year old web browser to cut it in today’s world is crazy.

Bugs, bugs bugs…

That’s not to say IE6 was that great even at the time. There are countless bugs and errors in the final release which have never been fixed by Microsoft. We sometimes spend hours hunting down and fixing bugs in Internet Explorer 6. As a company we could reduce our project costs by at least half a day if we didn’t have to support it. Saving our blood pressure and our clients money!

Web Standards

Web Standards are vitally important to all (good) web designers and websites but IE6 implements them very badly. I don’t expect most average users to be particularly bothered how websites are built but if you knew that just ditching IE6 would improve your own experience as well as ours what have you got to loose?

Please Upgrade

You will benefit too, as well as a whole host of new features like RSS feeds, tabbed bookmaking, faster speed and extra security. Almost every modern website will look a lot better too. IE6 doesn’t support transparency very well which can make sites that use it look messy, I have encountered this problem at my personal blog but decided not to support IE6.

If everybody upgrades from IE6 the internet WILL become a better place. Just think what web designers could be doing with their time instead of tracking down and fixing IE6 bugs?

New Site Launched & Rebranded! (Slightly)

2008-06-23T12:24:37Z

Apologies for the lack of posts around here lately! Hopefully you can see that I have not been sunning myself on a beach somewhere! I have been very busy working on the redesign which is now (pretty much) complete whilst juggling many paid client projects.

The previous version of this site had been live for over a year and actually designed almost 2 years ago. As web design is such a fast moving industry so much has changed in those 2 years, both in terms of technology and my own skills.

I have been trying to get this redesign completed for a very long time now, it’s very difficult to turn down paid work to allow time to work on an internal project, although I’m sure I will see the benefits in the long term, at the time it was unpaid work.

Wordpress CMS

The new site uses Wordpress as a complete CMS rather than just the blog as previously (look out for an upcoming blog post detailing my experiences, along with a few tutorials for things i’ve learnt on the way).

Local Clients & Keyword Research

Another change is the domain name, I thought I would take the relaunch as an opportunity to do some SEO research about keywords in domain names & urls (and there’s another future blog post!). So we can now be found at http://www.boltonwebdesign.co.uk.

We’re also looking for attract more local clients than we had been doing. Much of our work is done with clients we never get to meet. For example, our last 3 projects have all been in the South of England, Dorset & Hertfordshire, we do enjoy working with remotely but it’s also great to work with businesses in the local area.

Rebranded… (Slightly!)

The other main difference and the reason the title says ‘rebranded slightly’ is that the site is going to be a lot more personal now. I felt previously it was a bit too corporate and impersonal. As a company we pride ourselves on being friendly and approachable and now hopefully the website will match it.

Just Ask!

If you have any questions about the redesign please feel free to ask, also if you notice any bugs it would be great if you could let me know as i’m sure there are still some to be found!

Thanks to the people who have already contacted me to compliment the new design (basically just in the time it’s taken me to write this post!) Some of those blog posts I mentioned above should be coming soon.

Shaun

How We Built PAINTMYPROPERTY.COM In 10 Steps

2008-06-23T11:09:48Z

Our Web Design Process

We get quite a few emails asking about our web design process. This article describes our process and uses a real example of a project we have just completed for our client PAINTMYPROPERTY.COM. PaintMyProperty are a family run business in Hertfordshire, they complete all types of building work and specialise in restoration and protection of exterior walls.

Step One: Client Worksheet

The first step in our process is to get the client to complete our Project Worksheet. It’s a small document with some initial questions about their company, their current website (if they have one) and what they are looking for in their new website. We learn a lot from this document and it gives the client the chance to define their vision for the project.

Step Two: Current Website Analysis

If the client has a current website we will visit and complete a Website Analysis Report where we note what we like about the current site and what we believe needs improving. PMP did have an existing site; some of the comments we made were;

“The first thing I noticed was that it’s not immediately obvious what your company actually does” “The ‘ring now for a free quote’ box does not stand out enough. It needs to be highlighted to make it more prominent as I assume the main purpose of the site is to get users to call for a quote.” “The before and after examples are very poorly presented. They are a vital tool in selling your service.”

