The website is full of attractions in and around Winchester, places to eat and things to see, making it a valuable resource for potential visitors and well placed for strong SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Click here to visit this luxury Winchester B&B.

Dry Island is on the West Coast of Scotland and is the perfect getaway for a stunning Scottish holiday; with a warm welcome, peace and relaxation, and a breathtaking location.

Take a look at the website and see for yourself...
www.dryisland.co.uk

The dairy produces delicious milk, butter and ice cream from their herd of cows that graze on the tops of the hills of the Jurassic coast overlooking Weymouth Bay. Their amazing location may just be the best view in the house for the olympic sailing in 2012!

In addition to supplying over 400 wholesale customers including hotels, shops and newsagents around West Dorset with their home-farm dairy produce, the dairy also supplies doorstep milk deliveries to homes throughout the area too. And with their milk and dairy products you can also buy cheese, biscuits and cereals, jams, bread and cakes, making Craigs Farm the first choice for local doorstep deliveries of Dorset dairy produce.

Check out their new website, and if you're passing, pop by their shop to see the dairy in action and sample their produce.

www.craigsfarmdairy.co.uk

Zopim is a web-based application that lets businesses monitor and engage website visitors in real time. Designed with small medium businesses in mind, it is easy to use, affordable and powerful.

We wanted a helpful means to allow direct visitor engagement on the websites, allowing customer account managers to reach out to visitors and offer advice and support if it is needed.

Initial feedback is really positive, with direct contact with visitors from all over the world in just a few days.

Take a look at the sites and try the service for yourself: www.bioportfolio.net and www.spi-reports.com.

The site, which was formerly part of the www.bioportfolio.com website, now has its own domain name and a brand new engine to run it.

The new site has thousands of market reports, company profiles and business intelligence dossiers about the life science, healthcare and biotech sector from leading global market research companies. Researchers can search for and purchase reports directly from the site, drawing on dozens of reports covering all aspects of the biotech and lifescience market; from vaccines to gene therapy, hiv to cancer.

Take a look at the site and see the exceptional range of reports for yourself.

www.bioportfolio.net

The refurbished and relaunched cafe at the back of the newsagents in Maiden Newton is now on the web too.

The cafe serves some of the best coffee in Dorset in our opinion, as well as delicious cakes and savouries. We often use the cafe for client or team meetings .

Cafe 64 is a great stop-off point for walkers and cyclists exploring the Dorset countryside and makes a great start/end point to some lovely circular walks around the village.

We hope that the website will give the cafe another useful marketing channel to help them to attract more customers over the coming months.

Take a look at the site, and then pop in for a cuppa and a slice of cake if you're in the area. You'll be pleased that you did!

www.cafe64.co.uk

This week the total number of reports available on the website exceeded 40,000 titles with new reports being added daily.

With market data from leading research companies like Marketline, GlobalData and GBI Research the site is now an authoratitive and comprehensive source of market research data from all sectors of the global economy.

The site's powerful search functionality gives visitors the opportunity to find extremely relevant and focused reports on topics from the top 10 Global Markets for Yeasts to defence spending in Western Europe and the Childrenswear -BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) Industry Guide.

If you're looking for business intelligence then this site really is a key source of useful information.

Click here to start your search for market research and corporate business intelligence.

It describes the benefits of using BrightPearl's ecommerce management system in combination with the Magento Go retail solution. The project describes Garden Deco's experience of implementing Magento Go, with our design help, and tying it into the BrightPearl system.

You can read the full story here:
http://www.brightpearl.com/node/1828

Regional Marketing Online

Starting with building a series of news stories on their website we are working to build their online presence for all the towns and villages in their catchment area of West Dorset.

We will then be building out a series of pages that will build up the information about their specialist services and expertise.

The use of their website's news channel to do this will give them a double bite of SEO goodness, with fresh content being published every couple of days (keeping Google's hunger for fresh content satisfied) along with building out the volume of on-topic content on their website (making sure Google gets a good feed when the spiders visit).

If you're interested in discussing how we could help you with your promotions in a similar way then please get in touch: 01300 320076.

In addition to some stunning website design concepts he has created a new illustration for the life cycle of a clothes moth to be used on www.mothprevention.com

Also in the pipeline are logos and business cards and more illustrations for several new projects that are currently under development.

We're really pleased to have his input into the team!

The use of video on the site really shows off the quality of the products and services they offer, and gives a clear picture of the superb finish they achieve using resin products in different settings.

Our updates included creating the means to add in further videos to the site as and when they're needed.

They will be offering their delicious, authentically-Spanish, artisan foods as ready meals through the new website. The images alone are mouthwatering!

The goal is to have the site ready for action by the beginning of April so watch this space!

The site will sit alongside their El Bon Plat, Spanish catering business which is going from strength to strength since we redesigned and relaunched the website.

You can check out their catering website here:
www.elbonplat.com

Garden Deco approached us for help having seen our recent work for www.mothprevention.com and our earlier Wild Gardens website.

They wanted a new design for their online gardening shop that would make a smart and attractive impression. We took on the brief and this is the result.

You can visit the store here to see it for yourself:
www.gardendeco.co.uk

The new site has now been live for a couple of months and is being well used by the public and members alike.

It combines information about CPP, training and events, with news and information about the association. It also has a members' area that is used to help run the association.

Here's what it looks like:

You can visit the site here: http://www.acpponline.net

We've been asked to provide a beautiful new look to the site and create lots of great design elements to make it look more contemporary and increase its appeal to its customers.

It's a great project and we're enjoying the process of evolving the new design. When it's finished we'll post a link to show you what we've done.

We've also been continuing to work on the conversion rates for www.mothprevention.com and several of our recent changes have now more than doubled our sales almost overnight.

If you'd like to have some help with building an online retail site with Magento Go then please get in touch, or if you'd like help with skinning your site, or improving its performance then drop us an email: jon@alacrify.co.uk

The simple, intelligent search functions on the site give fast results and with high quality related content.

Researchers and corporate visitors can use the power of our extensive databases to discover market news and information in a clear, quick and joined-up manner.

You can visit the site here: www.spi-reports.com

Our goal is to present a site that is more intuitive to use, even more obvious and simple to understand, and that allows us to explain more about the expertise we offer here at Alacrify.

This is the first big milestone in the project, and has involved rebuilding the design structure and visual presentation of the site. We've also included the facility to be more social on the site, and give the option to "like" pages on Facebook or recommend them on Reddit.

The page structure also has "related content" boxes on the right hand margin for every page so you can see any additional information about the topic that's on the site.

The framework for the site also uses a neat, collapsible design framework. This means it works much better on mobile phones, allowing you to read the content at a sensible size without have to zoom in or move things around.

The final piece of the jigsaw is a revamp of the content. We've a load of new pages in development which explain more about what we do and how they can work for your business. These are going to be added in batches over the next month.

If you've time, do let us know what you think, and whether you do find it easier to use. We'd love to hear your feedback. And do feel free to "like" any of our pages on Facebook, or Recommend to Reddit and Tweet about us. The more mentions the merrier!

http://www.filmaker.co.uk/blog/home/51/wsx-rural-net-launch

10 points for anyone who can spot me amongst the great and good of Dorset! [30 points available!]

Jon

We're also in the process of rewriting and developing a new look for our website.

You may have already seen our new logo on our Twitter and Facebook. This is the first part of a number of changes we're making to our brand and presentation on the web in 2012.

The current look and feel has served us well for the past four years, but now as we've grown and developed we feel it's time to consolidate the content, refresh the design, and make it even easier for you to find information on the site.

With a busy orderbook for our clients, we're fitting these changes in around the fringes of the working day and at weekends. Our intention is to have the first phase of our changes live before the end of this week.

We've worked extremely hard over the recent weeks to ensure the messaging and performance of clothing moth control website www.mothprevention.com is as clear and easy as possible.

Sub-5 Minute Sales Process for Online Retail

Recent customer experience has shown that we've now been able to achieve sales in under 5 minutes from landing on the site to payment success. This includes browsing for and finding the right product to entering all the payment information and confirming the order.

Give us a ring on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk if you'd like to know more about how we've achieved these amazing e-commerce results.

Visit the site here. http://www.plmfineart.co.uk

When I recently added in a new business to Facebook it asked for the start date as part of the record. I typed it in as requested and then found that the new company had become my primary employment record.

I searched high and low to see how to order employer records on Facebook and see if they could be moved or re-ordered, but no, Facebook seems to like showing them in chronological order whenever it has enough information to do so.

The only way I could reinstate Alacrify at the top of the list was to remove the start date from all the other current employers' records and just put in a start date for my main employer: Alacrify. Then everything slotted into place perfectly again.

Hope this helps!

Overview:

West Dorset has become home to a new national retailer of moth prevention products throughout the UK. Founders and Maiden Newton residents, Adam Smith and Jon Sloper, made a conscious choice to set up locally, reducing travel and commuting time, drawing on local expertise and staying within their local community to build the business.

Maiden Newton's business community now includes more than 50 SMEs within the village.

MothPrevention.com draws on Adam and Jon's combined expertise in online retail and business development, and seeks to meet a growing need for prevention and treatment of clothes moths infestation and damage. The proposition is The UK's Widest Range for Moth Control - there are a lot of sophisticated and effective products beyond moth balls! Early signs indicate that there is a significant market for their products, with research showing that an estimated 1.5 million homes in the UK have experienced problems with moths.

"With good phone, broadband and delivery connections you can set up online businesses almost anywhere." comments Jon, "And working near to home and using other local businesses' services gives a feel-good factor that is hard to beat."

The pair are not only building a new business themselves, but are taking their experiences out to other people, offering support and help to other people and businesses who want to make more of their current web businesses or start up new businesses online. The business development and website building work is run through Jon's company, Alacrify (a word that means "to rouse up, or inspire"), which has been building sites and systems for many Dorset businesses and communities, from the Dorset County Show and MaidenNewton.info, to Dukes Auctions and Portland Port.

Adam's background includes managing the development and launch of the Dixons' Stores Group ecommerce websites on the internet in the early 2000's as well as working on the fast-growth development of Bid-TV and Price-Drop TV. Jon has worked with dozens of small businesses over the past 15 years; providing online business marketing, websites and business systems for SMEs to blue chip multinationals.

Picking moth prevention as a business may seem unusual, but their solid and tested business approach is already driving a great success with day one orders and growing week-on-week sales and recommendations since the business was launched just before Christmas.

Adam comments: "We're thrilled with the start of the new business and it is particularly satisfying to help customers who need fast help and are often very upset about their problems with moths! We're also very pleased to be able to create a 'proof of concept' business to demonstrate our capabilities to our consulting clients - this is a 'first' for a consultancy business as far as we are aware, and should set us apart from the many small online marketing agencies in Dorset with tangible evidence of our capabilities."

Why Maiden Newton?

The founders of Frampton Retail live in the large village of Maiden Newton in West Dorset and it is a short journey to work for the other staff members. Being an online retail business selling throughout the UK, the actual business location does not matter for serving customers - one of the advantages of running a retail business without a physical storefront.

Space to operate at relatively low rental cost was available and local staff availability is good - there is a team of 4 involved with the business currently, but as the business grows we expect to recruit additional members to the team locally. Providing employment opportunities in the area is important to the local economy and the location of our business in Maiden Newton has already benefitted other businesses in the village.

Frampton Retail is proud to have joined the thriving local business community in Dorset.

Ends

_____________________________________________________________________

About Frampton Retail and Alacrify:

Frampton Retail was set up in November 2011 to run online retail businesses. Alacrify Ltd provides consultancy services to other businesses, particularly focussing on local businesses requiring an online presence for the first time, or needing proven skills to assist with their online marketing to drive their business forward.

Adam Smith
Director

01300 321098
07515 742770

adam@framptonretail.com

The job advert for a Junior Web Developer is now posted on Gumtree and GradSouthWest, but of course we're also making the most of our website to push out the message, as well as spreading the word around the Dorset developer community while we're at it.

We're looking for an enthusiastic person to come and work with us, with an experience of PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS and Javascript, and a flair for good design and well written English.

It's a great opportunity to join a creative and enthusiastic team and to work on some excellent projects with some brilliant clients.

Please spread the news... and pass this on to anyone you think may be interested.

The event was hosted at Kingston Maurward and was attended by 200 Dorset Businesses from all over the county.

"Rural-Net enables you to get together with others to exchange ideas and experience in a warm and friendly environment, hear from business experts and increase your business success and ultimately your bottom line." www.rural-net.co.uk

There are 6 groups across the county that members can attend. Being on the cusp of Dorchester's Hardy Club and the Marshwood Vale's Marshwood Club I can see myself attending both of them.

I wish them well and look forward to seeing the developments over the course of this new year.

Take a look at their website for the latest Auction news from their Dorchester Salerooms.

www.dukes-auctions.com

In addition to improving the front end of the site we've also integrated a variety of member-specific features to improve members' ability to manage matches and tournaments.

One of the sections that was updated was for their SubSea range of Technical ROVs.

You can check out the site by clicking here or on the image above to read more about these amazing vehicles.

The Dorset County Show will be taking place on the 1st and 2nd September 2012.

There's also a load of excellent videos on the site that you can view to whet your appetite for this year's event.

Traders/Exhibitors can view the latest video about the benefits of taking a stand at the show by clicking here, or clicking on the image below.

Firstly I should say that there is no inbuilt blog in Magento Go. It just doesn't exist. So we have to find a workaround to simulate one.

This is a bit fiddly as the key part of a blog (apart from being able to regularly publish content) is that it should be available as an RSS feed.

Secondly you can't set up an RSS feed on Magento Go. So again we need to find a workaround.

The approach we took to creating a blog on www.mothprevention.com was to create a series of pages with a particular URL format (which you can set in Magento Go). We then created a php script to read the whole sitemap that MagentoGo creates for Google. The script then unpacked the relevant pages that had the special URL format and converted them into the RSS feed.

As we couldn't host this PHP script on Magento Go's platform, we put it onto another of our site's webspace. While the URL of the rss feed is not the same as the Magento site, the URLs and internal references on the RSS feed ARE all correctly labelled and refer to the Magento site, creating a virtually seamless integration...

The resulting RSS feed is what we feed to Twitter.

If you'd like us to help you set up RSS on Magento Go, or set up a blog on Magento Go then please call 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

There is no built-in way to do this, so we have had to create a cunning workaround. This means utilising a bunch of formatting conventions for the page names on MagentoGo that we're using for the news stories (they are all prefixed with "stories/") and then using PHP to read the list and create an xml RSS feed from the published items.

Once the RSS feed is in place (which needed to be hosted on another domain as MagentoGo won't allow independent files to be hosting on the standard package) we could then set up the Twitter account and using Twitterfeed we were then able to publish it directly to Twitter whenever a news story is written in MagentoGo.

