Diary for December 2011

14th Managing your Time Better [Business Scene]

Who is this course designed for? The busy business person, struggling to manage more and more conflicting priorities. Audrey Davies: 'Are you a slave to your email?' If you are - or even think you might be - The Way Ahead, has the answer. “Be prepared" What’s in the course? The compulsive e-mail checker! How to avoid e-mail overload Type-casting your tasks to focus on what you should be doing – and when Managing interruptions ...

13th Customer Service Excellence [Business Scene]

This course is designed for those working in a customer facing role and who need to develop or improve their customer service skills. What are the course objectives? Understand the importance of delivering excellent customer service in today’s market Define excellent customer service and explain why we sometimes fail to get it right?  Be able to differentiate yourself and your organisation by delivering excellent c...

9th Assertiveness and Influencing [Business Scene]

This course is designed for front line managers, who need to understand the value of networking, and how best to influence and negotiate with others to achieve their objectives. What are the course objectives? Explain the value of networking Identify an appropriate work-based network for yourself Describe methods to establish and maintain effective relationships with the identified network Explain the general principles of negotiat...

7th Leading your Way to Success - 5-day Leadership and Management Programme [Business Scene]

For Owners and Managers who want to become more professional,productive and effective, in terms of getting the job done and delivering to the bottom line. Also excellent opportunities to learn from and share experiences with other like-minded businesses. What’s in the programme? We’ve used feedback from local companies to identify the topics to be included, and used it to create a Leadership and Managementprogramme to meet the learning and development needs of local busine...

6th Motivating your People to Perform [Business Scene]

For the practising or aspiring front line manager who needs to identify what makes each member of their team `tick’, and then to be able to pick and use the most appropriate method(s) to motivate the team to perform effectively. What are the course objectives? Outline the factors that influence how people behave at work Explain how to apply some of the basic recognised theories of motivation to team members, in given situations   Expla...

5th LinkedIn Made Easy - The Workshop [Business Scene]

This half day workshop has been designed for those professionals who already have a LinkedIn profile, whether it is complete or not, but are unsure about what the next steps are to help them promote themselves, their businesses or their employer. It will walk you through everything you need to ensure your activities on Linkedin are helping you to achieve both business and personal goals. It will focus on key activities around your profile, using Groups and Answers appropriately as well...

2nd Understanding Business Finance [Business Scene]

For the non-specialist in the financial aspects of the company - to be able to better manage the facts and figures side of the business.   What are the course objectives? Discovering what compromises the assets and liabilities of the Balance Sheet  Reviewing the record of business activity and profitability for the record Establishing the ground rules for safety, liquidity and profitability Exploring the art of interpreting ...

23rd Review of 2011

This year has been one of growth and partnerships at Alacrify. We seem to have done more work than ever and now have our biggest client portfolio to date. More Sites Than Ever in More Sectors Than Ever In simple numbers we produced almost 50% more sites this year than last year, with over 50 new or rebuilt sites being launched in 2011. But that only tells a part of the story. We've diversified into new sectors like engineering, flooring, roofing, defence and catering. We'v...

23rd Over 50 Sites Launched/Relaunched by Alacrify in 2011

Below are a list of sites that have gone live during the year, combining a mixture of new builds and re-builds: www.acat.me.uk www.acpponline.net www.advansyssolutions.co.uk www.amhmagazine.com www.bay-publishing-medical.com www.bellamont-topiary.co.uk www.bioselector.co.uk www.capheatonhall.co.uk www.cartwrightlighting.co.uk www.catchingrainbowsfertility.co.uk www.champagnefilm.com www.clay-to-game.co.uk www.coalarmh450en.com www.cobramds.co.uk ww...

22nd Publishing News Online to Boost Traffic

We have been working for the Southampton Ice Rink to publish a series of news stories for them almost every day that they are open. With a new site like www.southamptonskating.co.uk which was only launched about 8 weeks ago, it's often difficult to achieve quick results for search engine listing. Many sites are barely listed in Google at all within this timeframe. To help them get their message out there more quickly we have been running daily stories on the site to build content ...