Step Three: Client Discussions

Once completed we compare with what the client had to say about their existing site. We will then discuss both sets of results with the client, sometimes face to face, on this occasion over the phone as we are 300 miles apart!

Following those discussion we email the client a project specification document which explains what the project will include, how much it will cost and approximate time milestones. We also send an invoice for 50% of the cost of the project.

Step Four: Planning (Use paper!)

We begin planning every website on paper. The first task is to gather all of the content from the client and group it into relevant sections. One of the main problems with the previous PMP site was poor page names and badly organised content. We believe that it’s vital to spend time getting this right at the start of a project. The clients previous site had a number of irrelevant pages including a recruitment form, which was never used, and a whole page linked from the main navigation about a type of paint. We suggested that these pages are removed and replaced with a page called ‘What We Do’ which clearly identifies the service they provide and a page for Customer Testimonials as we believe that they add huge value to this kind of business.

Step Five: Sketch Layout Ideas (Still no computer!)

Once we have page names and the content for each page we begin to sketch ideas for site layout. Before we focus on the design of the site we include the most important features, which are navigation and branding. We decided to go for horizontal navigation directly underneath the logo and contact information. We also decided to go for a 2 column layout with a large column for the main content and a smaller sidebar for additional information and links. The layout was completed with a small footer.

Step Six: Logo Design & Colour Scheme

Once the planning was complete we needed to design a logo and come up with a colour scheme. We wanted a logo that directly represented the company name and decided to go for a house being painted by 2 men. We chose green as it has strong emotional correspondence with safety and suggests stability, which we felt was important as PMPs customers would be trusting them with their homes. The client was unsure about using green when we suggested it but luckily they loved the finished logo. The orange/brown colour is a complementary colour picked using colour theory and a colour wheel.

Step Seven: Build the website (HTML & CSS)

When the logo was complete we began to work on the website. We no longer create mockups in Photoshop and start building the site directly with HTML & CSS. We code all of our sites by hand using Coda for the Mac. We decided to use a black header to add contrast to the logo, to keep the main content area fresh and clean by using a white background and a toned down version of the green from the logo for the footer. The navigation bar would be the same orange/brown as from the logo. From the previous sites log file we determined that there was a high number of visitors still using 800×600 screen resolutions. This is unusual and we usually design sites at 1024×768 but we did not want to alienate existing visitors so we designed the site at 800×600.

Step Eight: Content Population

The sidebar of each page would contain links to other areas of the site or highlight important information such as the areas PMP cover or their free quote offer. We also decided to feature a different quote from the client testimonials on each page in the sidebar and on pages other than the home page to have a small before and after example of a job PMP has completed with a link to the gallery.

Gallery

The Gallery was one of the most important areas of the redesign. For a business like Paintmyproperty the best way to sell their business is by showing real examples. Some of the before and after pictures show an amazing transformation in the properties they have worked on. The designer of the previous site had completely missed this. We organized the gallery into 2 main sections, Commercial and Residential and then into smaller subsections such as Renovation and Decorating. We featured 3 photographs for most properties, before, during and after shots. We felt it was important that the photos were displayed next to each other to show the progression so we kept them as small thumbnails; you can click on the thumbnails to view a larger photo in more detail and also skip forwards and backwards between the large photos.

Self-Cleaning Paint!

PaintMyProperty has recently begun using a self-cleaning paint. As well as being an exciting new product, it has also been featured on Grand Designs (A Channel 4 show in the UK) and there is a bit of a buzz around it on internet forums dedicated to home improvements. To capitalise on this interest we created a page dedicated to the product which is search engine optimised to attract visitors interested in the product to the site. The page also features embedded YouTube video of Kevin McCloud demonstrating the product on Grand Designs.