You can see the results here: @MothPrevention

If you would like us to set up a system like this on your MagentoGo account then please get in touch with jon@alacrify.co.uk or phone Jon on 01300 320076.

We customised MagentoGo to build the site which is optimised to provide the best possible platform for retailing moth prevention and moth control products.

If you would like help with building or developing an online store using MagentoGo then please get in touch. We can help with the design, operation, marketing, stock control processes, order management, and more; in short we are able to help get your business online and delivering the goods.

Call Jon on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk to find out more.

http://www.technology-news-reports.com

We've also been working on improving topic pages as well as making large improvements to overall site performance.

http://www.technology-news-reports.com/topic/2407-video-games.html

While still a work in progress, with these changes we hope to improve search engine optimisation as well as guide users though the large amount of content more clearly.

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've also broadened our activity in many of our long-standing markets like healthcare, holiday accommodation, financial services, IT services, membership associations, art, photography and business consultancy.

New Content Management System Launched

2011 saw the launch of our new MicroCMS which is now used in pretty much all of our new websites. This allows our clients to take direct control of their website's content and news and maintain the sites themselves. It's been extremely well received with many clients now having published hundreds of news stories and changes on their sites without any need for our assistance.

Giving Something Back

We've also supported a number of charitable or community websites this year again; www.maidennewton.info, www.theafricanpulse.com and www.devondorsetregiment.co.uk, as well as continuing to support www.rutlandreminders.org.uk, www.homestartwestdorset.co.uk and several other community group websites.

Highlights

Some of our favourite parts of the year have arisen from seeing the success of our clients as a result of work that we've done with them on their website or digital marketing.

One of our biggest projects in 2011 was the relaunch and rebrand of www.acat.me.uk, the website for the Association for Cognitive Analytic Therapy. It required a complete rebuild from the ground up, and has resulted in more visitors, more page views and lower bounce rates on the new site. Plus the anecdotal feedback from members has been really positive.

Our other major ongoing piece of work is the continuing development of www.bioportfolio.com which continues to offer world-class information, news and reports to the biotech, life science and pharmaceutical sector. The site is now within touching distance of becoming one of the top 20,000 websites in the US- not bad when you consider the other sites in this club include Google, Apple and Amazon!

We've also been building a successful series of new microsites for Honeywell Analytics / BW Technology. These support their new product launches around the whole EMEA region. This has included developing multilanguage sites for them too.

There have also been many clients like www.heathcotehouse.co.uk and www.quintessentialbedandbreakfast.co.uk who have made use of every opportunity and piece of advice that we've given to create highly successful websites in 2011. Quintessential reached the top of The Good Web Guide this year as a result of their hard work!

Partnerships and New Opportunities

In 2011 we built 2 new ecommerce websites using the MagentoGo platform. www.wildgardens.com and www.mothprevention.com both of which are growing well. We've also been working as a beta tester for www.xampe.com to test their new Business Administration and Management Software that they are going to be bringing to market in 2012. It's been brilliant to use and made an enormous difference to our project management and workflow visibility.

2011 saw the launch of Sector Publishing Intelligence too, which is a spin off business collaboration between BioPortfolio's Peter Barfoot and Stefan and Jon from Alacrify. The 8 new sites are growing and developing daily with a series of substantial new developments planned in early 2012.

New Members of the Team

We've been delighted to have Cindy Dahl join the team this year as our Accounts Manager. She has made a huge difference to the workflow around finance and billing this year and is a highly valued member of our team.

There have also been many others who have helped in 2011 that we hope to continue to work with in the new year. Adam Smith and Sarah Tiplady, Ralph Corderoy and Tim Fawkes. We're also grateful for the continued support of many of our business partners like Comms UK, Flatrock Systems, Scott Vevers Accountants, United Hosting and Creeds the Printers.

They've all made 2011 a year of great progress and continuing success.

Into 2012

Our growth as a business means that 2012 is going to be a big year for us, with an office move and lots of other new opportunities in the early new year. We're looking forward to the challenges and new enterprises that this will bring.

And finally

I'd like to say a huge thank you to all our clients. We have thoroughly enjoyed working with you all in 2011. Thank you for choosing us as your web partners and thank you for all the excellent referrals you have introduced to us this year. We look forward to working with you in 2012 and wish all our customers and visitors a very Merry Christmas and a fulfilling and successful New Year!

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
www.contactconsultinguk.com
www.devondorsetregiment.co.uk
www.dorsetcountyshow.co.uk
www.elbonplat.com
www.essdorset.co.uk
www.euro-resins.com
www.exetersymphonyorchestra.co.uk
www.firstchoicesolar.com
www.framptonretail.com
www.gasalertmicroclipxt.com
www.guardianauto.co.uk
www.heathcotehouse.co.uk
www.jonathan-gooding.co.uk
www.jtmlandscapes.co.uk
www.moneymattersdirect.co.uk
www.munichtechnicalcentre.com
www.mothprevention.com
www.pc-college.co.uk
www.pomairepottery.co.uk
www.pictures-of-you.co.uk
www.obrien-roofing.co.uk
www.obrienpropertysolutions.co.uk
www.obrienskyvac.co.uk
www.osedirectory.com
www.romanfinds.org.uk
www.sallypinhey.com
www.sectorpublishing.com
www.sevenspringsphotographic.co.uk
www.southamptonskating.co.uk
www.teak-house-tangalle.co.uk
www.theafricanpulse.net
www.thegalleon.co.uk
www.thepaintedshed.co.uk
www.wholehogroast.co.uk
www.trinityhousebandb.co.uk
www.westernmarquees.co.uk
www.weymouthandportland.info
www.wild-food.net
www.xampe.com

0ver 50 sites this year ... that's more than 1 launched every week!

We're really proud of the work we do and are delighted to work with such an interesting and diverse group of excellent clients. We wish them every success in 2012.

If you'd like us to work with you in 2012 then please ring us on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk We'd love to hear from you, and who knows we may be putting your business on our list next year!

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 and awareness and attract Google and the other search engines back to the site regularly to read the updates.

This has led to PAGE ONE listing on Google in under 2 weeks for many key words and phrases and PAGE ONE listing on Google for "southampton ice skating" within 3 weeks of launch!

The site is also referenced on Facebook and the news is fed to Twitter.

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 people and businesses on their two Twitter accounts.

The goal of these changes is to provide even more helpful information to people about Health and Safety and Environmental Monitoring issues around the world, and increase the SEO richness of the website along the way.

Take a look at the site and the new pages for yourself: www.osedirectory.com

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.

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 or looking to treat Carpet Moths then pay the site a visit. You'll find a range of Moth Balls, Moth Repellent and Moth Sprays to treat any moth infestations you may have.

www.mothprevention.com

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 let us know what you think.

www.capheatonhall.co.uk

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, and no-one else can help, go to www.mothprevention.com

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 energy industry for example).

We're currently working on some video to supplement the still images on the site.

Take a look at the site for yourself: www.cobramds.co.uk

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 and news generation having 2 clear purposes:

1. Staying in touch with customers

2. Reaching out to new customers through good SEO

Staying in touch with customers is clearly a good thing. It allows you to continue to develop your working relationship with them and explore new opportunities together as time goes by. They can keep up to date with your business activities and may hear of a new service that you're offering that relates to them that they didn't realise you offered.

Reaching out to new customers is all about getting your website up to speed and performing properly. This means Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. One of the cornerstones of SEO is freshness of content. This has become even more important in recent weeks as Google has changed its algorithms again to give more weight to fresh websites. Blogging or writing news is a simple way to keep your site up to date.

If you would like some help with working out what you could write about on your site, then please get in touch. We also offer copywriting services for our customers where we write and publish news for them on their websites, making sure their sites are well regarded by Google and the other search engines.

Call Jon on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

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

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 provides is our own metric and doesn't map directly to any Google ranks or scores, but it does show the relative effect of different changes that you could make to your site, and how much more complete the site's SEO could be when the gaps in SEO are dealt with.

Take a look for yourself and let us know what you think.

www.alacrify.co.uk/seo-tester.php

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 from ecommerce to brochure sites, and of all shapes and sizes, from one-pagers to sites with millions of pages.

We hope it shows how complicated and subtle SEO really is, and how you have to tackle lots of different aspects at the same time to make a site really work effectively.

Do get in touch if you'd like more information or help with optimising your website.

jon@alacrify.co.uk

This has been achieved by a well planned mixture of both online and offline marketing.

Alongside the online marketing, some traditional print media adverts have been used to let people know about the new rink that is in Southampton city centre for the winter.

The online story has centred around making sure the site is highly optimised for the search engine indexing; making sure it is super-fast to load; making sure it is properly referencing the important keywords for the rink like "ice skating", "southampton", "holiday", "family", etc.

We've also run a daily news story about the rink to make sure Google retains interest in the site and realises that it is active and interesting. These stories are then sent to the rink's Twitter account @SotonIceSkating

The site has also been referenced and linked to from a number of other local websites.

The result is fast growth in visitor number from week one of the site's launch, and a high conversion rate to bookings.

We're delighted with the results and are really pleased to see the rink is such a success.

Check out the site for yourself and see what we've done.
www.southamptonskating.co.uk

Working closely with their Marketing and Design representatives, we were able to build a bespoke version of our popular Micro CMS website, following the existing design style set by ourselves for the H450EN microsite (see previous story here).

The website is intended to be used by both English and German speaking users, and we were able to easily integrate two language options as part of our Micro CMS system.

Take a look at the Honeywell Gas Detection - Münich Technical Centre website here: www.munichtechnicalcentre.com

We were able to quickly build a new website, based upon the design of an existing one - the GasAlertQuattro, working closely with Honeywell Analytics to ensure the preset content was suitably accommodated and easy to read. Attention was also paid to ensure the website worked across a variety of web browsers, including older versions which can be easily broken by using up to date code.

See the website for yourself at www.gasalertmicroclipxt.com

Check out http://www.thegoodwebguide.co.uk/news-info/best-sites-digest/best-sites-for-bed-breakfasts/13902 to read the full review.

We're thrilled for our clients who have worked unbelievably hard on the site and really used all the functionality we built into their website; and the results are now speaking for themselves.

Well done Quintessential!

You can visit their site here: www.quintessentialbedandbreakfast.co.uk

Microsites are designed to easily convey information about a product or service and are often used as a digital addition to more traditional printed marketing materials, such as brochures and leaflets.

Our work for the newly launched H450EN Carbon Monoxide Alarm was centred around creating a website that strongly resembled a range of marketing materials that had already been created, whilst ensuring it was easy to use and clear to read.

This included the use of existing coporate colours and logos and some clever Javascript code that allowed us to use a non web standard typeface for the header text, without having to resort to embedding it as an image.

Find out more details on the Honeywell Analytics H450EN Carbon Monoxide Alarm.

Visit the microsite at www.coalarmh450en.com

If you're in the market for event catering take a look at their sample menus and testimonials.

The skating rink is here:

View Larger Map

You can book online now by following this link: http://www.southamptonskating.co.uk/booking

Peter Desmond,
Trustee, The African Pulse

Vist: www.theafricanpulse.net

Fighting HIV&AIDS in Southern Africa

The African Pulse works in South Africa equipping individuals to make informed life choices in a world affected by HIV&AIDS.

The African Pulse provides African schools and communities with innovative, relevant teaching tools and skills to promote healthy living, HIV&AIDS education and prevention to break the cycle of infection and fight the HIV&AIDS epidemic.

"What HIV - the AIDS virus - does to the human body, it also does to society..."

In just a couple of sessions we've already got over 25% of our data loaded and functioning on xampe's business administration system and already it's proving its value.

xampe Report's Real Value

We needed to run a spot check on our SEO terms on our clients websites to check they were all up to date, and through xampe we were able to run the report and get back a set of data on over 100 sites that we'd added within just 15 seconds; that's the total time it took from the time we thought about it to being able to read the report. It was brilliant!

The beta phase isn't without a few glitches though and we've already passed on some comments and suggestions for improvements that have been taken on and added to the system; things like small tweaks to the presentation of the information and one or two occasions when the action buttons didn't make sense, or didn't behave as we'd expected.

xampe Online Task Management

The most exciting and interesting part of xampe for us at the moment is the fact that it allows us to integrate lots of vital information in one coherent place. It also allows us to report on our work and projects at the touch of a button (as I mentioned above) and create analyses of our business that we'd have never been able to do before.

The other significant benefit has been with the task management options in xampe. We've used this to structure our activity for the forthcoming week, allocating tasks and actions amongst the team directly from the xampe application.

Previously we tried using BaseCamp to do this, which was excellent, but still was disconnected from our other business information. This time we've managed to keep all the information connected; linking people, projects and businesses all together. This naturally makes the whole picture easier to see, and also makes it easier to find related information whenever you need it.

We'll post more notes as we get more familiar with xampe; intial results are really promising though.

If you're interested in finding out more about xampe click here: www.xampe.com, or call us on 01300 320076.

We've created a brand new website for the rink to allow you to book a Christmas holiday ice skating treat for you and your family. Just visit www.southamptonskating.co.uk and click on the bear at the top of the page. Pick your dates and times and pay online.

You'll get a receipt that you can take to the rink with a QR barcode on it that will be scanned at the front desk. Then within just a few moments you'll be able to get your skates on and get on the ice.

xampe is an online business administration and customer relationship management service. (It's not just for online businesses though!)

It is designed to allow us to keep all our business records in one place, so we can access them wherever and whenever we need them. It won't replace Outlook or our website code storage, but it will allow us to manage our projects and plans and customer information in a much more effective way and store our key administration files too.

It should help us a lot with managing our long term projects, and also those projects where our whole team needs to be involved at different points on the development process.

We've set up xampe to allow us to allocate tasks and manage our website development workflow, as well as to monitor our CRM processes to make sure we're looking after our customers as well as we can.

xampe is due to be launched publicly in early 2012, but we're delighted to be able to make use of it as early as possible. I'm sure there are going to be some teething issues, but already I feel a huge sense of relief about what it can help us out with; in particular lots of administrative issues that have been difficult to sort out in the past because they don't fit neatly into Outlook or onto Excel spreadsheets (or anything else we've looked at for that matter).

We'll let you know how it works out.

If you'd like to know more about xampe then visit the website: www.xampe.com

Cheap Websites from Under GBP30!

The prices for a cheap website started at under GBP30 and then stretched up to a few hundreds. (One person's cheap is another person's expensive after all... it's just a matter of perspective.) Most came in at between GBP100 and GBP300.

For this you can get a site with one to ten pages, usually including a contact form.

It's not always clear what you get in terms of hosting and domain name registration in these packages, and whether these are added extras.

