Take a look at any blogs or articles on web design and it’s almost certain they will stress the need to optimise for mobile. Good solid advice given the phenomenal rise in smartphones but even more so now with the busiest time of the trading year approaching and when high street and online traders are gearing up for what is traditionally a spending free-for-all.

Whilst high street stores will no doubt enjoy increased sales in the run up to Christmas, online businesses are likely to fare even better if last year’s figure of £6.4 billion is anything to go by and with the significant increase in the use of smartphones, this year could be even higher still.

According to a recent survey by eDigitalResearch and IMRG, 35 percent of UK consumers plan to do more shopping via their smartphones this Christmas.

Derek Eccleston, Research Director at eDigitalResearch explains, “Christmas is by far the most important time for retailers. This year will be one of the first Christmas shopping periods where mobile shopping will be readily available to the majority of consumers. The rapid development in mobile technology and the quick uptake by retailers of mobile sites and retail apps means that more and more brands have the opportunity to connect with potential customers, encourage purchases and increase revenues. As we continue to be gripped by the MEcommerce revolution – where the consumer now holds the power to shop where, when and how they like – it is crucial that retailers have a strong presence across multiple channels in order to maximise the potential rewards that this Christmas has to offer”.

This is just one example but numerous other surveys have shown similar results and goes to show why optimising for mobile devices is crucial if you want to maximise your earning potential over the Christmas period and beyond.

A mobile-friendly website isn’t just for Christmas because it’s safe to say that accessing the internet and shopping via mobile devices is not a fad that will die out anytime soon; it’s with us for the foreseeable future and optimising for mobile is now just as vital as having a website was just a very short time ago.

Until next time.

In my last post, I wrote about link building and the importance of having quality inbound links to your website. In this post, it’s about the need for all your site pages to have internal links so search engines can easily find and index all the pages on your site.

Out of all the various SEO methods, including a sitemap on your website is perhaps one of the simpler and more straightforward techniques that should speed up the time it normally takes search engines to crawl the pages; something which left to their own devices can often be counted in months rather than weeks.

A sitemap which is linked to the main areas of your website or preferably every page if possible will greatly aid search engines when it comes to indexing, but always ensure all links are working correctly because broken links may result in search engines indexing just a few pages instead of the whole site.

Sitemaps can become even more important if your website contains hidden or archived pages because search engine bots will still reach them even if your internal link structure isn’t all it should be. It is highly advisable however to repair any faulty links yourself so you don’t have to rely totally on the bots doing their work.  

Additionally and importantly, a sitemap will speed up the indexing of new or altered content on your website which although for obvious reasons wouldn’t happen instantly will still be actioned faster than a site without one.

Aside from the SEO aspect, sitemaps are organised so every page title can be easily found at a glance and so will allow visitors a much smoother ride in terms of navigation especially on larger sites which consequently will make them much less likely to leave in frustration at not finding what they want. 

As with all business websites, owners need to use every means at their disposal to get the best out of them in order to remain competitive, and any businesses that don’t currently have a sitemap should have a word with their web designers to find out more.

What I’ve touched on so far is only a very brief idea of what sitemaps do, but I hope to revisit the subject in more detail at some point.

Until next time.

It’s well known that linking your website to others has great SEO value and is a highly effective way of getting your site found quickly and indexed by search engines. However, although it’s one of the more straightforward SEO techniques, there are still a couple of things to bear in mind if it’s going to work properly.

You should be extremely selective when linking to other sites with the emphasis being on quality and not quantity. Although numbers are important, links coming from websites with no relevance or connection to your particular line of business will do you no favours and likely dilute the value of the better ones.

From time to time you might also come across what are known as ‘link farms’ which are basically sites with the sole purpose of increasing links to your website with the aim of getting it ranked higher in search engines, but there are a couple of good reasons why linking to these types of sites is not recommended.

Firstly, search engines don’t like them with most of them including Google considering them as nothing more than a form of spam. Secondly, link farms contain no categories so you are unable to direct your link to a section relevant to your business: something which renders the whole exercise pointless.

Surprisingly perhaps, link farms have little or no page rank because just about every search engine penalises them for what they are which is rather ironic considering their supposed aim is to get other websites to attain higher rankings. The truth is that linking to them will see your website penalised as well so don’t be tempted.

