Coast Digital Blog

For many business, it has been a tough year that has required significant sacrifices, quick-thinking and patience.

If you are in business, the question on your mind will be whether 2010 will be as challenging, or whether it will create a kinder environment. Only time will tell, but if you haven’t started to plan then it’s definitely the moment to do so.

These are my top ten tips for businesses that need to address their planning for next year. You may have your own priorities – so be sure to share them in the comments.

1. Don’t underestimate the power of engagement

If you want to generate a lot of positive consumer behaviour, you must communicate with your target audience. You can do this by using any of the four main engagement techniques (i.e. content, message, platform and experience), but be sure to record and evaluate the response as this will shape the way you present your brand to a mass audience. Your sole objective should be brand engagement.

2. The new generation of consumers expects a great deal more

Too many brands these days are oblivious when it comes to assessing what their customers want. If yours is one of them, revenue will be slipping through your fingers.

Consumers snap up the latest pocket-technology and web wizardry and, if your business acts intelligently on this trend, you should soon introduce lucrative and profitable new revenue channels. Businesses simply have to become more savvy about the digital world – mobile devices and evolved web technology are quickly going to be central to the way we do business.

3. Green is the new black

Climate change and the environment are no longer seen as fringe issues, and your business and brand need to speak and act green. Your environmental activity also needs to be authentic, sincere and likeable – and if it’s not, consumers will give their business to your competitors. Green issues will be more crucial than ever to brand promotion in 2010.

4. Price is more important than ever.

Businesses that failed to adapt during the recession, particularly by failing to change their pricing strategy, usually lost sales. In 2010 you will need to be kind to customers with competitive pricing, and in return you will build up brand loyalty. As many companies have found in recent months, if you don’t cultivate a loyal customer base you could easily go bust.

5. The ‘Three Simplicities’ – websites that are simple to find, simple to understand and simple to use

If a website is simple to find, simple to understand and simple to use, then it will be simple to buy from. By all means focus on price, promotion and brand – but if you don’t keep your website simple, your eBasket will leach sales like a colander. Talk to a web design agency if you need help.

6. Don’t make assumptions about your target audience – behaviour is what matters

There’s no need for generic audience profiling these days. With tools such as Google Analytics and social media platforms, you can tailor your planning to your actual audience. If you interrogate your data properly, then you will have a major competitive advantage – but do employ specialists who have necessary skills in disciplines like web analytics and competitor benchmarking.

7. Give customers that little bit extra

Consumers love knowing they are getting more bang for their buck, so if your brand adds extra value compared to your competitors, then they are more likely to choose you. Adding value can also be a much better option than price slashing, which can spark off detrimental price wars.

8. Give customers customisation and control

Whether it’s a product or a service, customisation options are becoming more visible than before.  With many luxuries raised to the status of essentials (e.g. iPods, mobile phones, laptops etc), you need strategies to help buyers personalise their purchases (e.g. offer different colours or cases).

This technique has migrated to the services industry and is strong within the online environment and it’s an effective way to generate a buzz about a product and increase sales.

9. Bring your marketing activity together

Culturally, marketing activity tends to be conceptualised, developed and executed within its department (offline, online, digital, PR), ignoring the activities being created within the other departments. This often results in campaigns that have very little (if any) synergy, which is a strategic no-no. Lack of communication can also result in mixed messages, which confuse your audience – to the detriment of your brand. Bring departments together more often and more intelligently and your marketing will improve significantly.

10. Affinity marketing will see brands coming together for a common cause – more sales

Affinity marketing that brings complementary brands together is nothing new, but in the UK is has predominantly taken place within the ‘white labelling’ sector – mainly supermarkets and financial organisations. However, over the past year a growing number of smaller businesses have joined forces to offer consumers more enticing offerings.

This is a great area to explore, and if the partnership makes sense to your target audience then the potential benefits can be huge. Activity costs can also be split, making it an economical and increasingly popular strategy.  

Summary

2010 will definitely be a challenging and aggressive year for businesses, particularly as many will want to compensate for the recent downturn and will be competing against new firms that have capitalised on recent opportunities. Although we can’t predict exactly what the commercial climate will throw at the business sector, logical and strategic planning is essential – and if that requires the help of an online marketing agency, then it’s worth talking to one now.

What are your business aims for 2010? Leave your comments below or contact us to discuss your digital marketing plans.

When asked to define their relationship with their company’s website, most people will fall into one of two distinct camps: it’s either a perfect partnership or a constant battle.

A stalemate situation

It’s a fact of life that some sites are more user-friendly than others; and if your company’s website has been built on an inferior CMS (content management system), the task of maintaining it will continue to be a daily battle until you take action.

