Website Marketing Blog by Signature.gb.com

Social networking has shaken it's geeky image

2009-06-13T22:04:00.024+01:00

Reserve your seat at the table

Protect your brand for future use by registering tied accounts on social networking sites like Furl, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Bebo, Flickr and Wikipedia.

Be seen in the right places

Remember social networking is opt-in by your audience so it's unlikely you'll notice thousands of connections from day one. Monitor what works and focus your time and effort accordingly.

Create a public face

Create a public face for your company; enabling your staff to update and manage your social networks for you. Think carefully about your public face, when you get it right your audience will identify with you.

Sticky marketing ideas

To keep your audience interested or 'sticky' your marketing must have talkability. The timing is also important if you're hoping to grab and hold their attention and encourage sharing. Remember content is queen so stay on topic and keep your posts relevant.

Follow my breadcrumbs...

Make it easy for your audience to get involved and follow you. If you want them to bookmark you, make life easier by adding free social bookmark buttons. If you have a presence on Twitter, MySpace, YouTube or Facebook make sure it's promoted on your website with a link to it.

Free Makeover Website and Website Marketing Strategy Ideas

2009-05-17T18:36:00.013+01:00

For many SME's a highly effective website marketing strategy is make or break necessity. Many business' now recognise this and are now contemplating website makeovers to "improve" their websites performance. However, in order to drive targeted traffic to your website and improve lead conversion, companies need to develop their websites around an effective website marketing strategy.

Is your website doing the business?

Get a free website audit to find out if your website is doing the business
Plus free website marketing tips for dummies
Plus tips for a quick and hassle-free way to get your site in Google
Plus we'll also share our top 5 tips to make the most out of your website
Plus links to download free software to measure results from your website marketing efforts

Anti Social Networking Orders (ASNO)

2009-05-04T19:26:00.030+01:00

The growing popularity of social networking sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook has lead many business owners to slam Anti-Social Networking Orders or ASNOs (pronounced /ˈæznoʊ/) against their staff for visiting social networking sites. In their defence estimates puts the cost to UK business' at around £6.5 billion a year in lost productivity and questionable bandwidth usage.

So is social networking a waste of time?

New research from IDM would prove otherwise "...almost 70 per cent of Britons do not regard checking social networking sites as a time-waster" - Source: Institute of Direct Marketing, 16 April 2009

Social networking is a great way to promote your business and stay in touch with your customers. To put it simply, maintaining a presences on social networking sites should become part of your marketing mix!

Worth a click...

Hot Website Development Trends for 2009

2009-04-17T17:38:00.041+01:00

This month we review hot website development trends for 2009

Search engine marketing
Search engine marketing (or SEM) techniques promote websites by raising your websites visibility in search engine result pages (or SERPs). Search Engine Marketing techniques we employ for our clients include: social networking, search engine optimisation (or SEO), article submission, email marketing, online forums, paid placement and paid inclusion.
Social Media Optimisation
Social Media Optimisation (or SMO) is highly impactful in our industry. SMO techniques we employ for our clients include: social book marking, viral optimisation, press releases etc.
Viral Videos
Video is a presentation of your business and is a great way for you to expose your brand to users. A well executed viral video campaign can increase brand awareness by reaching a large number of people quickly and easily online. The dancing eyebrows advert for http://www.signature.gb.com/services/marketing.htm is a 'viral video' success! Attracting over 3 million views on YouTube; the most popular video sharing site to date.
Firefox 3
The Web is all about innovation, and Europe's favourite browser Firefox 3.0 officially made history in June last year setting a new Guinness world record for 8,002,530 downloads in a 24-hour period. Firefox 3 blazes a trail with one-click bookmarking, fast performance and much more.
jQuery
jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.
Open Source CMS
Open source content management systems (or CMS) such as WordPress and Joomla allow clients to collaboratively author, review and publish website content; keeping their websites fresh and lively without having to learn HTML.

Is your website doing the business?