When it comes to link building you should exercise care in your choices and just a little bit of patience because it can sometimes be a slower than expected process, but as I said, the emphasis is on quality not quantity and eagerly linking to all and sundry will certainly defeat the object. If you’re unsure about what to do with regards to link building, then your web design company would be worth contacting for further help.

Until next time.

If you ask anyone what their idea of a good website is, opinions will vary but ease of navigation, quick loading, no pop-ups or music, clear information and not too busy will invariably crop up and probably a hundred more things I haven’t mentioned.

So, when you come across a website that seems to break all the rules yet receives in the region of 100.000 unique visitors a month you have to wonder how? The site I’m talking about belongs to Ling’s Cars and has been running for quite a few years without really changing much in appearance over all that time.

The site is garish, much, much too busy, cluttered, contains lots of flashing animation and looks like it was built by a wannabee web design enthusiast with no actual design talent but it’s reckoned the business leases around £3.5 million pounds worth of vehicles every month.

I think for many, this website is everything a website shouldn’t be but for some reason it works and US internet marketing expert Seth Godin has even praised it for its internet marketing best practices. 

The site’s owner Ling Valentine has employed some wild publicity stunts over the years, not least when she bought a Chinese military truck with a large rocket on the back which she used to advertise her business to motorists who drove past her premises. She has also appeared on Dragon’s Den and turned them down; something that did her business no end of good.

Of course not every business person has the creativity, nerve or time to do those kinds of things, preferring instead to let their websites advertise their services and products in a more traditional manner and this is probably one of the reasons Ling’s Cars’ website works so well for her - because it’s an unusual and quirky website complemented by a quirky business woman with unusual but memorable publicity stunts.

If you haven’t already seen it, the site is worth a look for the curiosity factor alone. It’s certainly an assault on the eyes and most website owners would never dream of having a site like it, but as it’s phenomenally successful for Ling’s Cars there’s really no reason why she should change it, not least because  the internet would be a little less colourful if she did.

Until next time.

The cost of starting a business of any size can be considerable and certainly not for the fainthearted and almost every new start-up will very likely be in debt long before they’ve made a penny.

If you are a new business, you will understandably try to save costs wherever possible and have to make some hard decisions on where the bulk of the expenditure should go, what to prioritise and what is of secondary importance.

However, when it comes to your website, it’s imperative that you invest as much as you can into its creation because even if your business also has a physical presence, potential customers are still almost certain to visit your website first so a professional online image is vital.

Although there are numerous and rather good programmes available that allow novices to create their own websites, not everyone has a natural or acquired design talent, so whilst a self-created website might look ok, there are almost certainly going to be noticeable differences between those and professionally-built ones.

Firstly, web design is far more than taking a template and populating it with stock images, self-composed copy and a company logo. There are many other important factors to consider such as ease of navigation, SEO, coding and user-friendliness to name but a few.

Understandably, it would be all too easy to try and save money by building a website yourself; in fact some businesses already have albeit with varying degrees of success, mainly because there are certain areas of web design that are best left to the professionals.

New businesses will know that a good website is essential but may be under the impression that a professionally-built site is beyond their pockets and depending on the type and capability of the site required this might well be the case. However, there are some web design companies that offer various payment options to help spread the cost, so shopping around is highly recommended.

Another important reason to invest in your website is to create just the right impression to increasingly internet-savvy visitors who may not know anything about actual web design but they know what they like and will easily spot a half-hearted or amateur attempt, so it’s up to you to ensure they like what they see.

Until next time.

It might come as a bit of a surprise but your internet audience is steadily growing and being made up by what some describe as the ‘Silver Surfer Brigade’, or pensioners to you and me.

Not too many years ago it was only the younger generation who understood it and indeed grew up with it so to them the internet is second nature. Now though, more and more older people use it as an everyday part of their lives in one way or another and I know some in their mid-seventies who although they took to it late in life are always telling me how great it is to communicate with friends and family or shop from the comfort of their homes instead of traipsing the high street.

For many senior citizens, surfing has become their new and favourite pastime as they gradually come to grips with one of the most life-changing technologies in history. At the moment the majority use it mainly for communication but as they get to know it better and gain confidence, I suspect that online shopping will be their next target.