Cheap Website Development

The site development offered was remarkably mixed, with some offering free unlimited design and content customisation (how that is commercially viable at under GBP100 is hard to imagine) but many offered "off the shelf" template packages with photos and text changes as part of the service.

These looked well presented and seemed to have a punchy design concept with glossy photos and dramatic text or navigation elements. Initial impressions were good.

SEO On Budget Websites

But then when I dug a little further and looked into the performance and Search Engine Optimisation [SEO] of the sites they were often rather limited in what they could offer.

Reliance on images instead of text made the sites rather lightweight for SEO. The image navigation, flash animations or just big images with embedded text reduced the likelihood of achieving very good SEO results.

Some offered SEO guides to help their customers do the SEO themselves. But none talked about understanding their customers' needs or business objectives and whether these types of sites were appropriate to their needs.

In those cases where there were guides available, the assumption was that the customers would know what they were doing. (Which is a big expectation in a complicated and fast-moving world like the internet.)

Unique Cheap Website Design

There was also a bit of a "me too" tendency to some of the designs. Maybe this is bit of a picky comment, because familiarity is definitely a nice feeling and immediately knowing where you are with a site can be reassuring and encouraging to visitors. My only concern is that it can sometimes mean that the unique spirit of the business is lost in the standard-issue templates.

Is Cheap the Best Price for a Website?

Well maybe. We're not that self-obsessed to think that our approach is the only or the best one in all cases (we do recommend other solutions when it's appropriate). There are definite advantages to going for the cheapest option. But as with many things there's probably a hidden cost to the cheaper options that may even things up in the long run and in this case I suspect that it might come down to performance.

To make a website that performs well takes a combination of technology and SEO expertise. While the cost of the technology can be very, very low (and GBP30 is remarkably low!) the SEO is going to take time to master, and it may be cheaper in the long run to pay a professional to set it all up for you right from the start.

Does Alacrify Offer Cheap Websites?

No. The cost of our sites is from about GBP700, with the occasional one-pager for very special cases for GBP100 or so. We do offer great value though.

You get the peace of mind of knowing your site is designed for your needs, and built professionally to the best standard possible. And as a result you can be confident that your website will perform well from day one and continue to benefit you and your business into the future.

You'll also be able to call on us if you ever need any more help once the site's live. Our service is personal. We care what happens to you, your business and your website. We're in it for the long run.

If you're interested in talking to us about what we do and how we could help you with your website then please call 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

This outstanding performance surely makes Quintessential Bed and Breakfast one of the best B&B sites on the web for B&B owners.

The combination of a beautiful site design and photography, with a clear commitment to only list quality B&Bs, plus a comprehensive approach to best practice Search Engine Optimisation has made this site highly effective for the B&B's listed, and a lovely place to browse for the site's visitors.

Take a look for yourself and see what you think...

www.quintessentialbedandbreakfast.co.uk

We have just launched the website www.southamptonskating.co.uk on behalf of Western Marquees - for whom we also launched their rebuilt corporate website recently (you can read more on that project here).

Western Marquees (under the name of Western Skating) hosted this popular Ice Skating event in Salisbury last year, proving to be a big hit with hundreds of people taking to the ice during the Festive period.

2011 sees the launch of this feature in the popular Bargate area of Southampton City Centre, ensuring thousands of shoppers and visitors will have the chance to book their 45 minute slot on the under cover ice rink, whilst enjoying the sights and smells of the annual German Christmas Market held in the same area.

We haved worked closely with David and Amanda from Western Marquees to ensure that the website, which features an online booking and payment facility, is straight forward enough for customers to use and the site's owners to administer.

The system makes use of the popular QR code system, allow for quick scanning of payment receipts to ensure booked participants can be quickly verified for their alloted time on the ice.

For more information, visit www.southamptonskating.co.uk

The Southampton Skating Ice Rink will be open to the public from Thursday 17th November 2011 until 8th January 2012

There's a number of questions about new websites that we find ourselves answering a lot. Here's our top 5.

1. How many visitors will come to our new site? How many visitors do other websites get?

We obviously don't disclose information about one client to another, but in broad terms we would expect initial visitor numbers to be low. Maybe a couple of dozen in the first week or two and then climbing upwards from there.

The number of visitors depends on how interesting your site is, how well written it is, how relevant it is, how big it is, how long it's been around, how many people link into your site, and a number of other factors.

Obviously some of these factors are missing from a new site; it's not been around long, and it's probably not got many pages, so the initial numbers will be low.

It also takes Google a while to visit and index your site, so you can wait as long as 4-6 weeks before your site appears in Google search results. (We've had a couple of occasions when a site has appeared in 24 hours, but that's extremely rare.)

So be modest in your expectations to start with. If you need to launch with a bang, then consider using Pay Per Click advertising like Google Adwords to drive traffic when you launch, or support your web launch with an email newsletter or print marketing campaign to bring people to your new site.

2. How quickly will our site appear on Google?

Usually within 4-6 weeks all your pages will be listed on Google (if Google thinks that they're worth listing!).

We can sometimes accelerate this process by giving Google a sitemap of all the pages on your website and inviting their indexing "robots" to visit the site immediately. Sometimes this can mean you're listed in under a week.

3. Do we need to so anything to our site once it's launched?

Yes. Yes. Yes!

If your site content stands still then you can guarantee that your competitors will go past you.

So you'll need to make sure you give some time to posting new information on your site, refreshing your core pages' content from time to time and generally making sure your site is seen to be active and interesting over time.

In practice this means adding at least one new story to your site every week to keep Google interested. This also gives your existing clients a reason to keep visiting too.

Sometimes these updates can be handled automatically by republishing your Twitter content for instance, or another person's blog content (especially handy if they're an industry expert in your field). However republishing other peoples' content is not as effective as publishing your own unique stories. (That's why we publish between 1 and 3 stories a week about all aspects of our business, rather than relying on third party content.)

4. How can I measure whether my website is effective?

Well of course the acid test of most sites is the amount of business it brings in, and this can be simply measured by counting the value of the leads from people who found you on the web. (Sometimes you may not know that they've found you on the web unless you ask them when they phone you.)

Ecommerce measurements are straightforward. Count the sales. Job done.

Some sites are not designed to convert to cash however, and different measurements may need to be applied.

Informational sites, public service sites, news and community sites may have no commercial component at all. In these cases then the measures will be a mix of quantitative and qualitative calculations.

The quantitative measures would include things like: number of visits per day, duration of visits, repeat visitor numbers, number of pages viewed, etc.

The qualitative measures would include things like: number of referrals to your site from other people (e.g. Following you on Twitter, "Liking" you on Facebook), personal anecdotes and feedback from satisfaction surveys, etc.

And of course, you'll get feedback from your customers about your site too. We frequently get lovely comments from people about this site for instance.

5. Is there anything else I can do to may my website work better?

Yes. Loads of things.

Firstly your site needs to be properly built to work quickly, be easy to use and be search engine optimised. I'll assume you've ticked these boxes. (With our web design, this is a given.)

Secondly is a long list of things that may be useful or interesting to you, and which can bring additional value to your online marketing. These can include;

• Integration with Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. This increases the visibility of your business and can get you into closer relationships with your target audience if you plan it well.
• Pay-Per-Click campaigns - you can spend a fortune on these if you want and some businesses are entirely driven by these types of campaign. Basically you pay Google to send you visitors. These can be a good way to promote new products or services, or reach out to customers in a competitive market. (These can be expensive to run, but also bring real benefits if used judiciously.)
• Contributing to Other Websites - if it's permitted, and your content is appropriate you can also write on other people's website and link your content back to your own site. You might post to a user-group website, or to a LinkedIn group, or post on a help forum somewhere and link to your site. Some sites won't allow this, but if they do it can be a good way to create inbound links to your site.
• Publishing Press Releases Online - there are lots of free press release publishers on the web and you can publish your press releases on their sites for nothing. You will need to have something genuinely "newsy" to say, but otherwise there's no catch. Just write about something that is relevant to your business, include a link to your site, and Bob's your uncle.
• Regularly Review Your Content - check that you're still talking about the things that you really do as a business. Make sure all your services are listed. Make sure that they're described in a contemporary way, and that any jargon you may have used hasn't dated. Search engines are matching your content to peoples' searches. If your site doesn't have those search keywords on it then you'll not get the traffic.
• Get Regular Expert Advice - I'm going to say that aren't I! But it's true. The web is a fickle beast and very fast moving. Having expert knowledge about new opportunities and optimisation methods is vital, so talk to us (or your current web developers) to get the latest information on best practice for websites and use this to check that your site is up to scratch.

If you'd like more information about anything here, or would like to talk about how to improve your existing website then please call Jon on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

This has allowed us to explore the full gamut of search engine optimisation over the years that we've been working with them.

How To Get Top Listings On Google

Well, regardless of what some marketing companies will try and tell you, there's no simple way to achieve this. This is a goal that takes time and effort. Lots of effort.

The work starts with a properly understood approach to business marketing. We need to know what you're selling, making, offering in order to make the web work to your advantage. This is the really BIG picture that you have for your business.

We can't make your site contribute to these goals if we don't understand what they are.

Then there's a bunch of technical aspects to good SEO.

SEO best practice means we have to create a website that -

• is well laid out.
• runs quickly.
• is clearly structured and easy to navigate.

We also need to make sure that all possible relevant information about the business is presented clearly and properly on the site.

This gives us a good platform to build on. In fact, if we get this right we are probably 60% there already in terms of optimising your site's performance.

The next 40% is much more subtle and is where the real high performance SEO kicks in.

SEO Basics

Google's stated aim is to give high positions to genuine and useful websites and to penalise those that are either pretending to be something they're not, or that have less to them than meets the eye. (These can be sites with just a few pretty pictures on them, and nothing else; or sites that are too "flashy" and animated at the expense of any really useful text information for visitors.) The sites are scored and ranked according to these criteria.

The first 60% of this score is already covered in good content and layout of the site.

The next 40% is then gained from a combination of other external factors. These can include some or all of the following:

• age of the site - how long have you been on the web; older is better (less likely to be flaky or fly-by-night)
• internal and external references - links to your site from other reputable sites, and links from your sites to other reputable sites
• up-to-date-ness / freshness - fresh content added daily is highly prized by Google. It shows you're alive and well!
• richness of content - building depth and breadth of content in small bite-sized pages adds to your story over time
• integration with social media - recommendations on Facebook, Tweets on Twitter, +1 on Google and many other social recommendation systems are also used as indicators of your site's quality by Google.

These are just the tip of the iceberg, of a long list of possible options that can be explored; others include Pay Per Click campaigns (like Google Adwords), email marketing (like MailChimp) or professional online networking like LinkedIn.

We tailor make our recommendations to the businesses that we're promoting. One size doesn't fit all.

How to Win on Google

The game is a long one and you have to be prepared to play every round. The competition is perpetual and we are keen to help all our clients to plan a manageable and practical strategy to keep their sites performing well.

This includes recommending stories and themes for regular blog posts, pay-per-click campaigns, annual updates and revisions to main page content, plus a whole lot of appropriate extras that may benefit that specific business.

But Does it Work?

Yes.

We've got lots of examples of our sites being on page one or position 1-5 on Google for really solid search terms.

Try these for size:

• "Web Design Dorset" - That's us at Position 3! [Well we have to practise what we preach don't we!]
• "solar panels Dorchester" - That's "First Choice Solar" at Position 1.
• "lead fabrication" - that's "O'Brien Lead Fabrication" at Position 4.
• "high tech lighting" - that's "High Technology Lighting" at Position 2.
• "kingston lacy B&B" - that's "Quintessential Bed and Breakfast" at Position 3.
• "christmas party highcliffe dorset" - that's "The Galleon" at Positions 5&6.
• "five star B&B" - that's "Frampton House" at Position 3.
• "market sector publishing" - that's "Sector Publishing" at Positions 1&2.
• "family support west dorset" - that's "Home Start West Dorset" at Position 3,4 and 5.

The list goes on...

If you'd like to know more, or would like us to help with your site's development growth then please give us a ring on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

Using the Magento Go platform we've created a new design for the ecommerce site, customising every aspect of the MagentoGo platform to make it work brilliantly for Wild Gardens.

The site sells bird food and bird feeders and lots of other goodies for wild garden enthusiasts. From Gardening Gifts for Children to Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeders, they stock a great range of products for people who love encouraging wildlife into their gardens...

Check out the site for yourself: www.wildgardens.com

The visual elements were described and developed by Graphic Detail and we then contributed our expertise on the SEO, the structure and the content of the site.

Over the past couple of months we worked closely with the Western Marquees and Graphic Detail to build the new site and we are now delighted to announce its launch.

Check it out for yourself at www.westernmarquees.co.uk

Many of our clients report that they like the idea of working with people that they can meet and visit. They like to put a face to a name and get to know us personally here at Alacrify.

And likewise we can build a rapport with our clients that allows us to make best use of opportunities for collaborating together. From our point of view this is excellent too as we get to see what people do for ourselves; visiting factories and offices all over the area. These insights we've had into their businesses has undoubtedly enriched our working relationships and this layer of additional contact adds a liveliness to our working week.

This local contact and local network is balanced by our client relationships that are farther afield. Here the opportunities are different.

With more distant clients we rely on building rapport over the phone and email to get under the skin of the business. In some ways this can be an interesting discipline in its own right, and one that can be very revealing and helpful in assessing what is needed in the design of a new website.

In some ways the phone contact is closer to the sort of contact that can be provided by a website. You need to say everything that is important. You can't rely on people picking it up for themselves when they're visiting you.

This can lead to some really interesting conversations and insights for us and the business owners themselves. And it makes the process of setting goals and understanding expectations much more explicit from the start.

Being based in Dorset is a real pleasure and to spend our time getting to know more of the thousands of amazing businesses based in this beautiful county is a wonderful way to work.

But what is the comparative value of each end of the spectrum? In many respects this is an almost daily question for us as a web design agency. In every case where we provide a quote we wrestle with putting a tangible and intangible value on the money we charge for our services.

There aren't necessarily easy comparisons in other sectors to draw on either. Web design isn't yet (and probably never will be) a professionally regulated business; so you can't compare it to solicitors or accountants or doctors. It's not even directly comparable to traditional PR and marketing as there's a whole technical dimension to the web design process that has a real impact on performance in a way that is not replicated in print or other media. (If your server isn't fast enough, or if the code is buggy or not optimised then your site won't work fast enough and will plummet on the search engines and irritate your customers. There's no equivalent to this in print media. (As far as I know.))

So then how do we differentiate ourselves? What makes us "worth it" when compared to a cheap, self-service option?