21st News from www.osedirectory.com on @OSEsafety and @OSEenvironment

We have just built a section for the OSEdirectory website to allow news stories to be added and published online. The stories are either written by or commissioned by OSEdirectory, or are created directly by their advertisers. The Health and Safety and Environmental directory is a multilanguage source of information about products, services and companies for health and safety and environmental monitoring. The news is automatically fed to Twitter and is followed by over 2,000 ...

20th 2011 Christmas and New Year Opening Times for Alacrify

This year we will be closed from 4pm on Friday 23rd December 2011 and will reopen for business on Tuesday 3rd January 2012. We would like to wish all our clients and visitors a very Happy Christmas, and a successful and enjoyable New Year. We've lots of new plans for 2012 which we'll be posting online here in early 2012, so do pop back and watch this space, or follow us on Twitter www.twitter.com/Alacrify to keep up to date with what we're doing....

19th Day 1 Sales From New MagentoGo Website

We are delighted that the new website we built for www.MothPrevention.com has proven its worth already by making sales within 24 hours of launch. The combination of extreme SEO and highly optimised site design for ease of customer use resulted in exceptional day one performance. The rigorous application of digital marketing theory and best practice website design gives us confidence that this site is going to be a real high performance gem. If you're in need of Moth Traps...

19th Exceptional Website Launched www.capheatonhall.co.uk

For unforgettable self catering holidays in Northumberland. Today we are proud to announce the launch of a new website for self-catering holidays at Capheaton Hall in Northumberland. This stunning Grade 1 listed building dates from the 17th Century and is the family home of the Swinburnes. The West Wing offers accommodation for up to 8 people (2 extra children can be accommodated) and stabling is available too for horses or ponies. Take a look at this stunning new site and le...

18th New Website Launched for www.mothprevention.com

Offering the UK's widest range of moth control products, this site is built on the MagentoGo platform. It has been designed and optimised to provide exceptional search engine performance and has proven the worth of this approach with a its first sale occuring within 6 hours of launch! The site offers a range of moth traps and other prevention products, including moth pheromone traps that attract the moths away from your precious clothes. If you've got a moth problem, ...

15th Mine Disposal System Website for CobraMDS Launched

The new site for Cobra MDS mine disposal system is now live on the web. Our brief with this site was to create a site that would back up the marketing and sales channels already in development, and to present customers with a point of reference once they had been contacted about Cobra. This unique system allows for the safe disposal of unexploded underwater marine ordnance (explosives and mines), and has a clear national security as well as civilian market (in the offshore ene...

12th Business Blogging and Telling Your Company's Story

We've been doing a lot of work lately to help to explain the purpose of blogging or posting news on our customers' websites. Many business owners we talk to either think that this is a waste of time or alternatively don't think they'd have anything to say. Through our conversations with them they start to understand the importance of news and blogs to high performing websites and start think differently about this valuable aspect of digital marketing. We see blogging a...

9th New Website for High Level Cleaning Services

O'brien Sky Vac now have a new website to advertise their high level cleaning service. The business specialises in cleaning gutters and fascias at heights up to 48ft . They also offer video surveys of rooves, chimneys and guttering. www.obrienskyvac.co.uk ...

6th Free SEO Checker for Your Website

We've designed and launched a free custom SEO checker to help us to demonstrate some of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimisation to our clients. It shows the major dimensions that we focus on whenever we're creating a project on the web, and gives us a chance to show the sort of impact that different changes can have on the performance of a website. In particular it is useful to show where the gaps are in a website's SEO profile. The score it provide...

2nd SEO Testing and Visualising Changes to SEO

We've just created a new page on our site here to help us to explain to our clients how SEO works and show the effect on websites of altering different aspects of SEO. You can view the page here: SEO Tester You can use the tester to see how the different aspects of SEO can improve or harm your website's performance. We've built the tester from our experience of building and maintaining websites over the past 15 years; and drawn from a wide variety of types of website f...