Should I meet your web agency face to face?

The power of the internet has meant that a large number of web agencies don’t ever actually meet their clients with all work done over the phone or even more commonly these days, by email. Is this good, bad or indifferent?

When looking for a web agency or even a web designer direct why should you meet them when you know exactly what you want? You can simply send the web agency a web design brief and ask them to proceed? I mean this will save you or the company time travelling to meet.

It is a fair point but at James Blake Internet (JBi) we believe that something is missing if you don’t meet you client face to face prior to working on the project and we will give 3 simple reasons why.

1) Web design – this is subjective and sometimes to explain your vision for your business website over the phone, is not easy and sometimes the detail can be lost in translation. What better way than explaining to you web designer direct, showing the benchmarking sites and colours you like and removing all the ambiguity?

2) Web development – Often when looking at websites for businesses the client is looking not just for building the website but also for ideas and feedback direct from their web developer. Again, a full understanding of the vision will really help the client get the best out of their web design agency. For instance with a content management system (CMS), what aspects of the site would you like to control? Why should your business not control the whole website? For ecommerce stores, what about some of the extra functionality that can make the difference between and on-line sale and a drop off.

3) Human contact – Working on a website takes time and some business websites are complex and the project can run. This means that your account manager will need constant contact with your web agency. Surely it is better to know who you are dealing with and build a relationship with them? Go for a coffee and let them know get to know you and what you tastes are, it can only help the project.

Here at James Blake Internet we try and meet as many of our clients as possible. We are based in Finchley North London so we have easy access to all clients in central London as well as in Hertfordshire, Essex, Middlesex and Berkshire. In fact if you business is located on our doorstep say in Barnet, Golders green, Hampstead, whetstone, Southgate etc then you have no excuse !! We are honestly not that bad to meet!

The act of Googling oneself has become one of our favourite guilty pleasures in this new digital age. We suppose it is an activity enjoyed by many but admitted by few. The reason people search for themselves is that they are curious about what other people will see when they search for their names.

We are all a little curious to ponder on what kind of information is circulating in the digital world about us, even worse, what if there is an inaccurate detail posted about us??.Learning how to perform a complete search for yourself with Google therefore makes sense in a world where everything is online (well almost!!)

What does Google have to say about you and how you could control it- is important to know and we need to understand this:

Listing Your Name:

First of all, make sure that you are among the top people in a search for your name. This is not so difficult when you have an unusual name but slightly harder when you have a more common name like Lisa Sullivan! If you do have a unique or less common name, a moderate amount of online activity will put you above the handful of people with the same name. On the other hand, if you have a familiar name, like Steve Palmer, you have to work especially hard to even be on the first page of listings since there are many more Steve Palmer’s active online.

For those who wish to increase their digital footprint, building and optimising a website helps in increasing the visibility. Social media sites are also a great way to start, so it is a good idea to have and maintain an active profile on several of the popular networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter etc

In order to assist people in googling their names, Google has introduced ‘Google Profiles’, which helps people to control how they will appear in Google searches for their names. You just need to create a profile and point it to other relevant sites for those looking for you. The Google profile provides you with a personalised page on which you can include links to your blog, Twitter feed or company website, plus share online photos and link to your other profiles on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

The more information you add to your Google profile, the higher your page is likely to be ranked on a Google search for your name and associated keywords.

Eliminating Unwanted Information

Even though you appear among the top most search results for your name or even if you come out first on the list, what comes up against your name might not be to your liking. What do you do?

There may be information about you which is incomplete or inaccurate. It is therefore important to take steps to rectify the situation. Contacting the website or company responsible for the error is often all it takes. In order to remove any obsolete information you could simply contact the people in charge of administering the space and ask them to remove or update the material.

Importance:

The ready availability of information on the Internet makes it easy for people to do free basic background checks on you or on other people before entering into business relationships. This is something you too should definitely do yourself before hiring anybody as an employee, consultant, or contractor or before entering into a business relationship.

So even though you have updated the information about you on the web and have taken measures to increase your search listings, you should maintain your online footprints by periodically performing searches on your name. Once a month is more than enough to ensure that your good name remains unblemished.

So take the next 2 minutes to run a Google search, or Yahoo or any search provider of your choice, and see what comes up

Not everyone is aware but the word “blog” is actually a shortened form of “web log” and it stands for a website that keeps a log of people’s thoughts, their actions, and their reactions to other people’s thoughts and actions.

Business blogs enable companies to create powerful personal relationships, with their existing and future customers. Blogs not only add a personal and human face to your business but also serves several purposes like providing required and important information about the company to your clients, highlighting your businesses products, services and activities and also attracts new visitors to the website. Many business blogs also keep their readers up to date on industry news and happenings in their specific business sector.