Step Nine: Testing & Client Approval

Once all of the pages were complete and the content populated we uploaded to a test site for the client to view and approve. We test in a variety of different web browsers and operating systems. The client makes a few alterations and suggestions which we happily implement.

Step Ten: Going LIVE

Once the client is 100% happy we transfer the site to their original domain http://www.paintmyproperty.com . We send an invoice for the remaining 50% of the fee along with information about using our website statistics packages and accessing the included email addresses.

We hope that you have found this insight into our web design process interesting, we realise that it will vary from the way other web designers work and would be interested in your comments.

Future Of Web Design 2008

2008-05-05T00:21:10Z

Recently I attended the ‘Future Of Web Design 2008’ conference in London. Although the event is primarily aimed at web designers and developers I felt that it would interest many website owners too. You can read my report and thoughts on the event over at my personal blog http://www.fluffypig.com. Part 1 is here and Part 2 here.

10 Tips To Master Google AdWords

2008-11-06T13:55:36Z

Google AdWords is Googles Pay Per Click advertising service. Yahoo and Microsoft also have PPC services and most of this post applies equally to all 3 companies.

The following information is offered as advice and best practices to help you make the most of Google AdWords. It’s important to understand that Pay Per Click advertising can be very expensive if done incorrectly. Whilst we actively encourage people (including our own clients) to try Google AdWords for themselves we cannot be held responsible for any costs you may incur.

We do offer an AdWords/PPC management service, if you are interested please see our Internet Marketing page for further information.

What is PPC?

Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns provide instant results and a clearly measurable return on investment. They involve bidding for high positions in search engines based on specific key word searches. PPC is so effective because your advert is only displayed to users who are already interested in your type of produce/service and you only pay when a user actually visits your site.

That being said, it’s also very easy to waste a lot of money with PPC if you are targeting the wrong people or not attracting the right people. The following 10 tips will help to perfect your PPC campaign.

Use Attention Grabbing Words

Start your headline with an attention grabbing word such as SALE! or FREE! etc…

Include Keywords In Your Ad

Include targeted keywords in the headline and description of your ad. Google highlights searched keywords in bold which will catch a users attention as they scan their search results.

Use ‘call to action’ Phrases

A call to action tells users to do something. Use phrases such as:

‘Free Trial’
‘Call Now’
‘Register Today’
‘Limited Time Only’
‘Find Out More’

Remove Common Words

Remove as many common words as possible. Usually works such as ‘an, in, of, it’ etc.. do not need to be in the ad.

Include the price in your ad

Many advertisers try to keep the price from customers for as long as possible. When it comes to Pay Per Click you want as high a conversion rate as possible. Displaying the price may well reduce your click through ratio but will improve your conversion ratio and save costs from customers who would never have bought.

Use Negative Match Keywords

Negative match is one of the most underused aspects of AdWords, they can be vital in improving your click-through ratio and reducing wasted cost. Negative keywords are entered with a minus (-) before the word and they prevent your ads from showing for searches containing that term. For example ‘-cheap’ would filter out users searching for “cheap car sales”.

Refine Your Keywords

Using square brackets around your keywords will only show your ad when the exact phrase within the brackets is searched. For example [car sales bolton], without the square brackets the ad would be displayed to any search with the words ‘car’ and/or ’sales’. Such as “car sales london” or “car sales Glasgow”.

Target the right audience

Google allows you to select which countries and languages you want to target your ads at. If you don’t operate internationally only target your own country, if you provide a face to face service you may only want to target your local area. Perhaps you could exclude all countries who do not speak English.

Test Multiple Ads

Always test at least 2 adds simultaneously. Track the statistics and replace the ad with the worst conversion rate for a slightly different one. You should repeat this cycle indefinitely to achieve the highest conversion rate possible.

Link Ads To Relevant Landing Pages

If your ad is for a specific product or service link to the relevant part of your website rather than your home page. Make sure the page contains relevant and useful information to help convert the customer.