2009-04-13T23:00:00.012+01:00

Bounce rate is a measure of the effectiveness of your website or online campaign. In simple terms, 'bounce rate' is the percentage of website visitors who click onto to your site and quickly leave to it, without clicking through to other pages within your site.

If you're running costly pay-per-click or search engine marketing campaign to drive targeted traffic to your website, then bounce rate tells you, how much traffic your website is failing to convert.

Bounce Rate Calculator = Single Page Access/ Entries
A low bounce rate, say under 50%, is considered a good sign that your visitors are 'sticky' and browsing your web pages.

Regularly updating your site is key to attracting site visitors, but using site metrics to see what your visitors are up to is increasingly important these days. Right now, lead conversion as well as high website traffic are hugely important.

Sticker Marketing, Business Stickers, Promotional Sticker Advertising

2009-04-08T19:39:00.007+01:00

Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Call us on 08700.205.805 to discuss your sticker marketing, business stickers or promotional sticker advertising campaign. As every project is different there are no set prices. Our prices are set according to the amount of work involved.

Getting spam instead of qualified enquiries from your website?

2009-04-03T00:47:00.022+01:00

Many spammers use contact forms to send spam to the intended recipient. What we typically see is a badly designed enquiry form without form field verification, which is a magnet for spammers!

Apply these simple tried and tested solutions to protect your website against robot form submitters/ spambots and bring in more qualified enquiries.

Create a form verification image (captcha) to verify that a real person
submitted a form
Validate UK postcodes, telephone numbers including mobiles and block
09 or 08 numbers
Verify that the form script is being run from your domain
Create a robots.txt file to block spambots
Check IP Address Blacklist Databases and manually Block IP addresses.
This is an effective way of guarding against brute force attacks by banning
undesired connections to a website or mail server
Download and test drive free anti-spam products such as Spam Assassin

Signature Web Service Status

2009-04-01T10:18:00.013+01:00

There are currently no announcements from Signature.gb.com

Pharma Company Website for leading specialty pharma business

2009-03-28T10:48:00.006Z

Altos Vision Limited (“Altos”) is an ophthalmology company that has already acquired its first late stage prescription ophthalmology product, iDESTRIN™ for dry eye syndrome. Their mission is to be a leading specialty pharma company focused on ocular diseases by developing and commercialising prescription eye products and creating an effective global marketing and sales organization while being a cash efficient company.

Sheffield - Network Issues - March 17th, 2009

2009-03-17T20:52:00.015Z

09:30 - PipeTen hosting (one of our hosting partners) are currently experiencing some issues with our Sheffield POPs network connectivity.

09:53 - Engineers are on-site and investigating the issue which seems to be impacting customers taking telewest routes.

10:50 - Services should now be coming back online. A full investigation and report will be posted here as it becomes available.

11:00 - PipTen seem to be having some residual issues, including expected high mail load, These issues are continued to be investigated.

11:30 - Mail services should now be returning to normal as after-outage backlog is cleared.

12:11 - All servers and services are operating as normal however we still have some routing and speed issues for a minority of customers. We are continuing to monitor, isolate, trace and resolve these issues as they occur.

13:10 - An issue with outbound SMTP for mail.pipeten.co.uk has now been resolved.

13:25 - There are still a few customers having routing issues to our Sheffield facility. We require these customers to raise a helpdesk ticket (to ensure delivery) with the subject line ‘routing issue’.

14:00 - Thanks to all customers who have responded with the requested information and for those who have confirmed that the issue is no longer present for them. We are working closely with PipeTen hosting through your responses but would appreciate it if anyone else for which the issue was present at 13:30 but is working now could post a comment on this post.

15:24 - Further routing changes have been made which should further resolve issues for some customers. We are still working on some TW routing issues.

16:45 - PipeTen are still working with our connectivity and facilities providers on routing and connectivity issues.