You're Worth It

Well I think it comes down to three key things:

1. We know what we're doing and how to do it. This means we know, technically, how to build a site, how to get it running quickly and properly on the web; from design to implementation to hosting we know what we're doing and the best solution for any given requirement.
2. We know how web marketing and advertising works. The many years of experience and continual immersion in current writing on theory and practise of web marketing is brought to bear on all of our work. Our understanding of niche and mainstream web marketing is thorough and tested and proven. This saves lots of time in trial-and-error testing, and means we can usually provide a site that will "hit the ground running" and start performing from week one for our clients. We can also tailor our approach to the specific needs of our clients' business - marketing apples as apples rather than trying to pretend that they are just green oranges.
3. We know how to ask "obvious" questions about our clients. This is not as daft as it might sound. What I mean is, we don't start with lots of assumptions about what our clients should be doing, or indeed what they are doing. Instead we spend time asking lots of questions to get at the company's real value and their real ambitions, and find real answers to real questions that their customers might be asking. This means we can then draw up a design and structure and content-requirement for the website that will properly express that business' activity and aspirations on the web, and connect with their potential customers in a direct and meaningful way. (This "overlooking the obvious" is a frequent characteristic of self-build sites, where the business hasn't really understood or articulated the real value of their services.)

These three dimensions are what distinguishes our services from the cheap, "self-build" offerings that are available. It is undoubtedly possible to build a successful site yourself from a position of innocence. But if your business is in a competitive market, or has very specific advertising and marketing needs then it's unlikely that you'll get it right first time without considerable research or a mighty dose of luck.

Real Value and Confidence on the Web

This personal and personalised way of working is what creates the real value of our services to our clients. They can be reassured that their website isn't going to be reliant on luck for its success, but rather on skill and insight and understanding. And because we share this information and knowledge with our clients, they can carry on the content development of their site with confidence that they know what they're doing and how to do it effectively.

In the light of this, the cheap cost of a self-build site may in fact mask a performance cost in the future, whereas the modest (GBP700-1,200) cost of a custom built site from Alacrify will bring tangible rewards to a business in terms of PR and sales, and has the potential to continue to increase the business' value significantly into the future.

If you'd like to talk to us about your ideas or ambitions for promoting your business on the web then please give us a call 01300 320076, or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

John featured on Simon Mayo's Drivetime Show, talking about the potential treats on offer for those interested in foraging and recipes using foraged items.

Alacrify are long time friends with John (and also near neighbours!) and worked closely with him during the rebuild of his informative foraging website, which includes a blog and details of his regular foraging courses and trips.

You can find out more by visiting John's website at www.wild-food.net

We are working to a strategy developed especially for the business to ensure their presence for key search terms on the web. Within 7 days of starting the campaign, First Choice Solar was in 2nd position on Google's search results.

If you are interested in getting help with making more of your business in the local area using a targeted campaign on the internet then please call Jon or Mark on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

If you would like to know more about their bid to win GBP6,000 of community funding from NatWest please visit Home-Start West Dorset's website and click on the community force logo at the top of the page:

www.homestartwestdorset.co.uk/page/home

The African Pulse works in South Africa equipping individuals to make informed life choices in a world affected by HIV&AIDS.

The African Pulse provides African schools and communities with innovative, relevant teaching tools and skills to promote healthy living, HIV&AIDS education and prevention to break the cycle of infection and fight the HIV&AIDS epidemic.

This is one of a number of organisations that we support by helping them with their websites.

Do pay them a visit: www.theafricanpulse.net

The redesigns are for a variety of reasons. Some want a fresh look for a dated-looking site. Some want better SEO performance for their sites. Others want to utilise new web technology on their site. And some have changed the focus of their business and now need their site to be updated to reflect this.

One of the aspects of being a flexible design company is that we get to work on sites in all sectors of the economy. So this group of new opportunities for us covers engineering, construction, accommodation, retail, catering, garden design, ice skating, and sport!

We've also been launching a number of sites this month, and we'll drop a note on our news pages soon to introduce them all to you soon.

This weekend the site features the County Show, Car Boots and the Weymouth Angling Society, plus a treat for trainspotters as the Deltic explorer comes to town.

Check out the site and follow the news on RSS or Twitter...

Read more about it all here: www.weymouthandportland.info/feature/latest+from+the+website

Over the weekend there will also be new videos published on the site showing this year's highlights as they happen.

Check out the show video page: http://www.dorsetcountyshow.co.uk/page/dorset+county+show+videos

"Firstly I want to say how much I love the new website. The visual design is stunning, the new pages contain some great info and the site seems extremely user friendly."

"Congratulations on a fabulous looking, well organised and easy to use website, it works really well!"

"Fabulous! This is such an improvement. The new web site expresses the professionalism and accessibility of CAT. It's going to attract more people, and the descriptions of what CAT is about will help to make people more confident about their choices and options. It looks much more cheerful too... This new design is far easier to navigate than the last one (and I particularly like the little note at the top telling me where I am)."

"I've been using the website this morning a lot and it is very good, everything I have used has been in the right place and I have managed to get information off it very quickly - what an improvement!"

Check out the new site for yourself and send us your feedback. It's really helpful to receive comments on our work as it always leads to improvements and positive developments in the future.

www.acat.me.uk

We have worked on the Association for Cognitive Analytic Therapy's (ACAT) website from day one, almost 15 years ago, when the pages were tiny, written in basic html and peppered with a few small, low resolution images.

Over the years the site has evolved into a complete membership administration system, with masses of content and functionality aimed at supporting the association.

This change has been a process of incremental additions and accretions. While it was still perfectly possible to maintain it effectively, it wasn't always particularly efficient.

Public Facing Website

As part of ACAT's move to become a charity, the need to have more public-facing content and functionality on the website increased. The conversation then arose about how best to address this; what the content needed to be and how it needed to work with the existing member-orientated information.

Consultation and Collaboration

We then went through an extensive planning and development process to create a completely rebuilt and redesigned website for ACAT.

We explored the needs of all the user groups, from casual visitors, clients, therapists, professionals, press and media, members and non-members.

We looked at the services offered, including information about the therapy, its settings, practice, policies and ethics; training and events, news and contact points.

Website Performance and Integration

We considered the performance and integration of the content, making it easy to read, easy to navigate, and improving the site's search functionality.

Under the hood, in the guts of the site, we re-engineered the site content management and the business systems at the heart everything, making them more robust, coherent and easy to maintain.

This process has involved working with lots of people in the association, foremost among them ACAT's development officer and administrator. This team effort has been creative and inspiring and the end result is a site to be proud of.

I can't wait to hear what everyone makes of it... www.acat.me.uk

Our brief was to provide a clean and contemporary look for the business website, incorporating the company's existing logo and an easy to use navigation with a clean layout. Although the site is small, we also advised on SEO and assisted with the preparation of the artwork for the site.

Take a look for yourself and to see the results... www.advansyssolutions.co.uk

Target the Niche

Nowadays, unless you have the budget of a small country at your disposal, you are unlikely to be able to compete for search engine position for general keywords and phrases like "restaurant" or "clothes" or "building services". With that in mind we find that doing some serious work and lateral thinking about a client's business usually means that we can come up with a series of niche marketing approaches that can bear really significant fruit if done well.

The sort of thing I'm thinking about is "ethical clothing in Chepstow" or "B&Bs in Fife" or "restaurants in Weymouth". These niche combinations of words (which is often what people actually search for) can be targetted accurately and successfully within the sites that we build and can lead to some really good pre-qualified leads for our clients. Someone who has typed in this sort of phrase is already much further along the path to making a purchase than a casual browser looking for random "restaurants".

This niche targetting is done through the application of good Search Engine Optimisation principles.

Search Engine Optimisation Principles

There's loads written about this topic on the web, so I won't go into very much depth here, but basically the core idea is to "tell it like it is" and "provide helpful content for your visitors".

Gone are the days when you might be able to fool search engines with fake content to drive additional traffic to your site by pretending to be Tesco when in fact you run a small travel agency.

Now the search engines have achieved a much more human-like method of evaluating the content of a website, and so if your site doesn't convince a human, it won't convince the search engines.

This means you need to write carefully and aim at communicating real people, not with search engine spiders and robots.

If you can make it good and useful to humans then the search engines will usually love you too.

Paid Advertising - PPC

The question of Pay Per Click [PPC] advertising (usually Google Adwords) frequently arises in discussions with clients about driving more traffic to a site. In the majority of cases we don't find that it will serve our clients' needs for the budget they have available. Instead we focus on optimising for natural search results performance on the search engines.

In some cases it can be really useful though. A particular instance when this is true is when a site is being launched. In order to build brand awareness (as well as a few extra site visits) it can be useful to pick some niche keywords to target with a modest and time-limited Adwords campaign.

Although it seems that UK internet users are more skeptical about clicking on paid adverts on search engine results, it can still be important to create awareness of your site if you have an advert on the search results listings, or on other related websites using the network of other sites that display Adword adverts.

We can explain some of the basics to our clients in this case and work our a strategy for the campaign. If needed we can also run the campaign on our clients' behalf.

Inbound and Outbound Links

It's lovely to get a referral from someone, especially someone trustworthy. This is true online too.

If your site is mentioned on other trustworthy or important websites (like the BBC for instance) then your site can bask in the reflected glory, as well as possibly receive a few visits as a result of them clicking on the link.

Search engines love these quality inbound links and there are lots of companies that can provide them for you. We don't specifically target this method in our approach but often find that local or related websites will provide links to our clients' websites if we ask them nicely.

The other type of link that can be important is outbound links, where you refer to someone else's website and provide a link to it. This might sound counter-intuitive; why would you want to send visitors to someone else's site? Well that's true, a bit, but as far as the search engines are concerned, it demonstrates your connection and importance in your chosen market.

Think about it. The BBC links to millions of other sites and as a result we believe that the BBC is a good place to go for information as they know so much. If your site has similar useful and related links you'll probably be thought of in the same way.

Freshness

The final major strand that is important in increasing traffic to your site is giving people a reason to return to it again and again. They're unlikely to do this if the site is static and unchanging. They're more likely to pop and see you if they can read something new every time they visit.

We build news and blogs into all our websites now to give them this fresh and lively quality. It does rely on clients keeping them up to date which does involve some planning and ongoing effort, but the effects of doing so can be remarkable. Tieing the stories into Twitter too can lead to many repeat visits from those who follow you.

Getting it Done

The changing internet means that these tips will probably need to be updated in the next 6 months, but the trend in web evolution is basically stable. The key is to provide honest, useful information that is well written, engaging, up-to-date and of real interest to visitors. Build it and they will come!

If you'd like us to help you with your site then please get in touch with Jon on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

Building a New Community Website

Within just a week of launch we're already getting lots of visitors, and looking at their how they found the site, it appears that we're providing just the sort of information that people need, in a format that is really helpful.

People have searched for

• Cove House Inn
• Tout Quarries
• Weymouth Tip opening times
• Food shopping in Weymouth
• Flats to rent Weymouth and Portland
• The Gooseberry Fayre Portland

and much more.

Our vision for the site is to provide information in a way that people want, using words and phrases that match exactly what they're looking for.

We'll be using the visitor stats and these search terms to drive the development of additional content on the site, answering more of our visitors' questions as the site develops.

Residents and Tourist Information Website

From our initial analysis the visitors seem to be asking both "tourist" questions and "local community" questions to find the site, and that's just what we'd hoped for. We have designed the site to appeal to both types of person, with really direct answers to questions like - where are the petrol stations or fast food outlets in the area? Information that really makes a difference.

If you're interested in having a site like this for your town / village / community then please get in touch with Jon on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

We'll post more updates as the site grows and develops. Watch this space: www.weymouthandportland.info

The keys to successful Bed and Breakfast website design are a subtle mixture of search engine optimisation, marketing insight and hard work.

Building a New B&B Website

Websites advertising accommodation are in a fiercely competitive market with lots of listings websites with big brands behind them like Alastair Sawday and Wolsey Lodges. Finding a clear path to get in front of potential guests means taking on these sites, and other local sites to win a share of the market.

We've developed a clear and helpful strategy to achieve this, and have had some great results with our clients' sites.

Tips for Creating a Successful Bed and Breakfast Website

One part of our approach is to make sure we've clearly understood the type of visitor that our client wants to attract, and to build a site that creates an atmosphere that will appeal to them. Modern, traditional, rural, contemporary or urban locations all offer opportunities for creating a B&B website that appeals to a wide audience, or a niche one.

Another aspect of our approach is to make sure that the "voice" of the B&B owner is clearly reflected in the content and design of the site. It needs to feel personal and consistent with the owners' approach to hospitality. Wherever possible we seek to incorporate their words as they speak so the conversation with their potential guests is already underway by the time an enquiry is made. We find that this gives guests reassurance and confidence that the B&B will be personable and friendly.

Here's a few of the B&B websites that we've created over the years:

• www.cotswolds-bed-and-breakfast.co.uk
• www.dryisland.co.uk
  
• www.heathcotehouse.co.uk
  
• www.oldpostoffice-adlestrop.co.uk
  
• www.quintessentialbedandbreakfast.co.uk
  
• www.teak-house-tangalle.co.uk
  
• www.the-gables-crail.co.uk
  
• www.trinityhousebandb.co.uk
  
• www.woodencabbage.co.uk
  

If you're looking for a new B&B website designer to help you promote your business then please give us a call to see what we can do to help promote your B&B online. Call Jon on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

Some of our clients came through recommendations where our web services were recommended by colleagues or friends. Others simply found us on the web when searching for web design in Dorset.

Here's a list of some of the recent Dorset websites that we've created:

• www.amhmagazine.com
  
• www.artseeker.co.uk
  
• www.artwey.co.uk
  
• www.aweimagazine.com
  
• www.barton-cottage-pottery.co.uk
• www.bay-publishing.com
  
• www.bay-publishing-medical.com
  
• www.bioportfolio.co.uk
  
• www.catchingrainbowsdorset.co.uk
  
• www.cgfrytravelplan.co.uk
• www.clay-to-game.co.uk
  
• www.devondorsetregiment.co.uk
• www.dorsetcountyshow.co.uk
  
• www.dorsetstoneandmarble.co.uk
  
• www.dukes-auctions.com
  
• www.essdorset.co.uk
• www.filmaker.co.uk
  
• www.firstchoicesolar.com
  
• www.heathcotehouse.co.uk
  
• www.homestartwestdorset.co.uk
  
• www.hsimagazine.com
  
• www.hsmemagazine.com
• www.maidennewton.info
  
• www.moxoms.co.uk
  
• www.obrienleadfab.co.uk
  
• www.obrienroofing.co.uk
  
• www.osedirectory.com
  
• www.portland-port.co.uk
  
• www.sallypinhey.com
  
• www.symmsfabrication.co.uk
  
• www.thegalleon.co.uk
  
• www.wholehogroast.co.uk
  
• www.vwcamperhiredorset.co.uk
  
• www.weymouthandportland.info
  
• www.woodencabbage.co.uk
  

If you're wondering why we've chosen to blow the trumpet of our portfolio of Dorset websites it is to increase our Search Engine Optimisation for "Dorset web design" and if you found us by searching for Dorset web design then our plan worked!