Whilst most modern websites have a CMS that allows administrators to update content with a few clicks of a mouse and taps on a keyboard, you would be surprised how many people don’t have access to the ‘back end’ of their company’s site.

This leaves them with no choice but to pay an external developer to make amendments — no matter how small — whenever they need to make a change. Although some people might prefer to outsource this process entirely, it takes time — most web design agencies will need to book your work into an already busy schedule, and developers will need time to reacquaint themselves with your site.

As a result, the task of updating information is often neglected because it is too time consuming and costly. This means that the all important news articles and blog posts don’t have a hope of being refreshed on a regular basis – any SEO professional’s worst nightmare since we all know that content is the key to SEO success.

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you could just log in and tweak some homepage text, add a new employee or publish a blog post yourself?

Taking command

There are different options available to you if you want to make your website more user-friendly. You may need to find a web design agency that can completely rewrite your site on a different platform, or you might just need to speak to your original agency and/or hosting provider to see whether there is any CMS training that is available.

In my view, websites shouldn’t be unmanageable and they certainly shouldn’t be inaccessible. A website with content that is constantly refreshed and updated will not only perform better in terms of SEO, but it will also be more engaging and encourage visitors to return time and time again.

Engagement

Social networking is all about engaging people and starting conversations, so if your website is static, unchanging and stuck in the past, it is definitely the weak link in what might otherwise be a flourishing online strategy.

Website re-development can be a daunting task but there’s no need to go it alone. If you’re looking to have your website transferred to a more useable CMS, or if you’d just like some advice, talk to us. We’d love to help.

If businesses are to grow, they need to win more customers, sales and revenue. In a demanding commercial world, we have a tendency to take figures for these three discrete factors and morph them into two-decimal-point conversions. As a result, conversion rates have become the key indicators that illustrate success rates for online campaigns.

There is an underlying beauty about conversion figures – they simplify the mathematics of what tend to be complex calculations, but they have a phenomenal impact on business potential.

For example, imagine an ecommerce site that can lay claim to these statistics:

• Sells product X at £10
• Has 100,000 unique visitors per month
• 10,000 visitors make a purchase
• Average basket value (purchase) of £30.

In this case, the overall visitor conversion rate would be 10% and monthly revenue would stack up to £300,000.

Now, if we were to increase the conversion rate by a single percentage point, taking it to 11%, then monthly revenue generation would increase to £330,000 — an additional £30,000 per month or £360,000 over a year.

Better still, the increase can theoretically be achieved without needing to increase traffic volumes or carry out additional marketing activity.

To achieve this 1% increase, you simply need to make sure your website visitors are provided with the simplest and most pleasant experience possible. The best way to do this is to make sure your site has the following.

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1. An appropriate wireframe and layout – visitors are in your home, so make them feel comfortable.

2. Adequate sign-posting to the key areas of your website – if your visitors can’t locate their destination within a few seconds then they’ll leave.

3. A modern and relevant look and feel – this is key to your brand, your image and – most importantly — how visitors perceive you.

4. A quick, easy and informative purchase process – if visitors are adding things to their basket, then they are letting you know that they want to buy from your business. Make sure you embrace them.

If your website doesn’t satisfy these four necessities, then you are certainly not making the most of your hard-won traffic.

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The best solution is to invest in a new website that will help you make the most of your potential. By this I don’t mean modify what you already have; instead, start from scratch and use professional ecommerce specialists to guide you through all the opportunities.

There are also additional benefits to redesigning your website. For example, you can make sure your site is fully SEO optimised, which will drive more organic searches to your site. Indeed, the benefits could be phenomenal, especially if your present website is desperately outdated and unfit for purpose.

So, if you are an ecommerce business, I’d advise you to evaluate the traffic you are already generating, and ask yourself whether you can afford not to maximise your site’s potential. In the fierce competition of the current economic climate, it’s a question that’s more pressing than ever.

Talk to us. We can help you redevelop your website and grow your online business. There’s never been a better time to pile on those extra conversions.
 

As a website designer, I generally have Firefox, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and a few other programs running at any one time. Alongside them, I also have a few helpful utilities running, ready for a quick bout of time- and stress-saving action.

Taking screenshots

I’ve used quite a few programs that do a more thorough job than the age-old ‘Print Screen’ button, but I’ve chosen to stick with FastStone Capture. With this in your armoury, you can take screenshots of any shape you like, including a single composite image from pages that are more than one screen deep.

I know Firefox has its own tool, but it only lets you take screenshots of web pages: quite often I need to capture part of a PDF or a Word file, and for that I need a dedicated program.

FastStone Capture will also act as a screen magnifier – handy for showing your screen to colleagues at the other end of the office. You can even take a screenshot and email it directly from within the application.