20:38 & Ongoing - We are still working on this issue.
22:45 and 18/03/2009 02:57, 05:36, 07:27 - on going - PipeTen Hosting are *still* working with their connectivity and facilities providers on routing and connectivity issues.
18/03/2009 13:15 - Services to the problematic networks are starting to return, hopefully full normal service should resume within the hour.
18/03/2009 13:45 - All affected services should now be fully back up and running.
18/03/2009 20:30 - All services have been running fine all afternoon and there have not been any further reports of any issues connecting from any other networks. If any customers do still notice anything unusual please raise a support ticket.
20/03/2009 14:24 - We are still waiting on suitably detailed outage reports from our connectivity providers, as soon as these are available we will be providing a full report.
20:58 - Network fully back up and running.

Does your website stand out from the crowd?

2009-02-06T15:36:00.007Z

Please take some time to visit our web design portfolio and web marketing to see how we've helped UK businesses exploit online marketing opportunities and stand out from the crowd.

Retail Website for High Street Shop

2008-11-30T14:53:00.004Z

Kents leading bath and spa company showcase a staggering choice of quality bathroom suites and wet rooms for all tastes and budgets, beautifully designed & fitted. Their innovative ideas stretch the imagination with head turning bathroom designs using 'best-in-class' bathroom equipment from around the world.

Why choose Signature Image Consultants for web design, web development, web hosting and internet marketing?

2008-11-03T10:24:00.010Z

Are you an entrepreneur, start-up company, or small business in the London, Kent or South East areas looking for effective yet affordable web design , powerful internet marketing, web development, web hosting, and more?

Good. We’re going to get on great! Because when it comes to the above, Signature Image Consultants is a friendly, award winning UK web design and internet marketing company that does them all, and brilliantly.

But, hey, it isn’t about us, it’s about YOU and what we can do to help give you that dazzling and powerful internet presence you’ll need to go exactly where you want to go online, and quickly.

Affordable web design and more...

Based in Kent, the enthusiastic and multi-talented team at Signature shares a passion for creative, dynamic and effective visual communication. We can offer you high-quality, professional and accessible web services that include:

Web Design
Web Development
Web Hosting
Internet Marketing Strategies
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Copywriting
Analytics, Data Forwarding, and more...

An award winning ‘virtual company’

We're a 'virtual company' providing REAL solutions to REAL problems, which sync with existing systems and practices. Therefore consultants can work from anywhere. The benefits of outsourced services give you the opportunity to offload non core activities to specialists on an adhoc basis. This leads to significant cost savings; maximising return on investment.

We’ll go further for you

Offering agency-level solutions, we go further than our competitors by offering you not just one-off web designs, but a full and integrated internet marketing support service.

Digital Printing & Web Design Website

2008-10-31T11:28:00.009Z

Bisonprint.com is a full service print center. Providing high quality printing, prepress, copying and finishing services for PR/ sales promotion & advertising agencies, freelance graphic designers, clubs & associations, plus a wide range of SMEs and established business clients.

LFPS Care - UK Fostering Website

2008-10-28T13:46:00.005Z

LFPS Care needed an online presence to give their users a place to find them on the web. So we built their blogsite lfpscare.co.uk with simple, easy to use CMS and a brace of social networking tools.

Total Fostering Gets A Total Makeover!

2008-10-28T13:33:00.011Z

Capital Care Fostering needed a bigger, bolder online identity to support below-the-line marketing activity and drive targeted enquiries to their website.

Social networking sites such as Bebo, Facebook, Gumtree, MySpace, Yahoo! 360, You Tube and Flickr uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most services are primarily web-based and provide a collection of various ways for users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, and so on.

Social networking has revolutionised the way we communicate and share information with one another in today's society. Various social networking websites are being used by millions of people everyday on a regular basis and it now seems that social networking is a part of everyday life.

Tapping into to this popularity we re-built their website totalfostering.co.uk using Wordpress features to improve impact, web usability and search engine visibility with a brace of "social networking tools".

Website Design at a low cost

2008-10-18T19:04:00.015+01:00

Many businesses today need a professional website that can generate sales leads/ contacts perform ecommerce transactions and provide information to existing clients. As experienced web designers, we know that a site must also be easy navigate, easy to find and should make use of fast and reliable, yet low cost services.