If you'd like us to help you with a new website, or to improve the performance of your existing site then please call us on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk We would love to hear from you.

One of the star lots has been featured on the BBC Dorset website. A rare Chinese Ming tomb horse dating from the 14th or 15th century, which is carved from solid stone, at a height of 7ft and weighs over two tonnes. It is expected to sell for up to GBP100,000 at the auction on Thursday and Friday this week.

Visit their website for a complete list of items for sale or for contact details.

Following a complete, root and branch redesign and rethink of the site's marketing strategy we launched the site a couple of weeks ago. The launch process also involved us consolidating three domain names into one brand as Google's dislike of duplicate content was harming the overall business' performance on the web.

We also built the site to really perform well in specific niche markets that The Whole Hog are aimed at. Their large scale catering for festivals, corporate days and other events is a cornerstone of their business, and one that sets them apart from many other hog roast companies in the UK.

Looking at Google today for one of their key phrases they are now in second position on the first page of Google results, and for most of the terms that we've targetted they are climbing out from the shadows onto page two and three. I am sure by the end of the summer, with the continuing marketing efforts we've planned, they'll be on the top page for most, if not all, of their targetted terms.

This mix is something that is completely fascinating and brings enormous creativity to our working week. Although in some respects there are obviously going to be shared aspects to all our work - everyone wants to be top of Google for instance - the opportunity to learn about these diverse businesses is a real joy and endlessly fascinating.

We've also been working on our own (out of hours) projects on the web too, putting together a new community website for Weymouth and Portland based on our experience of developing Maiden Newton's successful site over the past year. The scale of the new site is vast and it's likely to take a few months before it's reached the level of content and information that we've planned for it.

Alongside these new builds we're also developing and enhancing some of our long-standing clients' sites. Bay Publishing are making changes to reflect their growing business, Dry Island's "Islonia" website now has a growing number of virtual citizens on it, Exeter Symphony Orchestra and the Roman Finds Group, among others, are taking advantage of our new version content management system.

We're looking forward to showcasing each of them here on our news pages as each site goes live. Watch this space...

The impact of these followers has been to boost our site traffic by over 5% in some cases. Plus we know we have some really quality followers out there who are real sector gurus; this is just the sort of networking we've been looking for.

We're also working on the next generation of changes to the site to include market reports and management reports. These should be available over the course of the summer.

Using our village website model we are working on a larger scale version that will hopefully offer the same quality and interest for people living in the area, and those coming to visit.

The site is a work in progress as we source all the information that we need to make it as comprehensive as possible.

In addition to information about things to do in Weymouth and Portland, there's also information about holiday accommodation and properties to buy and let. We're also including lots of lovely places to eat and drink, as well as more general information about the local area.

It is a big project, and we're currently working on it in our spare time. Take a look now, and then keep popping back to see the site grow over the coming weeks.

www.weymouthandportland.info

In addition to installing our own micro content management system to maintain the site we have also been building an internal news section on the site to publish SPi's own stories on the web.

These include milestones for the business, and exciting developments in the news about different sectors of the economy.

We've also added a host of Twitter feeds to support the most popular news on each of the Sector Publishing websites.

• @SPiTechNews
• @SPiComputerNews
• @SPiSoftwareNews
• @SPiOnlineNews
• @SPiTelecomsNews
• @SPiEntertainmnt
• @SPiUtilityNews
• @SPiFinancialSvc
• @SPiRetailNews
• @SPiEnvironment
• @SPiBizTechNews
• @SPiConstruction

And here's the link to the main site so you can see what's been happening for yourself...

www.sectorpublishing.com

We met with Tom, the manager, and discussed the requirements for a revised website that would be easy to maintain and perform well for search engines (SEO), whilst presenting a modern, contemporary feel that is so evident in the venue itself.

The finshed product is based on our popular MicroCMS 2 content management system and features a News section allowing people to stay up-to-date on events and news from The Galleon.

The new website follows on from The Galleon being voted 'The Best Public House' in the 2011 Christchurch Food and Wine awards - congratualtions from us!

Why not visit the award winning venue's new website for yourself...

In particular we've been playing with shadows and rounded box corners to provide pages with some more texture and depth.

Cute CSS3 Effects

Some of the cutest effects in CSS3 would take hours to acheive through using conventional images and text. Glowing boxes, boxes that appear embossed, or float above the rest of the page content, or boxes that appear to be carved into the page surface are now just a couple of lines of code away.

Similarly the text shadow features allow for indented and raised text effects to be created without lots of images.

This little page element that we've dropped into the news/blog section of this website mixes all three approaches; text-shadow, inset box shadow and standard box shadows.

Hopefully the effect is subtle! But gives the page texture and brightness where otherwise the fonts would be flat and maybe a little static...

the code for the main box style is

-webkit-box-shadow: 0 3px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.20), rgba(0,0,0,0.12) 0px 0px 10px inset; 

-moz-box-shadow: 0 3px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.20), rgba(0,0,0,0.12) 0px 0px 10px inset;

the code for the indented text effect is

text-shadow: #fff 1px 1px 0px;

Googe Fonts

We've also used one of Google's fonts on the page too. Instead of a traditional Arial (which looked fine anyway) we opted for a replacement font called Arimo. Again it gives the page a more "designed" feel rather than a standard "websafe" character.

These replacement fonts are fab. From only 5 or 6 a few months ago there are 185 as of today, of all types, from handwritten to monotype and all stops in between. Not all of them scale very well, and so can only be used at relatively large sizes (for headings for example), but there are many lovely typefaces to choose from.

You can view the full set (and get the code to add them to your site) here: http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2#HomePlace:home

ps. of course it goes without saying that not all browsers currently support these approaches, but with Firefox 4+, Google Chrome 12 and IE9 the effects work fine.

The mixture of useful content, properly structured pages, and optimised writing on each page has meant the site has rocketed up the search listings.

Key Tips for SEO

We don't use any "magic" to get to the top, just sound and honest approaches to making a site that is primarily of benefit to its human visitors rather than primarily aimed at search engines.

Once the human content is good and helpful we then apply a layer of "search engine polish" to make sure the pages have good amounts of on-topic words and phrases on key themes.

That doesn't mean we stuff it full of keywords, just that we make sure that there's a suitable mention of them somewhere on the website.

One simple way this is achieved is to break the content up into smaller topics, rather than trying to say everything on just one page.

How to Get Google Sitelinks

In the case of Jonathan's website this has paid off handsomely as Google has now provided it's Sitelinks for the site. This is a rarity on most sites, and a real mark of Google's appreciation of the importance and quality of Jonathan's website.

They are a reflection of the quality and clear structure to the pages, including the friendly urls, clear navigation and useful content.

In short we're thrilled with the outcome for Jonathan's new site. His fabulous photos can now be seen by more people as his site is performing so much better on the search engines. Take a look for yourself. It's amazing!

www.jonathan-gooding.co.uk

It is rare that a new business startup will begin with all the answers in place, however much experience the new entrepreneur has accumulated in their previous work experience.

Finding good sources of support and advice is really important in filling in the gaps in your knowledege and providing a "sounding board" for your new business ideas.

Expert Advice and Commonsense Questions for New Business Startups

We've been fortunate all the way through the growth of Alacrify to have honest and thoughtful input from friends and family. Some of the advice and input was at the "expert" end of the spectrum, but equally important was the "commonsense" - say what you see - commentary too.

Sometimes the obvious questions are the most liberating to answer and provide the most room for growth and development. "Why do you do that?" "Why do it that way?" "What's that for?" Suddenly the answers provide an opportunity for positive change.

Web Advice for New Businesses

We see lots of new business startups in the course of our work and it's fascinating to spend time hearing about the dreams and ideas behind them.

This past month we've talked to a cycle tour organiser, a horse riding coach, a decorative furniture artist, a hotelier, a therapy organisation, an engineering company and several others. Each sharing their vision and plans for their new businesses.

It's our responsibility to provide honest and practical solutions and advice about what a website can do for a new business in each specific case. And so each conversation is different, each solution offered is tailored to the entrepreneur's goals and ambitions.

Getting a New Business Website that is Fit For Purpose

A new website is now an integral part of a new business launch and we're keen to help our clients get the most out of their new business online. And to set off on the right foot.

How to make the new website work for you is key.

That means we need to take time to understand the new business' aims. Just throwing a site together isn't enough. Just buying a "cheap", "off the peg" solution won't give you the results you need. (Unless you're already skilled in internet marketing of course!) Building an effective site takes hard work, thought, and planning.

Top Ranked Websites

We're always striving to make our clients' sites reach the top of Google's search listings. But, we don't promise that we'll always succeed in every situation. No-one is going to knock the big players in a sector off their pedestals with a new build website. It can't be done, well not immediately anyway!

Some companies will promise the number one spot for all their new sites. Life's not like that. The maths and the search algorithms just don't work like that. Sorry! It's a fact.

We prefer a more realistic and practical approach.

We look for key, unique and sometimes niche aspects of our clients' businesses. Then we try and help them get inside the heads of their customers to consider how and what their customers may be searching for on the web and how that might relate to their business. Then we create convincing and useful pages to that are targeted to those search topics.

Delivering Web Results

And when we've understood the client, and the client's understood the goals of the site, and we've built the new site for them, then the work begins to build the traffic and promote the business; implementing the strategy we've developed to help them grow their new business effectively on the web.

From pouring rain to baking sunshine, they had it all...

The Whole Hog do fantastic hog roasts and are perfect for catering for large events, parties and festivals.

You can read the full story here...

The site's owner writes,

"The Quintessential Bed and Breakfast website went live on 8 November 2010. Exactly seven months on and the site boasts 16 unique and luxurious bed and breakfast homes from the Scottish Borders to the very south of Devon. Visitor numbers are climbing by the day; thus far over 14,000 visitors have enjoyed the site with nearly 72,000 page views. In the last 30 days alone, the site has attracted 3,882 visitors who have looked at 21,363 pages on the site. "

Our support and development of the site started with a blank sheet of paper, and encompassed its design, structure, seo and copywriting advice, third party software integration, technical support and web marketing advice.

It has been a dream of a project to work on. Seeing our ideas and suggestions take shape and deliver real results to this excellent business gives us all a real sense of achievement.

We're thrilled with the progress and raise a glass to the site's continuing success.

With new images being added to the galleries and new stories on the site's blog the buzz around the site is growing daily.

We are currently working with the the site's owner, Katrina, to build a set of targetted SEO projects to really push the site forward and increase its impact on the web.

One of our targets is to increase the visitors from people searching for Dorset wedding photography and local wedding photographers around the area. I'll keep you posted on progress as we build the campaign.

It's a creative mixture of relationship-building and design inspiration as well as a chance to get to know our new customers' businesses inside and out.

Quite why we've had such a lot of new business enquiries just at this point is always slightly a mysterious process if I'm honest. Usually they are more evenly spread. Something in the ether maybe? But the cross fertilization of ideas and insights really enriches the process for everyone.

Interestingly in this current crop of requests there seems to be a 80:20 split in the enquiries between re-build and new build requests, with more people wanting us to work to improve / redevelop / redesign their existing websites and help improve their offering to visitors on the web than people wanting a new website for a new business startup.

We're hoping to launch at least 3 new sites in the next week or so. We're just waiting for some final tweaks and a bit of polishing up of text and then we'll introduce them to you...

There's something infectious about the energy that surrounds a new startup enterprise that gets our creativity flowing.

We've been fortunate to work with lots of new businesses to establish their web presence and have found there are some important elements that really help everyone to set off on the right foot.

Sharing a Vision

Our starting point, as with all our work, is to get into the mind and worldview of the entrepreneur; to see the world from their perspective and get a clear idea of what they envisage for their business.

This means understanding their business proposition, their market, their opportunities and their strategic business goals.

In the early discussions these can sometimes be quite broad in their scope. Sometimes the conversations between us can really help to clarify the detail for the clients.

Picking the Best Strategy

We then spend time working out the best strategy for making a big impact. To do this we spend some time talking about the opportunities that the web provides to businesses and picking the most appropriate ideas to be incorporated into the new business' website.

At every stage these choices are weighed up for their suitability for the new business' vision, asking and answering questions like "Should we be using Facebook as a business?", "Should my business be on Twitter?", "Will my clients find this helpful or confusing?", and so on.

We also make absolutely sure that our suggestions are a proper and good fit with our clients' needs. Some of our "brilliant" ideas may not fit at all with our clients' values, ideas or strategy and so we're careful to check them through with our client before adding them to the build list.

Planning to Build a New Website

Sometimes the answers to these strategic and tactical questions will mean we build a simple and well crafted brochure site. Sometimes it means we will build a shop. Other times we'll make a site that incorporates other third party content from the web, like Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon store, PayPal, etc.

Considering the Competition

Alongside our "blue sky" approach to the solution which is driven entirely by our client's needs, we also look to our client's competitors for comparison too. We check who the market leaders are and compare our ideas to the solutions they have achieved.

We then use this competitor information to fine tune our proposals and plans for the new site.

Getting to Market

Once our client is happy that s/he's understood the proposal and the reasons for each aspect of the site we then get on with the build phase.

This involves us creating the visual design for the site, picking the right colour scheme, fonts, layout, page elements and images.

We then present this to our client for approval along with a final list of text and other resources that we need to have from our client in order to build the site.

Once we've received the go-ahead and the content we need, we then make the site, filling it with the content supplied by the client.

And once it's all done ... we make it live.

Happily Ever After

But that isn't the end of our story. Our relationship with our clients continues after the site is launched.

Sometimes we'll offer simple help with using the site to its best advantage.

Sometimes we'll answer further questions that our clients have about the site maintenance, or new opportunities, or practical questions about the content management system, and so on.

Often we will also be in touch with clients if something appears on the web that might be useful to their business. In this case we'll show them what we've seen and explain how it could potentially help them.

And usually we'll check in for a 3-6 month review of progress to see if everything is going to plan. We'll look at whether the site is working as expected and look at how to keep it moving forward in the right way.

Differences Between New Build vs. Rebuild

These "new build" approaches are not very different from what we do with rebuilding existing sites for established businesses. But with new startups there are usually far more unknown factors, best guesses, and trial-and-error approaches in the clients' business plan than are found in established businesses.

