A few weeks ago I discussed how the rise in tablet PCs and the ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe on the use of Flash meant that if we didn’t make sure our website worked for non-Flash browsers we could be potentially losing customers (here).

Customer experience is everything and if we want to make sure we squeeze every single drop of potential out of a customer visit, we need to make our sites as user-friendly as possible. Of course, there was a bit of a backlash because, regardless of how many people are now using iPads to browse, the vast majority of PC users are still viewing the web with Internet Explorer of which 95% apparently have Flash installed.

But that’s all about to change… Read the rest of this entry »

The SEO newswires have been abuzz lately with the news that JC Penny, a huge department store in the US has been penalised by Google for cheating and using “black hat” SEO techniques to boost rankings for many keywords.  But what did they do and how did they do it? More importantly, how can you ensure you don’t fall into the trap and get penalised yourself?

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Splash pages are utterly pointless. There, I’ve set out my stall and I’m quite proud of my stance.

Now, if everyone believed what I said religiously then I’d firstly not have much to write about here and secondly I’d be a millionaire many times over. I’m not rolling in cash and in the most part people ignore me, so I’d better start explaining my position.

A splash page is a single page that greets the unwary Internet surfer when they visit a web page and it usually (in the least offensive cases) has a nice picture and a ‘click here to enter’ button. What it attempts to do is to impress you with their ability to draw a picture or have a nice animation of a bird or something, I’m not sure exactly why, they just do.

Anyway, in some cases they reach new levels of turpitude by making us listen to some music whilst we scramble across our keyboard for the ‘mute’ button. This usually ends up with my CD being ejected by mistake due to the habit of many laptop manufacturers of making their buttons invisible until touched. Clever, that.

That’s beside the point, what I’m trying to explain is that splash pages are absolutely and without exception an annoying part of the web that I really thought had gone away for good. But they’re still around and appear to be growing in popularity.

But why? What is it with companies who feel they have to inflict their own brand of multi-media hell on those that simply want to have a good look around a site? Why are you doing this to us? WHY?

Even worse are those that insist on using Flash. I like Flash a lot, but only when used sparingly. Flash is superb at getting information across to people in interesting ways and it’s pretty much the best method of viewing multimedia content, but when overused it just gets in the way.

When I view a website I just want to view the information I came to see and then do something with that information. If I have to wait for a flock of seagulls to whizz across the page until a phone number is revealed or even worse – before the page with all the text on can appear then I’m just going to go somewhere else.

And herein lays the rub. People want to get to information quickly and without hindrance and if you put barriers in their way then they will simply go back to the pool of 50-billion or so other websites to find one that does service their needs.

If you have a splash page then do yourself a favour and be done with it. Cast it out into the great trashcan on the web and let your website free so people can enjoy it in all its splendour. Web design doesn’t need splash pages and neither do you!

In the first of our question/answer series, Paul Lacy asks about links to your website and is it all about quantity? Surely quality and relevancy matter too? Well, here is a detailed answer to probably one of the most difficult questions about SEO and link building, hopefully it will help others who have been bogged down by this very question.

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Now this doesn’t happen to me, but i’ve noticed that good looking men and women cause quite a reaction when they walk into a room. Like it or not and basic as it seems, attractive people ‘attract’.

On a slightly (only slightly) deeper level people are attracted to people like them. Could be similar tastes, characteristics, hobbies whatever…

Guess what… this very simple truth works with your marketing too.

Most successful businesses are aware of the power of attraction marketing to generate sales and increase their long term client base.

If this is so simple, why do so many companies get it wrong?

Well, most businesses get it the wrong way around. Through lack of a proper plan, they decide to pursue new clients. A bit like the guys you see in the pub that hassle the pretty women after they’ve had a load of beers.

Even when no-one responds to their letters, emails or phone calls; they carry on regardless blaming the recession for the lack of sales.

Here’s an example of a better way…

We are obviously a web development and SEO company. People find our blog and newsletter reasonably funny, informative and useful. So that could be described as ‘attractive‘. Many people have downloaded our free guide to SEO, which in many cases has helped people generate more sales for free.

SEO is a market full of scamsters. By being open, honest and giving away solid free information, we set ourselves apart. People then link to our site and tell others about downloading our material and joining our newsletter.

When we send out details about SEO seminars we host, people respond well and we fill them because people trust us.

So, without spending anything on ANY traditional forms of advertising, there’s tonnes of people who know all about Calloway Green and our ability to help companies rank high on Google and produce great sales results.

THEN whenever someone who follows us decides they want to embark on a full blown SEO campaign, hopefully they come to us.

Now, does this take more time and effort? Yes.

Does it work better than banging out crappy flyers and emails in a shotgun approach, hoping someone will use your product or service? Yes.

So think about your strategy to become more attractive to your potential customers. Remember, people don’t like to be sold to, but they do like to buy. As I found out today when my wife came home with a new pair of shoes!

As Andy said in his last post, our SEO Birmingham event was a great success. We had a real mix of people from one man bands to Directors of multinational businesses.

We realised that although people are all at a different stages in their online marketing. Some had created their own sites, some had invested a lot on an agency to create them a slick corporate site. BUT… the biggest issue people had was not getting enough traffic.

Without traffic you can’t tell whether your site is working or not…

Without traffic you have no idea how to enhance your site…

Without traffic you can’t build a list of people that you can turn into clients…

THE LIST GOES ON!!

We believe that a website for vanity purposes is a waste of time and money, you must get people there. Not just any people either, you need motivated buyers in your market coming to you first.

At the seminar Andy showed us a load of ways to get the right people onto your site and how to keep them coming back. We’ll be doing the same again on the 25th November 09.

Come and join us.

Looks like we need to be ever alert to the problem of having our passwords stolen and news this week brings even more worry to users of some of the biggest websites on the Internet.

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There’s been a spate of Facebook ‘hacks’ lately that take the form of people sending dodgy links to people in an attempt to grab personal information. They’re usually pretty obvious, but another type of scam is currently doing the rounds that takes advantage of something we’re all very bad at hiding – human nature.

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..yes.

Well, if you are clever and actually use it for what it is and engage with your customers. If you’re the sort that thinks all this Internet malarky is for other people then you won’t, but maybe we should all sit up and listen when a name, a big name announces they’ve made a bit of cash from the social networking site of the moment…

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It’s hard to keep track of everything going on here and our portfolio is sadly lacking our latest success stories (must update it soon!), however, we have this here blog thing and as quite a few people read it (honestly, they do!), I’ll keep you up to date with happenings right here.

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