Brilliant. Go get it.

FastStone Capture

Instructions: Install the program and set it to run at startup. Assign keyboard shortcuts for an instant response when you need it. I use Alt+Shift+4 for the rectangular screenshot tool and Ctrl+1 for the magnifier.

Re-sizing images

When you've finished your website designs, you'll need to present them to your client. At Coast Digital we create an HTML thumbnail gallery with links to the full-size designs.

I don't know about you, but creating thumbnails for five or so images is a real pain in Photoshop: Open the file - Resize - Save For Web - locate the correct folder. Open next file... That's not my idea of fun. With VSO Image Resizer I can just select the files and create thumbnails from within Windows Explorer.

It’s a simple and effective program. Select the design files you want to create thumbnails for, right click, choose Resize with VSO Image Resizer, select a preset (or make up your own) and – hey presto – you get thumbnails for every single one. All done. You can even specify a suffix to add to the end of the file name, making it easy to identify the thumbnails later.

Get VSO Image Resizer

If you've had experience with the programs mentioned above, or others that do a similar job, we'd love to hear from you.

Both the programs above are free for personal use.

Part 2 coming soon...

(Neither the author nor Coast Digital is affiliated with any of the programs mentioned above - they have been chosen purely on merit.)

If the online world has become a shopper’s paradise, it’s also a crowded marketplace in which digital stores jostle for position at the top of Google’s search rankings.

It’s not hard to see why the online market is booming. E-commerce companies can make the most of low-cost social marketing, target their sales with easily-obtained customer data and – when they get it right – compete with the big brands that have traditionally dominated the High Street. The true beauty of the online world is the fact that business overheads are slashed, making it easier for anyone to get on the field and play ball.

That’s not to say that small, online businesses don’t face a ‘David and Goliath’ challenge when they are pitched against the big names – but it’s a battle they’re well positioned to win, especially with an effective and well-designed website.

If you want a digital store that will outshine your competitors’ and give you a greater return on your investment, we recommend you try these proven tips from the Coast Digital team.

1. Use a consistent template across your whole site
A familiar website page structure makes users feel comfortable, and it’s key to sales conversion. If you embed a strategic template across your entire site, customers will correctly guess what their target page looks like before they even reach it. Everyone likes their assumptions to be correct, so getting the structure and feel of your template consistent will give users a subconscious ego-massage and put them in the mood for buying.

2. Make navigation as simple as possible
Ignore this at your peril. If a potential customer can’t find the page they’re looking for, they will leave and give their custom to a rival with a better-designed site. Stick to clear, logical navigation systems and never sacrifice ease of use for design gimmickry.

3. Establish your branding
Brand association is a decisive factor that influences purchasing decisions, so it’s crucial that your website conveys the right image. Providing visitors with a brand they can associate with will help you overcome the lack of an orthodox POS strategy, so it’s a good idea to have synergy between your online and offline operations. On the other hand, if your business is solely online, you can carry out research into existing brands and pick up ideas from the ones that are successfully reaching the audiences within your target market.

4. Make sure your content appeals to your audience
Get your content wrong, and you’ll lose conversions. Keep it relevant, digestible and targeted and you’ll pick up sales. Never forget your intended audience, and shape your language and tone to meet their expectations.

5. Use simple, attractive imagery
Don’t succumb to the temptation of using visual tricks to make your site look cool – your pages will almost certainly be a disaster. Simple, relevant imagery is always appealing, easy to decipher, and helps emphasise your credentials for quality and reliability.

6. Help users to locate what they’re after
Provide customers with both a site map and an intelligent search function and you’ll ensure that they will always find what they’re looking for. The simplicity of these options is very attractive and savvy visitors will use them to get straight to the point.

7. Find more ways to keep visitors engaged with your brand
An online shop has many benefits, but one major drawback is the fact that visitors can leave your website in an instant. That’s why it’s a good idea to keep customers engaged with tools and resources that encourage them to maintain a relationship with your website. Email sign-ups, community sections and free guides are popular, and give users the incentive to return in future.

8. Provide external links, but keep visitors in
Because it usually costs money to get a visitor to your site, it can fly against reason to provide them with out-clicks – links to external sites. However, providing relevant external links can be highly beneficial for users, and improve their relationship with you. Just make sure that all external links open in a new window – that way visitors still have open access to your website and don’t need to make the journey afresh.

Whilst these tips are not a complete set of recommendations, they will certainly get you started on the road to online success. For information on how Coast Digital can power your web presence into an even higher league, be sure to get in touch.
 

I can hear the mob down at the other end of the street. "Down with IE6! Death to IE6!" 

I wish.