This makes the design process much more creative and the project much more challenging as we strive to give our clients the best possible start on the web for their new business.

Often they've had a presence on the internet for several years, but have yet to really see the benefit.

Often their website is only found when you add the business name to a search phrase, which shows just how bad things have become - how can you put yourself in front of new clients who haven't heard of you when you can only be found when someone types in your business name? It's a "Catch 22".

Often they've picked up mixed messages and expectations about what their website can and can't do for their business.

Improving Website Performance

This is usually the starting point for a much bigger discussion in which they start to explain what they'd hoped to get out of being online. We then open this up to find out what their business is all about and what their wider goals are.

Even if this was done when the site was originally launched, there have usually been some changes in the business since then and of course there have been LOADS of changes to the web.

Through the discussions we then offer an insight into what can be done with websites at the moment, explaining what a business can expect from being on the web, how web marketing works, how websites need to plug into the main drivers and goals of the business, and really build a clear brief for the business' reasons for being on the web.

Free Advice About Marketing Your Business On The Web

Usually we give lots of this website development advice for free. Frequently we are then given the chance to work with the client to put the ideas into practice. Free advice about web marketing is not just part of our own marketing agenda, it's part of our values.

We like working with businesses and supporting them and seeing them flourish online. If we're able to build or rebuild their business website as part of the process then that is especially satisfying.

If you'd like to talk about how your website is performing and have a chat about how it might be improved then do give us a call on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

Sector Publishing is a single source news and market report provider for different sectors of the global economy. With seven sector-specific websites to choose from Sector Publishing allows visitors to follow news stories on key topics, companies or locations from a single website.

Over the coming months sector-specific market reports will be added to these websites to give visitors even more information about the market sectors they are interested in.

Check out the main site at www.sectorpublishing.com

This means that Google and other search engines can get to see more of your site more quickly whenever their spiders come and visit.

It also means that visitors quickly get to see the contents of your site without waiting around for content to load.

Testing The Site Load Times

We measure the performance of our sites using Google's Page Speed tools. This can either be run from within Firefox or can be accessed using their online service.

The online service just needs a url to check and then it does its magic, returning a score out of 100 for the optimisation of your site, and a list of suggestions for making improvements.

We recently checked to see that the site for the Dorset County Show was still delivering fast load times and ran it on the Page Speed Tool.

It came back at 96/100! Job done...

This simple tool takes the title and first few lines of text from our RSS feed and drops them into the news on our Facebook page.

It's another aspect of the SEO we offer with our website Content Management Solutions and gives a big return on the investment of effort in writing new stories. The single story is then available on the site, via RSS, on Twitter and now also on Facebook. 4 for the price of 1. Not bad!

This past week I noticed that some of the Twitter buttons weren't showing the correct stats for the pages. I knew there were Tweets about the pages but they weren't showing on the button counter.

Having spent some while looking for answers it turned out to be a cacheing issue. The browser (in my case Firefox) was just showing the button state from the first visit to the page. Clearing the cache immediately solved the problem. Simple!

Our collaboration with the port meant we took care to understand the scope of their business and really get a sense of their aspirations for the future.

This knowledge informed our design of the site, building their brand image on the web. It also helped to shape our approach to the search engine optimisation built into the site.

We completely restructured the site content, the navigation and the presentation of the information on the site to better reflect the Port's business activities.

We also built new content management system to enable them to maintain the site into the future. We're delighted with the outcome.

Take a look for yourself: www.portland-port.co.uk

We worked with them to build a bespoke website that allowed them to help promote the Association to both existing and future members, with the ability of maintaining it themselves using our Micro CMS 2 platform.

For added depth, they required a members only area that would feature more information and stories relating to qualified members who had served or is a serving member of the associated Regiments.

In addition to this, there is a variety of information available to anyone interested in finding out more about the Association and it's members.

To view it yourself, go to www.devondorsetregiment.co.uk

Today we're in the process of launching the new site. The first domain has gone live, and we're currently working on the rest.

The Whole Hog are specialists in fantastic large event catering, offering their signature Hog Roasts alongside licensed bars, barbeques and buffets. Their client list is extremely impressive, and you may have seen them at Glastonbury or the Isle of Wight festivals.

Check out their site for yourself.

www.thewholehog.ltd.uk

They concluded that, in some cases, the business owners forgot that once the site is delivered it is then their responsibility to keep it fresh and up to date.

This was an interesting and timely observation as we've just delivered a whole bunch of new websites and have been working very closely with our clients to make sure that they're happy to pick up the baton and continue to grow their new sites once they've been launched.

Lots of Recent Web Training for Clients

In the past few weeks we've run several training sessions here in the office, and out with clients, showing them how to use and get the most from their websites.

Our one-to-one website training has a clear end in mind, but we're completely flexible in how we work with our clients to achieve the goal.

The clients' spectrum of experience and confidence is broad, from nervous newbies to experienced experts and so we're keen to make our training as appropriate as possible and as enjoyable and comfortable an experience as we can.

We also usually find that the learning process is gradual. An initial training usually goes well, and then is followed up over the folloing weeks with a diminishing number of "quick question" phone calls as the client tries the system and begins to get more confident in using it.

Training is a Key to Online Success

This investment in training is key to these sites becoming successful. The clients' continuing efforts to maintain the site will ensure the long term performance of the site. Our design input and initial SEO alone will only ever get so far in the long run, it's the clients' input that will make the sites a real success.

Our web training is not just technical. We also help the clients discover what it is they want to say through their site, or in their news or blog. Usually we've already discussed this in the early design discussions.

We help to break through that "writers' block" by coming up with a maintenance strategy to help with finding good and interesting things to write about.

This combination of practical training and inspiration usually helps the site owner to grow in confidence and really be able to make the most of the new site we've built for them. And in the long term the site becomes much more useful to the business as a result.

We're constantly aware of this with the wide number of sites that we work on.

This week we've spent some time looking at the Quintessential Bed and Breakfast website in particular.

The website has now been online for several months and has been successfully indexed by Google and the other search engines and we've now reached a position when we can really judge the success, or otherwise, of our approach to the site's search engine performance.

On the whole the site is doing really well. We've hit many of our targets and our client is delighted with the growth in traffic over the months since it launched.

It's no time for complacency though and so we took a long hard look for any under performing areas on the site, and parts that could be improved. We realised that there were two sections that could be developed.

Breadcrumbs for Navigation

Firstly, we added in some breadcrumb navigation to the pages. This helps users to find their way around the site. In addition it gives search engines a clear idea of the site's page hierarchies and their relation to one another.

Keyword Refinements

Secondly, we added some additional keywords to some of the underperforming pages to increase the relevance of the site for important search phrases and hopefully drive more traffic to the site for these terms.

Making the News More Prominent

In addition to these usability and SEO improvements we also made the site's news section more prominent in the main navigation on the site's homepage. This should make it easier to find and bookmark the site's news pages which are available on Twitter, RSS and on Facebook too - so there's no excuse for not knowing what's going on!

All in all these changes, along with the news stories and new properties, events and activities added by the client, should contribute to the increasing success of the site as a first place to go to find unique and beautiful places to stay.

This month we've been working on a method for showing aggregated stats from a client's Clicky account and finding a simple way render a complex set of statistics as a coherent and easy to understand chart.

Planning the Website Stats Reports

The first stage was to get a clear idea of our client's needs. In this case it was for a monthly summary of visits, totalled by week, for various page types on the site.

This simple statement took a long process of discussion to get clear and focused. We needed to look at what was a sensible length of time to report on; whether to report by day, month or week; whether to sum all pages or sets of pages; and how frequently to run the stats queries.

Once these parameters were set we could look to the code to interrogate the Clicky API, optimising it so it ran quickly and efficiently without timing out.

Once the data was stored we could then build the database queries to create the monthly results for charting.

Finally we created the charts shown below, utilising the styling possibilities of CSS3 to give texture and depth to the bars and text in the chart and make it easy to read and interpret.

Example of the Website Visitor Statistics Chart

This example demonstrates the sort of month-to-view, weekly totalled, page visits to a particular set of pages (in this case "regions") , with each week given an alternate gradient background, and presenting the total visits as a number on the top of each bar.

The chart also has a "tooltip" or "popup" box that appears when you hover on the number which then explains in detail what the data point means; e.g. 125 page visits during the week of 1-6 March 2011.

This combination of useful data with clear presentation really enriches the site's reporting capability. The charts therefore become a key performance indicator [KPI] for the client to use to monitor the efficacy of their work and the performance of their website. The reports efficiently digest complex and disperate information into a meaningful and visual report on performance.

Having met and talked through some ideas, and given a demonstration of our Micro CMS 2 content management system, we were able to quickly arrive at a preferred design and start the build.

It was important for the website to have a personal feel, that reflects the photos themselves and the way that Katrina works with each client. There was also a requirement to provide a private area that could be accessed by friends and family once the photos had been taken, with an easy-to-produce order form that can be sent back to be processed by Katrina.

All in all, we're very happy with how it has turned out and we know that Katrina is too.

If your planning on getting married in the near future or wish to have some special moments captured forever, then why not take a look at Katrina's work yourself at www.pictures-of-you.co.uk

Working in collaboration with Graphic Detail, who created the design template, we built a CMS website allowing easy updating of both content and images. Particular importance was given for the navigation through the images and the structuring of the pages.

To see examples of Jonathan's excellent work yourself, pay a visit to his website at www.jonathangooding.co.uk

It serves two definite purposes. Firstly it gives your customers (and friends and family) a reason to pay a regular visit to your site as there's always something new to read. This is great for building connections and helping your clients identify with you and your business' story.

Secondly it is one of the factors used in Search Engine Optimisation to increase your chances of being highly listed by the search engines. They will almost always give preference to sites with up to date content over ones that have been static for a while.

New Blogs

We regularly discuss the option of building a blog or news facility into our clients' websites and recently we've had two cracking good examples of their usefulness and success.

www.heathcotehouse.co.uk has now had a blog for almost a month and the business owners have been putting lots of lovely local interest stories on their site to draw visitors and give people an idea of the wonderful opportunities on offer when you come to stay.

www.quintessentialbedandbreakfast.co.uk has been running their blog for a little longer and puts up local interest stories for events and activities near to their beautiful bed and breakfasts across the UK. They regularly get top listings on Google for the stories, and draw lots of traffic to their site from people looking to attend the events and find somewhere local to stay.

If you're interesting in us developing a blog on your site please give us a ring on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

This has to qualify as one of the most idyllic and stunning subjects we've ever worked on, and certainly the most exotic.

We worked closely with Nicola, the owner, to build a site that reflects the fabulous beachside accommodation and the wonderful local attractions of this beautiful island.

We look forward to hearing what others think of it too.

Take a look at the new site for yourself... The Teak House

We have just finalised the design of a poster for the upcoming "Sample Saturdays" due to be held in the Maiden Newton Stores throughout April.

Each Saturday in the month from 10am - 1pm, there will be a different range of tasty treats on offer for anyone to sample in store. The products on offer have been selected from a number of local producers, listed below:

2nd April - Framptons Butchers (Bridport)
Sausage tasting, sourced and made locally

9th April - Longmans Cheese (Somerset)
Try a variety of different cheeses

16th April - Manna Organic (Dorset)
Top Quality dishes and desserts using the finest local ingredients

23rd April - Purbeck Ice Cream
Locally made - who wouldn't want to try it!

30th April - Evershot Bakery
A range of bread and cakes to try, from just up the road

The poster design has also been adapted into an advert which features on the village website.

Hopefully we've whet your appetite enough to go along and try some delicious local produce on one of the forthcoming Saturdays!

With a spectrum running from food to flowers, a regimental association to a sports club, photography to business consultancy, landscape gardening to holiday accommodation, shipping to lighting, and healthcare to furniture, we're enjoying a really creative time!

Quite why we have such a diverse set of projects on the go is a bit of a mystery. We're pleased to be recommended by many of our current clients, and some of these new projects have come along through their recommendations. Others seemingly have come out of the blue by people discovering this website on the internet and getting in touch.

Having a variety of projects on the books always gives rise to even more creative thinking than normal. It's as if there's a cross-fertilization that happens from one to the next. Ideas evolve that can be applied to more than one project, sometimes new concepts arise from the collision of ideas and requirements that we're working on for different sites, and always we're being challenged and encouraged by each other and our clients to produce creative ideas for each new piece of work.

Seeing the sunshine on the new leaves outside the office really resonates with the sense of new growth and creativity going on inside too.

We've just updated lots of new content on their website to coincide with this special day of the year.

Along with sending flowers from the Seasons Florists website, you can also send hampers of fruit, chocolates, champagne and soft toys. What more could you ask for to make your mother's day special...?

The new lead fabrication website that was only launched a few months ago is already attracting lots of visitors and is a real showcase for the work of the company.

Their expertise in highly technical lead fabrication for all sorts of purposes is really showcased by the site. From simple flashing for chimneys to highly complex lead bay tops and finials O'Brien Lead Fabrication can produce just about anything. As they say on their site - "if you can draw it, we can make it!".

We have worked closely with BioPortfolio to ensure that these lists are kept up to date and are easy to find by people looking for market reports through the search engines and on the BioPortfolio website.

This is part of our ongoing support and development work on this market-leading biotech and pharmaceutical website.

From the new www.essdorset.co.uk website:

"Our goal is to support our clients in improving their skills and confidence in living independent and happy lives. We work in partnership with our clients and strive to consistently provide a sensitive, flexible and professional response. We have recently obtained registration with the Care Quality Commission (www.cqc.org.uk) and so are now able to offer personal care as well as social support."

"Within our team, we have high levels of knowledge and experience in working with people with various social care needs - including mental health difficulties, learning disability and Asperger's Syndrome."

A Clear and Simple Approach

In order to make the site as clear and simple to use as possible we used a variety of complementary approaches.

• The design has good contrast, but low glare, making it easy on the eye.
• It has larger than average text for easy reading.
• Content is short and focused, using simple sentences.
• A simple colour scheme is used for the different areas of the site for clients, carers and professionals.
• We used Makaton symbols to highlight key client pages (circled in the image below).

Initial feedback about the site has been really positive. We wish ESSDorset well as they continue to grow and develop over the coming months.

"First Choice Solar are based in Poole with offices in Launceston and Hove. Our mission is quite simply to provide top quality solar systems at realistic prices:

• First for Quality
• First for Value.

With the advent of the government feed in tariffs in April 2010 solar has become a realistic and profitable investment for homeowners who wish to reduce their energy costs. At the same time as helping the environment, your investment in solar energy will give you a better return than any bank.

First Choice Solar have researched the market to bring you the best value and the latest technology. We insist on value but never compromise on quality. All installations are carried out to MCS standards by accredited fitting teams, thus allowing you to receive your feed in tariff.

