Hello folks.

As you can see the new website is coming together nicely. It’s been quite a slog as I’ve had a lot of work on besides but I’m getting there now.

This blog needs to be re-branded but that’s not a big job, apart from that everything is more or less finished (apart from a few final adjustments)!

I’ve also re-done all my PDF guides. Originally they were done in Word and output to pdf, but I’ve moved them over to Illustrator to get them looking just right.

Onwards and upwards!

Paul.

All the best to all my customers – old and new. Let’s all have a fantastic 2010.

Best,

Paul.

When your website is complete it will be submitted to Google via the use of a XML sitemap to make sure that the worlds most popular search engine indexes your site correctly and a timley fashion.

No cost Service Upgrade :

The same will now happen for Bing, Microsoft’s updated search engine. This is at no extra cost to the end user.

Best,
Paul.

I’m just thinking about the cost of sending an email newsletter Vs post outs. Both types can be used in harmony for the same campaign but it’s much more cost effective to use email to inform your customers of a new product, promotion or service.

Let’s say a small business wants to post a letter (generated in-house) to 500 of  it’s most loyal customers.

POST

Letterhead paper £0.05p
2nd class stamps £0.30p
Self seal envelopes £0.02p
Labour to stuff envelopes (£6.00 p/h) £0.10p
Ink (full colour) £0.07

So that’s about 0.54p per letter x 500 = £270.00

EMAIL

Cost to send 1 email (operation cost) £0.01p
2 1/2 hours labour (£29.00) £72.50

So that’s about £0.16p per email x 500 = £77.50

With regards to cost email is a clear winner, in this example by around £190.00.

WHERE I COME IN

• I will create you a template design that fits your current branding/style (1 off cost)
• I will integrate a ‘sign-up’ form into your website (1 off cost)
• I can create and deploy your mail shot on your behalf each week, month or quarter…

BENEFITS

• ‘unsubscribes’ handled automatically
• See how many people opened your campaign
• See how many people ‘clicked’ (visited your website) and what they clicked on
• See how many people subscribed/unsubscribe in any given period
• Compare the success of your campaign with your industry’s average

Want some more information? Please get in touch…pauldesigns.co.uk/contact

Best,

Paul.

Found a great little article in this months .net magazine (November 2009)../

Top 5 SEO myths

1. Search engine technology is moving too fast : I can’t keep up!

While search engine technology is indeed moving fast, the underlining concepts of SEO remain the same. Create interesting and valuable content on a well designed and developed infrastructure. If you can get that covered, you’re well on your way. The basics will get you a long way!

2. Submitting my website to the search engine takes forever.

While you can manually submit your site, chances are it will be automatically discovered during a search engine’s indexing process. So just submit your main pages once.

3. SEO is dangerous and can get my website taken off the search engines.

While some people still try to trick the search engines, a successful SEO strategy focuses on creating a well informed, useful website.  If it’s useful for users and easy to use, you stand a good chance of ranking well.

4. Keywords and description META tags are the most important of SEO

While this may have been the case many years ago, the keywords tag is now all but defunct and the description tag is far less important than the actual content and structure of your pages and website.

5. I’ll see results from SEO quickly

There’s no denying that SEO takes time, but if done correctly the reward can be huge and the return on investment substantial. Develop a monthly review process to monitor SEO performance.

Hope this helps. Don’t forget to contact me for SEO services…

Best,

Paul.

I suppose it was bound to happen, the amount spent on adverting online is more than the amount spent on television advertising.

Online spending grew to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, TV spending dropped by 16.1% to £1.639bn.

What is classed as advertising online?

• eMail campaigns
• Classified adverts
• Display adverts
• Search engine marketing

The report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers said “The recession had accelerated the migration of advertising  spending to digital technology – from more traditional media such as print, radio and TV advertising to online”

Best,

Paul Newton.

The do’s and dont’s…of business cards…

First up, don’t forget the basic information :

• Full name, with job title/position held
• Telephone number (landline and mobile)
• Email address
• Web address
• Business address

The standard size of a business card is just 85 x 55mm so you don’t want to spoil the card by including non-essential information on the front. For just a few quid extra opt for double sided printing and use this extra space to explain your business to prospects.

Don’t forget to include your logo, essential for brand recognition!

A good quality business card features the following :

• Heavy 400gsm (Grams Square Metre) weight
• Highest quality silk artboard
• Double sided printing
• Standard 85mm X 55mm size
• Matt/Gloss lamination

A card featuring these elements will look professional and give off the right impression. Need help with your business cards? For just £26.50 I will design your business card and get them printed at one of my approved suppliers. Turnaround time is around 5-7 working days from artwork sign-off. Postage to your door is free!

Want more information? Please see my printing services and price list (PDF Format)

Want to know a little more? Please get in touch…

Best,

Paul Newton

Retail research group IMRG have reported online shopping stats for August. It seems that the overall spend for the month slipped by 10%.

Total online sales dropped to £3.8bn (which was still 16% higher than in August 2008). Alcohol and lingerie sales were down, but footwear sales were up.

The reason? Well I guess some of it’s seasonal and some of it’s the recession (after all unemployment is still rising). Wonder what’ll happen at Christmas? Crystal ball anyone?

Best,

Paul.

Although it’s up to me to do all the techy ‘behind the scenes’ magic to make sure you’re website is coded correctly, it’s up to the website owner to make sure the actual content is relevant and accurate.

Google, and other search engines love quality content. I’ve put together a new page which explains how you can help…Take a look…

Best, Paul.

There are so many new browsers around, and it’s important that your site looks good in all of them. To make sure of this I have the latest software available to check your website in the following browsers/versions…

• Internet Explorer 6/7/8
• Firefox 2+
• Apple Safari
• Google Chrome

Sometimes a website will not appear 100% as it should when viewed via Internet Explorer 6/7 (IE6/7) this because IE6/7 are outdated browsers using old rendering techniques.  I really don’t know why anyone still uses IE6, there are so many better (and safer) browsers available out there.  Secunia reports 142 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6, 22 of which are unpatched, some of which are rated moderately critical in severity.

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