Calls for the death of IE6 have, in certain circles, been mooted almost since it was first released. That's because Microsoft's browser from August 2001 was prone to crashing, it was insecure which made it a veritable virus magnet, and it didn't even do what it was supposed to do properly: it never fully supported official web coding standards.

Along with IE5.5, Microsoft had at least 85% market share for the best part of 5 years. With this high penetration Microsoft got complacent and it took a full 6 years until it's replacement, IE7, was launched. IE7 and now IE8 have gone a long way to righting the Redmond's wrongs but the IE6 legacy is still being felt by web designers and developers the world over.

As a reaction to IE6 new modern, robust, stands-compliant browsers like Opera were being built. And Netscape evolved into what would become what is now the second most used browser, Firefox.

Writing HTML that renders correctly in IE6 can often require custom lines of code. This takes development time away from the project. As time passes, supporting Internet Explorer 6 has simply become a drain on resources and, some say, with some developers sticking to relatively 'safe' HTML to ensure an acceptable browsing experience in IE6, it has become an inhibitor to progress and development on the web.

So amazingly, as a result of the continuing popularity of IE6, and in a world full of spam, worms, viruses and other nasties, 18 percent (as of March 2009, according to Wikipedia) of web users are still surfing using a browser that's nearly eight years old. Why is this? And why, typically, is your client one of this number? There are many reasons.

The largest proportion of IE6 users are those with no other browser on their PC at work. They generally work in larger organisations who may rely on a old but still used piece of software that is tied into IE6 (this is because IE6 itself was tied into Windows) to do invoicing, accounting or timesheet input.  These organisations often tend to have IT security policies which prohibit the installation of any software, leaving the user an IE6 hostage.

Other instances could include people using old versions of Windows: Windows 2000 and NT only support IE6. Some simply do not know any better.

And finally there's the PC-novice parent who insists that even her very web-savvy son leaves her computer well alone: "Don't touch it! It works just fine as it is, thank you. I can pick up my email and I know what all the buttons do".

If you had the guts you could choose to stop all development for IE6. But I believe for an agency like ours that serves a broad range of clients, including many public sector organisations (notorious IE6 users), support for IE6 is going to be necessary for quite some time - perhaps until its usage falls below 5%.

So what help can we offer to web designers and developers who choose to continue support IE6?

As a designer you'll probably be developing using IE7+, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari ... oh go then, and Opera. And because you can't generally have IE6 and IE7 installed on the same machine, the first hurdle is to find a way of checking your site in IE6 - and the secret is to start the testing early in the development process because leaving debugging until the end will cause you more grief than a sleaze-writing cabinet minister. Short of using multiple virtual machine sessions, a remote desktop connection to a legacy PC on your network still using IE6 or a visit to your mum every evening for a quick spin on her squeaky old IE6 browser, you'll need some way of testing in IE6.

We have recently discovered a great piece of freeware called IE Tester (bit.ly/ie-tester). IE Tester is a very accurate IE emulator. In our experience you can choose to develop in any one of Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera and use IE Tester for checking in IE6/7/8.

Of course you can also evangelize about the benefits of upgrading to a modern browser. But blog posts on a digital agency website are essentially preaching to the converted. So please spread the word - tell your friends and family, and also the government’s Chief Information Officer. Tell them to get with the program, the program called IE8.

Are we calling for the death of IE6? Not really. We tend not to have too much trouble supporting it. We seem to be quite good at balancing creativity with good clean code. We're pragmatic about it: for most of our clients it's still their main browser. And if we want to keep them, we need to keep IE6 and let it die a natural death.

The introduction of the Google Preview add-on in the toolbar in Firefox may be about to transform the world of natural search. In the future, click-throughs on search results may not just be based on position and relevance but on the actual appearance of the related website, now viewable via Google Preview.

Currently web users go through a simple decision-making process to choose the right website for them. The search results which are returned are judged by their keyword relevance and the page description, among other factors like whether the user recognises the website URL. However with Google Preview, there is now a new dimension within search which website owners need to be aware of.

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Working with emailers is tricky. The main reason is that most mail clients still aren’t advanced enough to handle today’s build technologies. In simple terms your email will be undeliverable. To succeed you almost have to take a step back in time to the late ‘90s and construct emails using tables and image-spacers.

The solution is wherever possible to stick to old-school HTML and use as little CSS as possible, using any CSS inline rather than relying on external style sheets.

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A few years back, Adobe re-wired Flash's authoring environment, reconstructing its core language, Actionscript. This marked a major change in the way large projects could be programmed and managed, as well as opening up a plethora of high-end visual and programming techniques previously only dreamt of by developers!

In order to better understand the impact of this change and how it marks the overall progression of digital, with its ever increasing flexibility and capability, it’s useful to look back at where Flash and Actionscript has come from.

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