I do no marketing (at all)

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I don’t do marketing .. I was told recently and I can’t help feeling this is foolish but then I am a marketer and I think it is essential for any business. Even if your business is doing nicely and ticking along, that may not always be the case. Then again you might be doing … Read more

Page speed insights

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I’ve done two SEO reports within the last couple of months for businesses in two different industries and both of them had serious page load issues. This can have a serious knock on effect for both SEO and engagement or conversion. Optimise web images Site 1, a luxury travel brand, had used big glossy images … Read more

Design collaboration with business stakeholders

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I’m interested to read the UX professionals survey by NN Group as they advocate the use of round tables with the business owner to review the initial designs and pick and choose the best of each design. In my experience, this doesn’t result in a cohesive whole. Many of the designers I have worked with … Read more

No one is signing up to my email newsletters

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Let’s overlook the obvious first check to make, which is how many people are visiting that page, and take a quick look at another issue that might be the cause. I tried to sign up this morning to a good cause – it had quite an unusual spam check, I thought – the email newsletter … Read more

My inbox is full

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My inbox is full of emails from Pay4Later, Paypal and Channel Advisor regarding Singles Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday with tips on how to use email marketing to maximise the benefit of these key retail dates and gain those extra sales. It’s also full of the eCommerce retailers that I have signed up for … Read more

Can’t pay, they’ve taken the ability to make online payments away!

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In response to security concerns of SSL 3.0 vulnerability to Poodle attack, Sagepay are upgrading their system and subsequently have announced they won’t be supporting Internet Explorer 8 and older from the 2nd December. Does this really matter when these users make up less than 5% of the global users in 2015? Biggest payment processing … Read more

Know your panda from your penguin?

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I was asked recently to explain the difference between these two algorithm changes made by Google in 2011 and 2012 respectively. Panda, named after a Google engineer, was designed to root out real content. It was no longer enough to stuff a bunch of keywords onto a page to achieve page one ranking. Google got … Read more

The perfect product page

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I’m a fan of simple layouts and one of my constant gripes is product pages on eCommerce websites. I just don’t understand why shop owners feel the need to cram endless pieces of twaddle onto their product pages. I want a price and a big buy now button at the very top of the page. … Read more

What’s wrong with my website image?

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There’s a problem with my website – this image isn’t showing. My images don’t look right, what’s wrong? I have spent a great deal of time over the years troubleshooting image uploads on websites. Sometimes, the issue is caused by the file name; the file has been uploaded with a space so it has been … Read more

Websites work harder in 2015

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We’re in the run up to the Christmas shut-down and project planning has been done to the year end, so I have been reflecting on the work that has been completed or will be completed this year. Website basics When I first started in the business of website design, business owners would come to me … Read more

We want Twitter/ Facebook/ Google+/ Instagram/ Pinterest/ Linkedin…

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“We want social on our site”, I get told. My first question is why? Does your target market hangout on Google? Is Facebook suitable for your B2B business? What are you hoping to gain from being on these platforms – sales, brand recognition, customer support? What type of social works on your website? I can … Read more

Copywriting woes

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A friend of mine is a freelance copywriter and she has just taken part in a survey of UK copywriters, most of whom were grumbling about the state of the industry. It seems that a copywriter suffers from the same problem that a graphic designer does, the customer often thinks they know better than the … Read more

Employee training on the web

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An awful lot of business owners, especially small business owners who are too busy to do it themselves, delegate ‘the website’ to the nearest employee. This can be a good thing or a bad thing and depends on the competence and interest level of the person involved. Early adopters A computer savvy youngster might not … Read more

Good website design doesn’t make me think

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Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug was a great read when I first read it over ten years ago now and so I am delighted to find that he has written a follow up revised version since (2014). I’ll admit, a lot of what Steve talks about I think of as common sense – in fact the strapline for the book is “A common sense approach to web usability” but I am surprised at how many people, good web designers among them, don’t take a logical approach to a website layout.

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Get the price right

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No, this is not checking the prices of the products that you are actually selling against competition so that you can add enough markup to ensure a good margin, but the boring old job of data entry into the database on your website. I’m currently wading through hundreds of product options correcting someone else’s erroneous … Read more

Distributed denial of service (Ddos)

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A customer of mine learnt the hard way why cheap domains registration isn’t worth it and why disaster recovery plans are essential. The domain registrar who holds all of their domain names on their domain name servers went offline following a ddos attack, taking their website and email service with it. Hundreds of other business … Read more