Tech Bridge Blog|How to make the best use of IT in Business

Checkboxes are a term that we came up with to describe the various factors that make a potential customer into an actual customer. They are the facets of a business that proves its professional nature and encourage a customers trust. A list of the basic checkboxes customers expect is below:

• Business name relevant to products/services
• Business address
• Telephone number
• Website
• Email address that is @website

As you can see, they are pretty basic and as mentioned are now “expected”. These are the “basic” checkboxes that potential customers want to know in order to prove they are dealing with a business. Advanced checkboxes are below, these are the “tippers” that help “tip” the potential customer into an actual customer.

• Professional website
• Actual office or workshop
• Business cards
• Office stationary (letter head, compliment slips, etc)
• More than one staff member
• Telephone attendant “press 1 for x”
• Custom voicemail “thank you for calling x”
• Embroidered clothing or office attire
• Fax number
• Limited company
• VAT registration

Now, you can imagine the business that has all of these checkboxes is a “business” in the eyes of the customer and not someone operating out of a spare bedroom or a possible con artist. At this point the customer trusts your business due to all the effort undertaken dictates an organisation that can provide the products or services they require. However, chances the businesses competitors are of a similar setup, so now you need to have “closer” checkboxes which “close” the deal and turn that potential customer into a actual customer.

• Free advice and recommendations
• Open and friendly discussions
• Straight-forward pricing
• Quick and helpful responses to phone calls and emails
• Jargon-less discussions (or at least explained Jargon)
• USP (unique selling points) e.g. free web hosting
• Aftercare and/or relationship building
• No quibble refunds or returns

Now you have pretty much all the checkboxes that will turn any potential customer into an actual customer. However, you can provided all of these facets and more and still not get a sale. These tends to happen when the customer is more concerned about price than service or quality. But they still might come back to you once they have experienced the “lowest bid” service.

From time to time customers have approached us to enquire about a website. We take them through the initial consultation and discuss the various options, Content Management Systems, Brochure Websites, Search Engine Optimisation and so forth. These facets are all pretty straightforward to discuss, but occasionally during the consultations we hear “we did not think we needed a website, but now as business is slow…” is uttered and the consultation moves from being a straightforward consultation to a discussion about the nature of websites.

To put it bluntly, a website is not a magic bullet. By that I mean, the creation of a new website is unlikely to rapidly boost sales and suddenly generate enquiries. They are a facet of the overall business marketing and at a minimum an information portal about the business.

So ‘getting’ a website is similar to ‘getting’ a new pet, they both need to be looked after and if done so correctly will both provide great returns. Once you have a website, it has to be relevant to your business with content that is not dated. If you have a news page then it needs to have regular news updates otherwise customers might think the company is quiet. There should be a monthly SEO (search engine optimisation) contract in place, powering the ranking of the website towards the top page on Google for your most relevant search terms. The higher the rank, the more users will find you and the more you can turn into customers.

That is why we encourage all web design clients to think about web design in two parts. 1. Getting a great website and 2. Getting new customers to find it.

But if you think that just getting a website will suddenly boost the business during the quiet times, then you have not been properly informed about the nature of websites.

Twitter has had a flash of inspiration to make some money – “promoted tweets”. Time will tell if it is the way to bring in revenue.

Link: http://blog.twitter.com/2010/04/hello-world.html

It sounds great, a friend or family member that can build your website for free or cheaply. Now, what do they say about deals that are too good to be true?

Personal recommendations are one of the cornerstones of good business and hard to ignore if offered from a good friend or family member. But before you accept an offer for a non professional web designer, there are some things to watch out about.

Now if a product is free or cheap then it is usually worth a try as you have little to lose (just make sure to look at the points below).

Recommendations:

• Register the domain name(s) under your details
• Get the web hosting yourself
• Alternately, get FTP details for the hosting account
• Ask to see a completed demo first
• Once complete ask for the source files
• If the website is mainly FLASH, always get the .fla files
• Never pay in full up-front, half on start and half on completion
• Always get proper contact details and ideally an address
• Get any passwords for any systems

Always remember when dealing with informal relationships there is little recourse if a dispute arises. If you follow the recommendations above there is no way for a designer to “hold you over a barrel”.