With eight years experience in the industry our team take quality and service seriously. We know that a referral from a happy customer is the best recommendation we can get. At First Choice Solar we are passionate about solar energy and its ability to reduce CO2 and cut your energy bills."

[from the First Choice Solar website]

Apart from the obvious suppliers of services to help run Alacrify (our IT and Telecoms systems and support have come from Comms UK and FlatRock Systems), we have also worked together in partnership with other businesses to help deliver extended services to our clients.

Creeds. Printers by Design.

Recently I dropped in to Creeds, the printers in Broadoak, near Bridport, to catch up on life and the universe.

Creeds have printed all sorts of work for us for almost 15 years now; including cards and stationery when I was selling my work as an artist, and then going on to print business stationery, flyers, leaflets, newsletters and booklets for Alacrify's clients. Just a couple of weeks ago they printed a set of carbonized invoice pads for one of our clients.

The collaboration is a two-way street and recently we've worked on the website for O'Brien Lead Fabrication, a client that they refered to us.

Just having a bit of time to catch up really brings home how much change there is in both our sectors. The digital revolution has impacted hugely on both our businesses.

The Rise of Digital Printing

Creeds are now producing many more short print run jobs on their digital presses. This means they can offer personalised leaflet and letter printing using mail merge direct to the printer, giving a personal touch combined with their professional print quality.

They are also printing limited edition books for customers. Some of these are local history or autobiographies just written to be shared with the author's family and friends. The quality of the results is wonderful.

All this digital work runs alongside their traditional litho and even letterpress printing services, and combined with their mailing facilities for sending magazines, journals and newsletters out to clients' mailing lists, it makes for a really complete and incredibly useful service.

Web and Print Services

The interplay between traditional and modern technology not only marks out their business, but also the collaboration between us.

Whichever end of the process you start from; print or web; you are likely to need both of them at some point in time while running a business. Between us we can provide seamless services with joined-up design from start to finish.

We look forward to continuing to work together over the next 15 years too.

Junior Web Developer

We need someone with PHP/MySQL skills to work on a variety of projects for our clients. We've put the full spec on the recruitment page of the site.

www.alacrify.co.uk/page/recruitment

It is a great chance to work in a very creative industry and gain experience on many different types of project.

The successful candidate will need to have a good set of existing PHP/MySQL skills.

Personal Development

We have a very positive attitude and active approach to providing support and development opportunities to everyone in the company to build and improve their skills, confidence and understanding.

Interested?

If you're interested in learning more about this role then please call Jon Sloper for an informal chat on 01300 320076.

The pages were set up with a number of $_GET variables that then were used to find records or search the site. They were in this kind of format:

company.php?type=health&company_id=12

We needed to find a way to break this up and redirect it to our new friendly url version, which, in its simplest form is:

/1-5-12/

[where health is denoted by 1 and company by 5, and the company id is retained]

(NB we're using canonical links on the pages, so the urls found by Google et al will actually include the company name and so on.)

Using .htaccess to Rewrite to Friendly URLs

We wanted to use .htaccess to handle this transformation rather than putting a PHP/header redirect into the "old" files so that the new pages would be properly indexed in their own right. We spent several hours looking for solutions to this problem, and trying out various approaches.

This is the solution we ended up with:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} type=health

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} company_id=([0-9]+)

RewriteRule company.php(.*) /1-5-%1/? [R=301,L]

There are several of these for each of the permutations of $_GET variables. The [R=301] means that the visitor's url is updated with the new Friendly URL.

To explain it a bit:

• The first RewriteCond statement checks for the presence of the type=health variable.
• Then the second RewriteCond looks for a match on company_id and grabs the actual value of this variable.
• The final RewriteRule translates any company.php pages that match this pattern to the new friendly url.

Job done.

You can see it in action here:
www.osedirectory.com/company.php?type=health&company_id=317

At the start of 2011 we were asked to update the design and functionality of the site to achieve two objectives. Firstly to improve the usability of the site for its visitors, and secondly to increase the site's presence in non-English-speaking markets.

Website Design Updates for Increased Usability

The most significant change to the site is that it is now a fluid height design, rather than a fixed height. This means there are no scroll bars within the page content. Instead if the page is long, the normal browser scrollbars are used to move around the page. This is a much more intuitive and recognisable form of navigation for most visitors.

The second most significant change to the site has been to remove some of the "flashy" navigation elements from the site (like a scrolling selector to choose product types or company names. Instead a more simple list approach has been used to display all relevant information and results on the relevant page. This makes the pages load faster, and easier to read.

Web Design for International Markets

The site has always been available in 15 languages, but some of them have performed better than others in terms of being indexed on the non-English versions of the search engines. We have put in place changes to address this and increase the individual identities of the alternative language versions, making them independent and more consistent in their presentation.

In the past it was possible to view any language on any of the sites. Now you can only view Spanish on the Spanish site. This makes for more consistency and should improve each site's standing in the search engine listing.

We'll keep you posted with the results.

If you'd like to see any or all of the sites, here's the full list:

• English OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Chinese OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Czech OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• French OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• German OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Italian OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Japanese OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Korean OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Modern Arabic OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Polish OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Portuguese OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Russian OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Spanish OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Swedish OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies
• Turkish OSE Directory: Health and Safety Suppliers and Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Companies

The undoubted and, at the moment, indisputable king of the stats trackers is Google's Analytics. It has set the bar for peoples' expectations of what stats can show them about their website's performance. And it's a great leader, integrating as it does with Google's Adsense/Adwords advertising accounts and so on. However the complexity of the stats that Google presents often confuses as much as it enlightens.

As with all Google's services, the actual mechanism for counting a "visit" and tracking visitors' behaviour is ultimately a trade secret and shrouded in mystery. There's lots of general writing about how it works, and lots of speculation from other web developers, but ultimately it's a black box and inscrutable to the naked eye. This is all very well until, that is, you are asked to deliver an on site stats recording system for a client that isn't Google. The likelihood of you reporting the same figures as Google is just about nil, but that's another story.

The bit that interests me at the moment is the fact that you need to spend a long, long time reading up on Google Analytics to understand what they mean in order to be able to explain to clients what meaning they can really derive from Google's default reports.

Google Bounce Rates - A Definition?

Bounce Rate is a good case in point. It's a measure only of how many people land on a page and then vanish from the site without looking at anything else.

OK, it sounds simple enough, and in fact to the casual observer it seems like a negative experience. The visitor disappeared after one visit. Surely that's a bad thing.

Well, maybe. The truth of it is that all of our websites are highly optimised for search engines, so if the visitor arrives on the site from a search engine search, they should land on the most appropriate and helpful page on the website; one that completely relates to their topic of interest. They may not need to visit another page, as they get what they wanted on page one.

Also, in almost all of our websites we now have full contact details for the business or website owner on every page, so if the visitor is looking for a means to contact the site owner, they can do so immediately without even going to a contact form or contact page.

In both these cases a single page visit (defined as a bounce by Google and others) may be a completely satisfactory and highly economical and effective visit. The visitor came, found what she was looking for, and left. Job done.

Get Clicky!

This week we started to trial a service offered by another stats company called "Clicky" to see whether there it offers enough to be a really genuine competitor with Google. And our brief experience so far suggests, quite definitely, "Yes, it is."

Firstly it has a much more user-friendly interface, drawing together information in sensible, inter-related sections that have simple and obvious meaning right from the start.

Everyone wants to know the basics visitor numbers and page views, so they're dealt with of course, but most site builders and owners also want to know, "How'd the visitors get here?" and "What happened next?". Clicky provides this information in a lovely little "link tracker" section on the site, showing inbound and outbound links that allow you to see clearly the visitors' paths on to, and away from, the website.

This is only the start of it though, and although we've only just begun to use the service I can't see a reason to stop.

There are some real goodies on offer here, like real time visitor visibility, full visitor action tracking, easy removal of your own site visits from the stats records. The only possible downside it that it is even more addictive than Google!

Click here to Get Clicky! and see it in action for yourself. They offer a FREE trial too.

The design of the website was soon in place and various requirements by Rutland Reminders were quickly absorbed into the finished piece. The website is attractive, easy to negotiate and succinctly gives all the information required. We are delighted with the service that Alacrify has offered.

Diana Ellard, Organiser, Rutland Reminders

First Choice Solar supplies and fits photovoltaic solar panels and is based in Poole, Dorset. Our task has been to provide them with a logo and a striking, bright and informative website to promote their business.

The logo is now complete and our designs have been approved for the re-developed site. We are now putting all the clients' copy and images into our new design and hope to have it all ready for launch in the next couple of days.

Watch this space: www.firstchoicesolar.com

In a rural areas like ours in West Dorset, the challenge of finding a skilled craftsman/woman to work on buildings that are hundreds of years old and are built with traditional building materials, or have listed status, can be a bit of a headache.

In Dorchester we've worked with a traditional building company called Moxom's (making their website) who carry out just this sort of specialist work.

They have long experience in working with all manner of traditional building materials and all manner of buildings, from churches and museums to listed houses.

Moxom's are well versed in working successfully with local planners and conservation officers to make sure the build goes according to plan.

Moxom's also have specialist glazing and joinery workshops that can create bespoke windows, staircases, kitchens for almost any purpose and design.

View the Spring Festival Listing for 2011 here.

Using the on-site blogging facility we built into their site, they have drawn together the highlights of the spring festivals for 2011, providing links to the Quintessential bed and breakfasts that can provide accommodation in the local area.

This mixture of event calendars and accommodation listings gives visitors an ideal mix of luxury accommodation and entertainment all in one place. And with a list of outsanding properties to choose from, why not get away from it all for a weekend this spring.

If like me the answer to both these question is a loud and obscenely phrased "yes" I would invite you to delay your IE burning in effigy and hear a suggestion for a solution:

Luckily the fix is extremely simple. As it turns out Internet Explorer 7 has problems loading CK Editor if a field has a specific ID. Kind of like reserved words in a programming language IE doesn't like you using certain things for your IDs. One common example that catches people out is a field with the ID "description". When Internet Explorer encounters this it will silently fail to replace the text area with CK Editor and just leave it as it found it.

The best way around this is probably to pre-pend textarea field ids with another string. I tend to use "cke-" (e.g. cke-description) as it preserves the name of the field and also gives some indication of why it has been done that way.

Once you've saved your changes and reloaded the page it would begin to work consistently across your fields. Who knows, maybe you'll even grow to love IE7's mischievous and quirky nature. Just like how you can't help but feel sorry for Wylie Coyote when he fires himself into a wall with an oversized Acme rocket, Internet explorer may gain a small place in your heart... Well. Probably not your heart but certainly your recycle bin.

As we mentioned before, one of the things we've added into the site to help with this is Twitter integration. This means that all the news and diary items that are published on the site are republished using Twitterfeed on Twitter.

This allows people with Twitter accounts to follow the Maiden Newton website as they follow their other "friends" on Twitter. We've already had a handful of retweets for some of our content, and are watching our "followers" lists to see when people add us to their networks.

We've also put a small link onto all of our stories to show how many times the story has been tweeted. While we know this is always going to be a very small number in most cases, it just draws people's attention to the fact that the site is linked with Twitter and they can follow it in this way if they want to.

This approach is built on our experience with our Twitter integration with this website for our company. We've had a Twitter account for a while now and have gathered quite a few followers over the past months.

If you're interested in finding out how this approach could benefit your website and business then do give us a ring: 01300 3200076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

Several people have approached us with new leads for further content that will be added to the site, and many people have complimented us on the work done so far in bringing the site up to date again.

Reindexing The Site After The Relaunch

Google has fully indexed the new site, but still has lots of old page links in its database and so we're just waiting for these to be removed. The new site is already performing well though, with the majority of search engine originating visits now landing on pages on the new site.

This lag in re-indexing is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand it means that we've had some traffic from day one due to the links to the old site. But on the other hand the old pages no longer exist and so we've had to come up with a way of helping people to find what they were looking for on the new site, rather than just showing them the default "page not found" message.

Custom 404 Pages

We've done this by creating our own custom 404 Page that visitors see if they are directed to a page that doesn't exist. It encourages people to use the search box on the site to look for the information they were looking for. It's not a perfect solution, but it certainly is a bit more useful than the standard "404 error" that you normally get when a page is missing on a site.

So the start of this new year and new project is looking really promising.

If you're interested in developing a hyperlocal, community website for your village or town then do get in touch - ring Mark or Jon on 01300 320076 or email mark@alacrify.co.uk

The year started with a flurry of activity on the BioPortfolio website. We were asked to provide a complete rebuild and redesign from the ground up. Building on the site's success over the previous 10 years, we have spent the year turning it into a highly sophisticated, quick, reliable and market-leading website. By the end of 2010 the site's performance had rocketed, with traffic increasing four-fold, increased presence in more countries around the world, and increased revenue for the business.

We have also been working closely with ACAT (the Association for Cognitive Analytic Therapy) in 2010. As part of the organisational changes to the association, including recent charitable status acquisition, we have been rebuilding their website almost from scratch. The work is still ongoing and the final version of the new site won't go live until 2011. Key new developments include a much improved public information section, easier navigation, better interaction between different members' sections of the site; all in all a complete overhaul to get it ready for the next phase in the Association's growth.

New Clients in 2010

We've been delighted to work with many new clients in 2010. They have engaged us to carry out a variety of different projects for them. Some have been new startups. These have had all sorts of web and print design services from us; from business cards and logo design to invoice and letterheads, adverts and more. We've also created a variety of different websites, from brochure sites (with and without our MicroCMS), to fully interactive, database-driven sites using our Simple CMS, to highly complex online business administration systems.

Here's a list of just a handful of the many sites we've built from scratch this year:

• www.quintessentialbedandbreakfast.co.uk
• www.clay-to-game.co.uk
• www.hipcollege.co.uk
• www.obrienleadfab.co.uk
• www.bioselector.co.uk
• www.probusinesstraining.co.uk
• www.arabelladennler.co.uk
• www.dorsetcountyshow.co.uk
• www.heathcotehouse.co.uk
• www.islonia.co.uk
• www.homestartwestdorset.co.uk
• www.maidennewton.info
• www.moxoms.co.uk
• www.oldpostoffice-adlestrop.co.uk
• www.rutlandreminders.org.uk
• www.romanfinds.org.uk
• www.pg-economics.co.uk
• www.trinityhousebandb.co.uk
• www.symmsfabrication.co.uk
• www.wild-food.net
• www.cgfrytravelplan.co.uk

We've provided some new customers with support for their existing websites, sorting out technical issues, and giving them a hand with their online marketing and business development.