This extract is taken from the Wavemonkey.net site.

“AXA Insurance has conducted a survey that reveals something all companies should take note of - pensioners are now describing use of the internet as their favourite hobby, taking over from DIY and gardening!

Activities such as email and searching come top (in line with general usage trends regardless of age) and on average retirees are spending 6 hours online every week, organising their finances, reading the news - in fact, everything that their younger contemporaries do”.

Older users are catching on quickly and what they once didn’t understand or were afraid of they are now embracing with open arms. The point I’m making is that as more users in their senior years take to the internet, your market is potentially larger than you might imagine but what will they make of your website?

Having a user-friendly website is a given; easy navigation, clear information and an easy-to-use shopping cart is enough for most internet-savvy visitors who expect no less, but is it easy and clear enough for inexperienced senior users? If it isn’t, you could be losing out.

It may be time to take a look at your current site to identify any areas that might create a problem for older visitors. This doesn’t mean dumbing down either; that would be an insult but simply making your website more age-friendly: something that even younger visitors are likely to appreciate anyway.

A chat with your web design company to audit your site would be a good first move in preparation for the growing numbers of older users who despite the current economic climate and gloomy news regarding pensions still have the means and potential to make a significant contribution to the world of online spending.

It may sound laughable talking about websites being pensioner-friendly but at some future point we will all be in the same boat and likely grateful for those sites that will give us an easier internet ride.

Until next time.

Google turned thirteen years old today and during that time, not only has it become the world’s favourite search engine but has also spread its reach and a not insignificant influence throughout nearly every area of the internet itself.

Everywhere you look on the web you come across something by, associated or owned by Google. You have Google maps, Streetview, Gmail, Buzz, Google Plus, Chrome, Picasa, YouTube; the list it seems is endless.

Google is now so powerful and prominent that it has also become a byword for searching information or answers: you don’t Bing it, Dogpile or Yahoo it: you ‘Google it’.

It’s estimated that Google has over a million servers worldwide and receives over a billion search requests every day; a staggering figure by any standard.

In thirteen years, Google has gone from being a straightforward search engine into a force that now dominates every other. It has become the search engine for websites to be found in with every business vying to be among the top of the listings

Google has also had its share of controversy over the years, not least the criticism and protests it faced over Streetview which some found extremely entertaining whilst others felt it was an invasion of privacy – the debate goes on.

Google’s life and growth from new company to teenager has been anything but uneventful, and as it continues to grow and expand it’s hard not to speculate where it will be in another thirteen years from now.

There’s much more I could write about Google’s time in existence but the best way of finding out more is to Google it yourself. In the meantime, Happy birthday Google and it’ll be interesting to see what the future holds.

Until next time.

There are lots of blogs and articles around that talk about the growing preference for accessing the internet via mobile devices as opposed to desktops and laptops and they are absolutely right; computers it seems are gradually being relegated to secondary devices in favour of smartphones and tablets.

Where computers were once the only gateway to the internet is now no longer the case because smartphones and tablets have put the internet in everyone’s pockets and made it truly mobile.

During some research for an email marketing blog post, I found this interesting article on the DMA (Direct Marketing Association) website which stated:

“By 2015, more people in the US will use mobile devices to access the internet than PCs or other fixed-line devices, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).

The IDC predicts that as smartphones begin to outsell more basic phones, and as media tablet sales explode, the number of mobile internet users will grow by a compound annual growth rate of 16.6% between 2010 and 2015”.

The company also forecasts that the number of people accessing the internet on PCs in the US will first stagnate and then slowly decline. Western Europe and Japan will not be far behind the US in following this trend”.

To me, this seems like as accurate a prediction as you could get and the figures may even exceed that forecast come the time. One thing is clear though; the rapid growth of mobiles is no fad or flash-in-the-pan craze and for the foreseeable future and perhaps even longer, businesses should be optimising their websites for mobile if they want to remain competitive.

Web design itself has ably kept pace with the evolution of the internet and changing consumer demands, and designing for mobiles is yet another stage in that evolution but a stage that looks like it’s going to be with us for some time to come.

Until next time.