When dealing with a company, you have more control and typically a contract which can be relied upon if a dispute arises or you are unhappy with the performance.

Later this month, we will write a post about how to deal when a friendly website build that goes wrong.

Should your business be using Twitter? of course the answer is never black and white as it depends upon who you and your customers are.

As you can presume, Twitter has a far higher uptake with the younger generations than the older ones. Partly due to fact that new technologies nearly always being targeted at the younger market but mainly due to the fact celebs are on twitter so people want to get some stardust.

If you are a celeb then Twitter is one of the best ways to reach your target market (again mainly the younger generation). However, if you are a business what good is it? Basically if you have a social networking campaign, it should have a Twitter facet just like it should have a myspace facet and a facebook facet, it is too big to ignore.

Questions you need to ask yourself before launching in Twitter are the following

• Who are my target market?
• What products or services do I have that are of interest?
• Are my products or services regularly updated?

There are other questions, but these are the main three, which we will address in turn.

Who is my target market?
Are they the younger or older generation? if they are younger then it is practically mandatory to have a Twitter account. Because it is another avenue to your target market, though you will also have to have a facebook and myspace account.

What products or services do I have that are of interest?
If you are selling widgets that are pretty standard or provide lagging for pipes then Twitter is never going to reap any serious reward. If your product or service is not interesting then it is unlikely to be of interest to the younger market. However, if it is the latest gadget or energy drink then it should be on Twitter.

Are my products or services regularly updated?
Interesting products are great, now do they change? Twitter is all about updates and status changes, if you products are not updated regularly your tweets will be few and far apart. The average number of tweats a day ranges from 6 to 22 depending upon the area. Though, one or two a day would be acceptable if the tweats are interesting.

Answered “yes” to all of the above? then get over to www.twitter.com and signup. Remember you need to point customers at the account so your website will need updating with a Twitter link.

Also, if you have a flash of inspiration on how Twitter can actually generate revenue, I am sure they would be interested, as at the moment they do not seem to have a clue

People are becoming more technically literate and expect that bit extra from a company when it comes to how it communicates.

The website, as we have previously mentioned, has to inspire trust and confidence but after the website has been visited the relationship with the customer begins. Hence, every interaction with the customer must be uniform in terms of the overall message. e.g. if a customer visits a professionally build website and makes an enquiry, and receive an email from john5@hotmail.com they are likely to question the authenticity of the company. This is in part due to the fact that websites can be built without the company behind them existing and the delude of scams that float about the Internet make users cautious. Now the customer is a little bit more apprehensive (as chances are they to have a personal email account along similar lines and thus can recognise a fellow free account). All the hard work of the website is now called into question and you are in a weaker position as the customer has already formed doubts. 

Don’t let email upset the relationship, email from the domain the customer was on e.g. if they were on www.scotwebdev.com then email from dev@scotwebdev.com as it confirms the authenticity of the company. Now the doubts that could be created by using a personal email address have been averted, it is time to strengthen the company image with a good email signature.

Always end an email with “regards” or “kind regards” as it has become an expected norm for email messages. After you have signed off the email with your name or first name (depends on what level the customer relationship is at) it’s time to add the touch of professionalism. What should follow is the company logo as a .jpg or .gif file. Just search for tutorials on “HTML email signatures” to learn the art of signature generation. The addition of a graphic really boosts the email’s image and now has to be topped off with the standard contact details, address details and possibly a V-Card (virtual contact card).

Following the logo and company details, there are additional guidelines detailed here that came into force in 2006.

Following all the legal requirements and details, it is also a wise precaution to have an email disclaimer along the following lines:

This email and any attachments are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom they has been addressed.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone.

Please contact xxxxxx, if you believe you have received this email in error.

Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of xxxxxx.

Details on email disclaimers are found here along with other helpful documents like staff email policies and general staff Internet usage policies.

As a rule, try not to make the signature too flashy or graphically heavy as it might detract for the content of the email.

Next Entry, Twitter – Twits or Tweets

Right, as you would have read from part 1 you should now have a professional design that inspires trust and confidence in your products/services.

Now we get to the meat of all websites, the content and as they say “Content is King”. Content is the driving force behind every popular website. Be it content generated for that site or user-generated content like facebook and youtube.