We're a Kent based website marketing firm that focuses on website design, website marketing and other creative solutions. Because we're a virtual company, you don't pay for unnecessary overheads. Because we work smart and partner with other leading specialists, you get the expertise and resources you'd expect from a much larger agency.

With over 12 years website design experience for small businesses, we will help you increase your business on the Internet. Whether it's a website makeover or new build, we'll develop a turnkey solution from web strategy through to copywriting, website design, hosting and marketing.

Smarter clients have a credit drought marketing strategy

2008-10-09T10:16:00.024+01:00

As the credit drought intensifies businesses are coming under mounting pressure as the banking crisis weighs on their finances. Many cash-strapped clients are reining in their spending.

The credit drought is forcing many clients to evaluate their marketing budgets more closely, which isn't a bad thing

Did you know online marketing can reduce acquisition costs, improve lead conversion and build brand awareness for a fraction of the cost of conventional advertising?

We work closely with our clients to create marketing campaigns tailored to meet specific business objectives

Signature Image Consultants are pro-actively working in partnership with our clients to exploit this very cost effective channel for sales, marketing and customer service. Working closely with our clients to ensure their marketing campaign is tailored to meet the objectives of the business, yet flexible enough react to changes in the current geo-political and socio-economic climate.

Need a credit drought marketing strategy for your business?

With the credit drought hitting many businesses hard, it's never been more important to find a resourceful online marketing company with ideas, energy and drive to deliver results, on time and on budget!

Website design & content management system for acountants and finance

2008-10-05T23:54:00.007+01:00

DG Accountancy Services offer practical solutions to everyday problems.

Whatever business are in they can help you run it more efficiently by taking away from you the tasks that they are best at so that you can get on with what you do best at - running your business.

Planet Beach UK Franchise Website

2008-09-20T10:21:00.004+01:00

Planet Beach Contempo Spa UK Franchise Website Makeover
The UK Master Franchisee approached Signature Image consultants to create a new website for the UK consumer market. Working closely with the US development team, Signature created a lively vibrant W3C compliant, CSS & Flash design theme for planetbeach.co.uk

"We have been very pleased with your overall enhancements to the campaign to make it work for the UK. We are definitely on the same team here and we sincerely appreciate the work you have done to create this website and have every intention on getting it to go live in time for your event".
Planet Beach.com

Create site stickiness through social networking

2008-09-03T14:25:00.005+01:00

Create site stickiness through social networking. Keep it personal, relevant and interactive and they'll come back for more. Add search; a the primary way users navigate. Get users where they want to go by how they think. Add powerful Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, forums, geo-mapping, rating systems and RSS feeds easily.

Sunburst Promotions team racing sponsorhip website

2008-09-02T11:40:00.009+01:00

This is a Public relations website, so we’re essentially selling you and your racing teams commercial appeal that businesses can get behind to achieve the following:

Increase brand awareness
For new product launches

Website design theme and usability based on F1 website with simple intuitive navigation. The page header also serves as an interactive menu. The site features 5 key sections for the website with headings borrowed from F1 racing terminology. This website template was built around Google’s Blogger, Calendar, Maps & Yahoo! FLICKR. Fully standards compliant — code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today's browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation. Hosted on our UK web servers.

North London Estate Agents Website

2008-09-02T11:08:00.005+01:00

Buy or rent property in North London, East London, Central London with M&M Property Links - London Residential Sales, Lettings, and Property Management for London N1, N5, N6, N7, N8, N10, N15, N16, N19, N22, NW1, NW3, NW5 areas.

Useful links

2008-08-29T22:24:00.010+01:00

How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website
SEO Services : Search Engine Optimization Techmagnate is an India SEO Services Company, offering SEO services in India,USA,Australia and UK.
Submit Your Site to Best of the Web!

Private Sale E-Commerce Website Development

2008-08-29T22:22:00.013+01:00

All properties sold in England follow the same basic steps for purchasing a property. The amount of time this takes can vary considerably, but usually takes two to three months from instruction to completion.

Our Property Move website is designed to be a very simple way to advertise and find properties.
Bringing buyers and sellers together to make a Private Sale.