Not only this, a blog can also enhance the website rankings on search engines since search engines love fresh content and lots of incoming links.This means that blogs and search engines complement each other very nicely!

Setting up the blog and structuring it properly is important too, contact James Blake Internet team to assist you on this.

For professional SEO services, please visit our website www.jamesblakeinternet.com. If you have any questions regarding this blog, feel free to post a comment.

Social media marketing can be a phenomenal marketing channel for small businesses to exploit. It is a great example of how you can effectively communicate your message to a targeted audience.

The benefit of social media for companies is impossible to ignore and in order to help our web design business clients at James Blake Internet (JBI) achieve the best possible results through this channel; we have laid out five key important points that are essential to understand and effectively utilise this marketing angle:

1.Your brand or company should take a holistic, goal-oriented and authentic approach to social media marketing, rather than focusing on any one platform or method.

Every company, brand or product could be and should be “social”. Conversations about almost every brand and related products are happening everywhere, you just need to be a part of that conversation to gain the maximum benefit out of it. Explain your brand and approach without preaching or sounding like an instruction manual.

2.Use the tools available to reach to your target audience. One of the best ways for small businesses to leverage social media marketing is to use various social networks in combination with each other. The examples below helps us in understanding the marketing mix for a effective and efficient social marketing:

• Connect your Twitter account to Facebook ( or the other way round).This will let you leverage your time on Twitter and will also update your Facebook fans.

• Connect your LinkedIn profile to your Word Press blog. This will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with your most recent blog posts and hence reach to the desired audience.

• Integrate Twitter or Facebook tools onto your website. The use of ‘ShareThis’ tool enables readers to quickly share content on multiple social networks.

We need to keep in mind that not all social networks will make sense for every business. Learn which networks are best for your on-line business strategy and find ways to leverage combinations of those networks to make your marketing more effective.

3.Posting relevant content is important. Remaining true to your brand promise is the best way to approach social media. Utilise your brand promise as guiding principles across all your social media efforts. It should be reflected in the content created, the tone used, and the promotional programs being launched.

Though more attention is focused on social networks than on company blogs these days, however, blogs still continue to offer great value for small businesses as they help in listening, learning and engaging in conversations with your customers and as we know understanding your customers requirements is half the battle!

4.Make promotions fun. Marketing is not a campaign but a commitment. In order to build long-term relationships with your clients you need to invest in them genuinely..

A social media programme is a commitment to engage and communicate with clients when and where they want to communicate.

5.Attention to details matters since much of social media marketing is human capital it involves more thinking and execution.

The best way to start a social media campaign is by listening.Set up Google Alerts to look for conversations about your brand or product.Then participate in the conversation and just remember to be authentic, honest and transparent.

A brand which is active on social media and interacts with its clients will carry more credibility and rally more supporters in the future.

If you are a serious Internet Entrepreneur, your website should be a direct reflection of you and your business. Creating a professional website takes a great deal of time and effort. The seven most important elements for online success, as there is much more to take into consideration than design, are:

1.Have a professional looking website:

If you are serious about creating a successful business which will stand the test of time, then you need to have your own “virtual presence”.

Your website is the most important sales tool you have. A professional website should be pleasing to the eyes, well organised, easy to navigate and load quickly.

2.Effective Content:

Your words are the entire foundation of your business. Whether it is your website, sales letters or advertisements, words play a major role in determining your success. The following details must be kept in mind while content writing:

Attention - Use a powerful headline that demands attention
Interest - Intrigue and create curiosity
Detail - Provide details about your product or service
Action - Call for action, phone, email, visit office or dynamic contact form.

3.Traffic Drivers:

Create a steady stream of traffic to your website. Give your visitors a reason to visit and continue to visit in the future. Blend your content in with the focus of your website and update it on a regular basis.

4. Search Engine Optimisation:

Design the website to rank high in the Search Engines. This involves much more than just including META tags. KEYWORDS, TITLE, IMAGE ALT tags, Text and the overall design, all play an important role in determining how your website will rank.

5.Reliance:

The visitors should know who you are. Provide complete information with respect to your company including, address, phone number and email addresses to request information and support.

Also, inform the visitors about their privacy through pages like Privacy Statement, Privacy Policy etc and let your visitors know how will their personal information collected through the website will be secured or used.

6. Gain Confidence:

Gain your visitors trust by displaying customer testimonials. This will help in boosting the potential customers’ confidence in you and your products or services.

7. Patience:

Be realistic in terms of your expectations. Online business can bring you a considerable income, but it needs investment of time and effort from you.