So to have a great website you need to have interesting and engaging content. Sounds pretty easy in theory, from experience we have found that content writing is extremely hard if you are not use to it. Fortunatly, we have some tips to help you write your engaging content.

• Don’t try to write interesting and engaging content from the get go (it’s extremely hard) It is better to get something down first then refine it.
• Don’t try to think too much about keywords initially, they can be added to content easier than forming content around them.
• Try to writing content in a team or via a brain storming session. Remember a problem shared is a solved.
• If you have a staff member that enjoys writing, why not let them write the content, you can be the editor.
• When writing your content, put yourself in the mind of your reader, what are they wanting from the content? (information, advice, recommendations, etc)
• Once you have written some content, do not be afraid of letting someone else look at it. It needs to be reviewed as mistakes will not be liked by your readers
• Don’t just trust your spell checker

Next, Secrets to a great website, part 3 of 4 (getting found)

ScotWebDev also employs a copywriter to assist in making dull content shine. Contact them for more details.

There are four factors that make a great website as opposed to a good website or just a website.

1. Professional Design

Never underestimate the graphical design of your website, especially now we are in age of Web 2.0. Web users are now “experienced” when it comes to web surfing and can recognise good websites from bad websites. This is mainly determined via the ‘look’ of a website.

As the first thing a customer sees when they visit a website is its overall design, this has become synonymous with the trust factor of the website. By trust, I am referring to the legitimacy of the website and the usefulness of its information. Both of which you want to keep as high as possible in-order to encourage the users to make the that sale or make contact.

There will be another post on do’s & don’ts of professional design, later. Alternately, you can email us for more details.

Just a brief post to say that backups do not always apply to data.

It’s a good idea to have a backup set of clothes at your office, as I discovered today.

I had a hire car with a neighbour that was parked far too close. Upon entering the car, I heard the wonderful sound of trouser ripping. Fortunately, I had a spare pair of trousers in the office and could quickly change. Of course it had to happen when I was on my way to an important meeting with a new client. A quick phone call to say I would be late and a new pair of trousers and I was on my way.

That’s another good tip, always keep your customer informed if you are going to be delayed.

In the previous post we touched on FLASH websites and someone emailed in to ask for more details.

FLASH was the creation of Macromedia (now Adobe) and is used pretty much everywhere on the web. Its mainly used for banner adverts that you see on almost every major website. FLASH is used to create motion based adverts or entire websites. Typically, movie websites and music websites tend to be entirely in FLASH.

How does FLASH work?
Unlike Static websites and CMS websites, which both combine graphics and content, FLASH websites are all graphical. They are actually movies similar to the ones you see at the cinema (only on a more animated level).

Why use FLASH for websites?
If you are looking to create a more in-depth or “movie like” experience for your web users, FLASH is the easiest option. Hence, its heavy use as banner adverts due to their eye catching motion. Coupled with the small file size for fast loading and you can see hows its popularity has come about.

Problems with FLASH?
There are two main issues with FLASH and both are quite big. 1st is SEO (search engine optimisation), Search Engines cannot process FLASH movies and extract the content from them. As such, they cannot assign relevance and depend more on inward links to determine a sites relevance. The 2nd issue is the length of time it takes to make a FLASH website (again, see why its more used for small adverts). As they are movies files, they are more complicated than Static websites and no where near as dynamic (unless you use cold fusion*) as CMS websites.

How is FLASH best used?
Small adverts or specific areas of a website are the best places to use FLASH in combination with either CMS or Static websites. FLASH also tends to look “at its best” in brochure websites when used subtlety e.g. a slowly rotating series of fading product images.

Anything else worth knowing?
FLASH movies are .fla files which are then published into .swf files. The .swf files are what play on the websites but the .fla file is the master document. If you are getting a website built with FLASH, it’s a good idea to ask for the .fla files once the project is complete. Without the .fla file there is no way to update the FLASH movie.

FLASH is also heavily used for games that you can play in your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc) and its most famous use, at present, is the codec that streams videos on youtube.com.

FLASH areas for websites tends to be used for rotating-banners (see www.stirlingbusinesspanel.org).

Sales Bit – ScotWebDev provides FLASH services and as part of the “Enhanced” design package can incorporate them into a website design.

*Cold Fusion is way too complicated to get into here. email us if you want details.