• www.honeywellanalytics.com
• www.ifonlyif.co.uk
• www.weedenmasonry.com
• www.vertex-training.co.uk
• www.realtree.co.uk
• www.johnstark.co.uk

Ongoing Customer Support and Development

This year we have continued to support and develop websites for many of our existing customers too, responding to their changing business needs and updating their sites with new services and information.

• www.stainedglassetc.co.uk
• www.risingstarsdramaschool.co.uk
• www.dryisland.co.uk
• www.hightechnologylighting.co.uk
• www.framptonhouse.co.uk
• www.dukes-auctions.com
• www.osedirectory.com
• www.commsukit.co.uk
• www.bay-publishing.com
• www.liquavision.com

Consultancy and Advice

There have been many other projects along the way where we've offered consultancy and advice to new and existing clients. Explaining the workings of the web, looking at the opportunities for web marketing for businesses, and even collaborating to build new online businesses from scratch have given us much to think about this year.

Team Development

As a team we've continued to read, research and learn more about the current trends and opportunities within the world of online business. Our bookshelves are groaning under the weight of this year's new books. Our brainstorming and team development has improved everyone's understanding of what is possible and how to make the most of running businesses on and off the web.

Business Growth and Collaboration

In June Mark Diment joined Alacrify as a Junior Web Developer. His skills in design and print and have been a boon for us as a business. Along with the web skills that he brought, he also has a wealth of knowledge, training and experience in print media too, and we've found many occasions when it's been put to great use on clients' projects. Mark's place in the team is invaluable and he now takes a lead in many of our client projects from day one to delivery.

We've also been delighted to continue to collaborate with other companies in the area. Graphic Detail and Watershed PR have provided excellent opportunities for collaboration, sharing expertise and experience between us to give their (and our) customers even better service.

Into 2011

We're really excited about 2011. We're in the middle of a whole bunch of fascinating projects at the moment that should start to come to fruition early in the year. There's a flurry of new sites on the drawing board at the moment, along with a some major new enterprises that we're working on for our clients. We can't wait to introduce them to you, so do call back next year and see how we're getting on...

Until then we'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy, peaceful and fulfilling New Year.

We would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and happy and peaceful New Year.

A newsy site like this is a perfect match for publishing stories that can then be followed on Twitter. To do this we utilised Twitterfeed to take the 4 RSS news feeds from the site (that cover village news and events diaries) and turn them into Tweets whenever new stories are published.

This was put to good use in the current spell of snowy weather when we published information about the disruption caused to village life. Within a couple of hours of the story being Tweeted, we had a flurry of new visitors to the site and followers on Twitter.

You can check out the story yourself here: http://www.maidennewtonvillage.co.uk/feature/Village+News/7

The site has simply the most outstanding bed and breakfasts imaginable in some of the UK's most glorious locations. Take a mo to visit and be tempted to stay in one of these exceptional bed and breakfasts.

Along with the stunning properties there are now several hundred events and activities listed on the site to provide you with things to do and see throughout the year, and across the whole of the UK.

Visit the Quintessential Bed and Breakfast website here.

Using all our web know-how and loads of local information collated by John Wright over the years, combined with tons of new research that we've undertaken too, we launched the site today.

We're thrilled with it and are looking forward to seeing what our neighbours in the village make of it all.

We'll keep you posted!

Take a look around for yourself: www.maidennewton.info

From their site: "Rutland Reminders is a group of local volunteers formed in 2010 to offer therapy through singing for people with dementia."

"We are concerned to support our Guests with dementia and their carers at our monthly sessions. We do not offer advice; rather we listen carefully, and try to respond appropriately. Our Guests with dementia come from all parts of Rutland, England's smallest county. We are very mindful that there are over 500 people with dementia in our county population of 35,000"

"There is no charge for what we offer. We are grateful to our many sponsors, and to the Rutland Care Village for their hospitality from month to month."

You can read more about this excellent organisation here: http://www.rutlandreminders.org.uk/who-we-are.php

It shows their main Fine Art Sales as well as their general sales in their Grove Auction Rooms, both in the heart of Dorchester, Dorset.

Their last fine art sale of 2010 included the fabulous jewels shown here. An pre-auction estimate of GBP20-30,000 was massively exceeded by the final sale price of GBP86,040!

Take a look at the 2011 Fine Art Sales calendar here: http://www.dukes-auctions.com/

And the Grove Calendar here: http://www.dukes-auctions.com/calendargrove.htm

Complementing their roofing and leadwork business they supply specialist lead products for the roofing trade. Including standard items like lead flashing they also can create just about any design you care to think of, from roof access point for birds ro chimney flashing and roof vents.

Their award winning company will supply to customers across the UK and immediate credit payment can be taken over the phone.

Our brief was to create a clear, bold site that was quick and easy to navigate and provided online presentation of their catalogue of products and services.

Take a look at their site here http://www.obrienleadfab.co.uk

Clay To Game Overseas Game Services

Clay-to-Game are now offering special services to visitors from overseas who wish to visit the UK and experience clay and game shooting during their stay. We've added in a series of pages to present these services to the website's visitors.

Clay-to-Game have also been running highly successful and enjoyable birthday and stag and hen parties, and some of the photos from recent events have been added to the site.

If you're interested in learning how to shoot, or need help with improving your skill and ability then Clay-to-Game are a perfect choice.

Take a look at their website: www.clay-to-game.co.uk and read more about them.

The store maintenance has been completely revamped along with the shop's artwork, purchase process and many other technical improvements, making the shopping experience easier and quicker for the customer, and the maintenance easier and more intuitive for the site administrators.

This is part of an series of new changes we're working on, building upon the new site framework that we created and extending the site's appeal and functionality.

We've been using both Google AdWords and Google AdSense on several projects over the past few years and it seemed a good time to distill the insights and understanding we've gained through using them.

• AdWords is the bit where you pay Google to display your ads.
• AdSense is the bit where Google pays you to display their ads.

As with all Google offerings they are both deceptively simple to use, and exceptionally tricky to master. Both require ongoing work to optimise their use and monitor their performance and to make sure that they are giving you what you need.

If you're interested you can read more about it all here:
http://www.alacrify.co.uk/page/google+adwords

If you'd like help to prepare or manage a campaign then do get in touch and email jon@alacrify.co.uk

In addition to featuring information about this record-breaking sale we also added a whole year's worth of sales catalogue archives to the site, showing the items listed and sold in each of the sales held in 2010.

Your can view the archives here: http://www.dukes-auctions.com/archive.htm

Only released into the wild last week, we are thrilled that one of the fantastic bed and breakfasts listed on the site has already confirmed its first booking that came directly through being found on Quintessential Bed and Breakfast.

It is not usual (or advisable) to expect such astonishing results from a newly launched website. Our normal expectation is that we would see traffic slowly build over a 4-6 weeks post-launch as it gets listed with the search engines, and that enquiries would start to flow in proportion to the increasing traffic from then onwards.

Although as developers we wouldn't claim full credit for this exceptional early take up, the fact that the site has been listed so quickly and converted visitors to enquiries so quickly too will be down to the way in which we planned, constructed and developed the site, along with the phenomenal amount of work done by our clients to add mountains of lovely content to it before it was launched.

I love it when a plan comes together!

This week we have broken through the 1,000,000 listed pages threshold, and are increasing at the rate of between 10,000 and 20,000 new pages per day. This has brought about a major incease in visitor numbers. Alexa's figures for the site today show that it is rated at 117,193 in the world. That may not sound impressive until you consider the 232,839,963 websites that Netcraft found on the web in October 2010, that puts BioPortfolio into the top 0.1% of all websites globally. That's right up there with Google!

Total Sites Across All Domains | August 1995 - October 2010 - Netcraft (November 2010)

Aside from the phenomenal amount of content that is now being shown on the site, the key drivers for this internet success are the site's page load speeds, exceptional search engine optimisation, and clear site architecture design. This means that really rich, genuine and meaningful data is presented on each page that is listed in the site's sitemaps, and that users will get a great deal of use out of visiting any or all of the site's million plus pages.

We're continuing to add new services and aspects to this leading bio tech website and will have more news to tell before the month is out... watch this space!

You can visit the site here: www.bioportfolio.com

We also added new content elements to allow the charity to publish news stories on the site, and updated some of the design elements to make it easier to find key content on the page.

In particular we've added a new "Annual Reports" page to present the reports and reviews that can be downloaded.

Home-Start West Dorset is a local charity which gives friendship, advice and practical support to families who live in the West Dorset District Council area.

We're proud to help HSWD and to be able to support their work in the local community.

You can view their site and find our more about their services here: www.homestartwestdorset.co.uk

We have worked extremely closely with our clients to create this site, bringing to bear all our expertise in internet marketing techniques and search engine optimisation to ensure that the site reaches its target audience.

This site includes some special solutions that we've not had the opportunity to implement before. In particular we've created our most extensive Google map facility to date, combining custom markers with "nearby" activities and events to show what is happening around and about the listed bed and breakfasts across the UK.

There is also an extensive use of "microformats" on the site. These present key information as short "business cards" for places and events that can be dropped into programs like Microsoft Outlook as contacts or appointments. With the right plugins (like Firefox's Tail's Add-on) you can simply drop the bed and breakfast's details into your address book, or add an event to your calendar.

We are really pleased with how the site looks and how it works. Its clean design concept reinforces the exceptional quality of the bed and breakfasts listed. We're looking forward to continuing to help and support the growth and development of this website as it grows and develops in the weeks and months to come.

Take a look around the site: www.quintessentialbedandbreakfast.co.uk and let us know what you think...

If you're interested in hearing how some of these techniques might be used on your website then please email jon@alacrify.co.uk or phone Jon on 01300 320076.

We've been working with them for the past 2 months to build this new site which combines wonderful photography from around Rutland with lots of information about the project.

With over 500 people with dementia in Rutland alone their work is in demand. Take a look at the site and see what they do. You can also get involved with the project yourself as a volunteer or a sponsor.

www.rutlandreminders.org.uk

Alacrify is pleased to be supporting Rutland Reminders through developing and supporting their website.

Mainstream products and companies will always be battling it out for the centre ground and the vast majority of popular opinion or sales, and will be relying on mass media advertising and huge marketing campaigns to out-do one another.

The Long Tail on the other hand acknowledges and celebrates the micro markets that exist around specialist interests and niche service offerings. The graph below shows the centre ground to the left, with high volumes of "standard" items, while the Long Tail that stretches off to the right represents the infinite number of specialist and unique items that may be on offer. These Long Tail offerings can be unique and are almost certainly in short supply.

A good example is with books. Mainstream books, both fiction and non-fiction, would be in the left with lots of companies from Tesco to Waterstones to Amazon supplying them at highly competitive prices with lots of traditional print and tv advertising. On the right of the graph would be obscure, short print run books, or even those that are out of print that may be sold individually or in very small numbers for a higher price to a very small market.

What the internet has allowed us to do is to talk about and display these niche products for the same price as the mainstream ones. The cost of adding an additional product or service page to a website is practically nil. This means that so long as you have time to maintain the stock or services list you can sell and market to the infinite niche as much as you like.

The key to the success of these niche opportunities is Google and the other search engines. Their ability to accurately match niche search term with niche search page means that any niche marketing you may do on your site (adding in specialist pages) are likely to perform well in Google for that niche topic.

Recently we added the concept "scientific website design" to this site; maybe not an extreme niche as niches go, but much more specialist than "website design". Within a couple of days we had our first visit from someone who typed in "scientific website design" into Google.

Similarly we added a blog story about configuring a piece of web software called CKEditor. We've had about 30 visits to the site just from this story.

The distinguishing feature of this type of internet marketing is that the volume of visits will always be lower than for more broad and mainstream terms, but when all the niches are added together the Long Tail out performs the mainstream every time. Additionally the likely quality of visit to a niche page is likely to be much higher, both in terms of the quality of the sales lead and in terms of the visitor's experience of the site. They're immediately getting something specific that they are interested in, rather than a lot of general information.

If you're interested in discussing the Long Tail capability of your website or business on the internet then do get in touch. Phone Jon on 01300 320076 or email jon@alacrify.co.uk

With our site we have always striven to provide easy ways to keep the site fresh and up to date, but for relatively little effort. A key part of the picture has been our blogs, like the one I'm writing now. It is a simple way to add content easily to our site, and because it appears on all the pages, they all have up to date content on them when Google and the others pay us a visit.

Making the most of the 15 minutes that I set aside to write these little items every couple of days has also been a key concern. Within this site we reuse and recycle the same content in a number of different ways.

Firstly we use RSS to syndicate our stories to news readers. It's impossible to know how many people subscribe to our feed, but we usually can spot a small "spike" in visitor numbers whenever we publish a new story; so someone's watching!

Secondly we make sure that the stories are listed in our search engine sitemap to make sure that the search engines pick up the stories as soon as they're published.

Using Twitter Feed

Recently we have also subscribed to Twitter Feed to convert our rss feed into tweets on Twitter. Basically Twitter Feed regularly visits the site and checks for any new stories in our feed. If it finds one it will then convert the title and first few characters of the story into a tweet, including a short URL for people to click if they want to read more.

These all happen automatically as soon as the story is written. To replicate these automatic updates by hand would probably double or triple my initial time investment in writing the story.

We employ many of these solutions to our clients' websites too, helping them to make their sites lively and up to date for minimal effort. As with pretty much all of our work, some clever planning in the design can lead to really economical and efficient solutions.

If you're interested in seeing whether our approach would suit your website then do get in touch: jon@alacrify.co.uk | 01300 320076

Robin's stories are about local people from around West Dorset and amongst his collection is one featuring Peter Thomas a retired farmer and now a renowned wood turner and stick maker. It makes for a wonderful read and illustrates the challenges and changes faced by UK farmers over recent years. Robin describes Peter's transition from farming to wood turning and captures Peter's passion for making beautiful things out of timber.

We've had the pleasure of working for Peter too over the years, designing and printing flyers for him and helping with the flyers and signage for the country show that he organised in Rampisham a couple of years ago. Robin's story really captures Peter's energy and enthusiasm for life and the joy of creating things of great beauty.

Take a look at Robin's amazing photography on his site: www.robinmillsphotography.com

Robin is also accepting portraiture commissions now and you can find more details by getting in touch with him: contact Robin here.

Information about the full range of Seabotix ROVs is now complemented with a range of accessories that can be added to these craft; including sonar, radar, motorised wheels, grabs and cameras. These combinations mean that Liquavision can supply ROVs to almost every underwater application from oil rig and pipeline inspection, homeland security applications, to search and rescue and fisheries settings.

Along with their extensive range of ROVs they have filled the site with other useful high tech equipment, from ship-borne sonars and radars, infrared and image-enhancing cameras, protection equipment and lots of marine and land tech.

Take a look: www.liquavision.com