A professional website specifically designed to sell is one of the most important factors in determining your success. Take your time and make sure you’re looking at the complete picture before you begin as the success depends on it.

One of the most annoying things when you have a website is that you think you have just received a new lead and a chance to sell and it turns out to be spam! Someone asking you to buy some search engine optimisation (SEO) service in Bulgaria or something (you would of course only use James Blake Internet!!!)

One of the easiest way to stop this is to use a CAPTCHA on your website. This is where you go to register on someone’s website and they ask you to copy the letters and numbers before you press submit. Can be annoying for the user but very important as it shows the company that a human and not a computer actually entered the details and the lead is likely (hopefully) to be genuine.

CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text but most computer programs can’t:

The term CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University.

CAPTCHAs have several applications such as
• Blogs - Most bloggers are familiar with blogs that have bogus comments, mainly to help them get search engine ranking. With CAPTCHA spammers are prevented and you can even avoid registration before use.
• Website Registration. All forms and sign-ups that are free should have CATCHA to keep only genuine users signing up !.
• Online Polls. Without CAPTCHA these polls can be easily manipulated. For example in this election if a poll without CAPTCHA asked the question “Who is going to win this election?” Each party could in theory build programmes to keep voting..

There are many other CAPTCHA implementations, some better than others. Please speak to us at James Blake Internet (JBI) and let us guide you

As part of our monthly features, we caught up with Peter Sumner owner of SP education Educational services Ltd (www.speducationalservices.com)to discuss his business and web experience.

SP Educational Services work in the education sector and James Blake Internet developed them a new on-line ecommerce site to help sell their products to a wide community.

Hi Peter

1) Can you tell us a little about your business?
The business was started in the year 2000 by myself and my sister, Laura Pooles. Laura and I are both practising headteachers of primary schools. All our materials are written by teachers who are still working as teachers (many companies use ex-teachers who very quickly lose touch with current educational practice).

SP of SP Educational Services stands for Sumner/ Pooles.

We started the business because Laura noticed a gap in the education market - the need for assessments to accompany the original Maths Numeracy Framework. The assessments were updated in 2008 because the Numeracy Framework was redesigned into what is called the Renewed Framework for mathematics. We also now have mental maths tests on CD and in book format to accompany the delivery of the renewed framework for maths.

2) Who should buy your products?
Our biggest market is primary school teachers and teaching assistants. We do however sell to an increasing number of parents who use our materials to help their children with maths. The materials are simple to use and really help diagnose children’s maths strengths and weaknesses. Parents our real future target market as this market is obviously much greater than our teacher market.

3) What are your objectives and plans for your new website?
The objectives for the new website are to present a much more attractive and professional ‘front’ to our business. We also want the site to act as an online shop. So far the feedback has been excellent and several customers have commented on the quality of the website.
Several have also given us feedback on some ways to improve the site and we will be working with James Blake on making these improvements.
We plan to incorporate all our new products into the website. Our next products are a set of Word Problem maths books for Years 1 - 6 in the primary school.

4) How do you use the internet to help your business
The internet has become a great source of advertising for us. We send email mailshots to schools in England and we include a link to our web site. Traffic has increased greatly since we have had the new site.

5) Have you got any tips for people who are considering setting up their own business on-line?
My tip would be to invest in a reputable company to design the website. It is very important that the web designer is patient and will work with the customer until the customer is happy with the site. James Blake were excellent in this respect.

6) Finally for our own records, how was working with the James Blake Team
I was extremely impressed with the James Blake team. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted the site to look like but because of my lack of IT knowledge, I found it difficult to verbalise. David Gelb of James Blake was very helpful and patient and we were both delighted with the end result. The site has really helped our business grow. I would recommend James Blake in terms of the professionalism of the team and in terms of value for money.

We are all very excited here at James Blake Internet as we are launching a fantastic new website this weekend that will really hit the spot for anyone who likes Curries!

The website will allow you to go to your favourite curry house and get fantastic discounts.

We are currently finalising the design and development of the website and we hope for a weekend release.

The website will be advertised in the Daily Mirror newspaper (www.themirror.co.uk)so you wont miss out

We will update you !

James Blake went out live on Scottish Radio station L107 on Tuesday 13th October!

James Blake was invited to take part in a live discussion on the effect the internet can have for businesses in times of recession.

Some of the key areas of discussion were
a) How important is good web design really to the success of your business
b) How do you market your website to ensure that it is found
c) Do you have to spend huge amounts of money on SEO and internet marketing
d) IS the Internet safe for ecommerce?

The James Blake Director, David Gelb held discussions with the L107 radio presenter in a lively discussion.