The jaws of death….

The iPhone 4, more powerful, more stylish, faster, slimmer, longer lasting. All the style, and yet more. Apple had almost exceeded the heartfelt anticipation of all those merry souls (myself included I’m afraid), who had joined the merry bandwagon of iPhone, signed up to the Jobs media circus, believed the hype! How we all wanted one!

How much can change in so little time. Or doesn’t as the case may be.

It wasn’t long before the first “issues” came out. The grip of death which turned that elegant 21st century technical tour de force and style icon into little more than an expensive paperweight. A phone that didn’t do phoning (well unless you held it right handedly and only by the fingertips – and then it was ok.).

Again and again by independent reviewers the aerial fault was laid bare (attenuation of the aerial when the phone is held in a certain way). The phone, as described by many, was not (just like the Home Office) fit for purpose.

The wrong reaction

So, Apple, a brand based on style, understated elegance, simplicity and that everything they do just WORKS! Had a duff product with a fundamental design flaw. No two ways about it, a phone that doesn’t work as a phone if you hold it in your left hand has a fundamental design fault!

So what was the initial reaction – bearing in mind we live in a flat world (blogs / twitters / newsfeeds etc make everyone connected). For a company with such equity based in its brand, and so many copy-cat products (all competing on price) the reaction was not promising, to a degree it showed a certain disdain for Apple’s loyal followers.

First of all “hold it differently”, secondly, deny the issue and blame the software for how it calculates bars and thirdly go on the attack and accuse every other phone of the same issue!

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s not necessarily the right way of protecting and enhancing your brand.

The blogosphere – the flat world

Within literally minutes, thousands of blogs began to condemn Apple for it’s supposed high handedness. Picked up on twitter, and subsequently the broadcast media Apples assertions were quickly found to be baseless. It seemed that the brand itself was set for a fall.

And this leads us to the first lesson. In a flat world (where everyone is increasingly connected), you cannot bluff the market. Someone will find you out and denounce you, and you loose control of the message!

Proven right all along…

The pressure built! Eventually, Apple conceded. In a belated mea culpa, Apple is now giving all iPhone 4 users a free case. Up and until the 30th September. In terms of a tacit acceptance that the iPhone 4 was not fit for purpose in it’s original state, this is quite a big one.

So far the story is, you were wrong, you were wrong, oopps you found us out, we were wrong, sorry and here’s a freebie.

Now, for a major brand is this sufficient?

The damage….

Now for such a major brand such as Apple, this was disastrous. Or, more precisely, should have been.

The issue was real, and the initial reaction of denial was poor. Undoubtedly Apple has lost brand equity in the way it has handled this whole affair. For a company which depends on its brand in order to maintain significantly higher margins than anyone else in the industry, the protection of the brand is critical!

But how much brand equity has been lost?

That is a question that may never be answered. Apple whilst falling foul here and disaffecting many thousands of loyal supporters, is in an enviable position. It’s products are generally well designed, styled and supported by a strong brand and marketing programme. As such, demand usually outstrips supply, therefore it can afford some disaffection without hitting sales too badly.

However, Apple has fallen foul. It has been found wanting, and it’s initial reaction to this issue was not text book by any means.

When you have a brand which is so important to your business, you need to do everything to protect it! Even if that means loosing profitability for a year…..

My opinion – not that I hold opinions – Apple will survive, this will become a little blip, nothing else. However, if they were to repeat this mistake, then we could see that hallowed brand start to suffer.

Oh, and by the way, anyone else out there think the issue is fixed and Apple hasn’t told anyone to avoid a general (and expensive) product recall?

Many small businesses who have either developed their own website, or used an agency, are often too close or too attached to be able to review their website in an impartial manner – after all it’s very hard to be self critical. Further, many small businesses have a lot of expertise about their business, but not necessarily about the web and what works and what doesn’t work. This is where Hot Lemon can help, by an honest and impartial review of their website.

Why a review service?

One of the key reasons why Hot Lemon has developed this website review service is because we have found that many of our clients have either put up with a sub-optimal website for some time because they didn’t know what they should have done to their website, or they were mis-sold a website package that does nothing for them or their business.

The times we have picked up the pieces from other so called web design agencies which haven’t bothered to do the basics right for a client website are getting hard to count. We have seen a lot of bad design, bad coding and downright laziness over the years, all because people have cut corners, or even worse, couldn’t be bothered in providing a proper service (in this case, a website fit for purpose).
If you think your website might not be doing all that it can do, please get in touch.

Hot Lemon’s website review service:

Hot Lemon’s website review service has been designed to be as comprehensive as possible, whilst still keeping costs down to a manageable level (small businesses aren’t made of gold). The service is both holistic and specific. Holistic in terms of first impressions and overall look and feel, to specific in terms of whether the site is coded properly, whether it’s optimised for search engines etc.

The criteria which Hot Lemon will review each website are:

• usability – is the website user friendly? Is the navigation and presentation of content intuitive? Are categories and arrangement of the content laid out in a logical manner that visitors can follow?
• look and feel - does the website reflect the businesses’ brand and brand values? Does it look professional? How does it compare with similar sites? Are users put off or encouraged by the design?
• proposition – does the website have a strong customer proposition and a strong call to action? What is the point of the website – is it just for hygiene purposes, or does the business want to generate business or leads from the website? Is it clear and concise in its message to visitors? Are visitors converting to customers through the website?
• copy writing – how good is the copy writing on the website? Is it targeted at the right market? Has it been optimised for search engines? Does it reflect the values of the business? Is it too long or too short?
• search engine optimisation – has the website been optimised for search engines? Has it been submitted to the major search engines? How well does the website perform in search engines? Does the coding and structure of the website facilitate or hinder search engines? Have the title, alt and meta tags been used appropriately? Has the site been optimised for keywords? Are there too many or too few keywords?
• coding and structure – does the website use semantic code? Is the website complaint with international standards? Does the structure of the site facilitate or hinder search engines? Is the website compatible with all browsers? Are there any nasty workarounds hidden in the code which might cause issues?
• competitor analysis – how does the website compare against its competitors? Is it doing better or worse then them?

As can be seen from the categories above, hot Lemon’s website review service is quite comprehensive. the aim of the service is to provide small businesses with a report whereby they can identify what the key issues are with regard to their website, and then use that report to improve their website.

As part of each and every report, there will be a series of recommendations and actions that can be implemented to help in getting higher search engine rankings, increased number of visitors and increased conversion rates.

Website reviews from £75.00

Hot Lemon offers this review service completely impartially. That’s why we charge a fee for it. There’s no obligation to do anything else with Hot Lemon and we won’t bombard you requests or offers. You can take the report and either act on it yourself, or take it your web agency and ask them about it and how they are going to resolve the highlighted issues.

For the smaller website (say 4-6 pages), Hot Lemon will charge a flat fee of £75.00. For more complex websites, please get in touch so we can quote a price for you. Like everything Hot Lemon does, we will not commence any work for you – be that a website review, a website, or marketing consultancy, without giving you a detailed quotation. So you always know what your getting from Hot Lemon, when your getting it and how much it’s going to cost you!

If you want to find out more, please get in touch with Hot Lemon on 0845 094 3391, or see our website.

Hot Lemon has introduced its “small business starter package“, which for a flat fee of just £350*, will give that business an effective on-line presence, with everything they need to start taking advantage of the internet.

The package includes:

• development of unique website template for the business
• four page website, including a contact page with fully tailored, spam protected contact form
• help with content and copy writing
• free sourcing of appropriate imagery, pictures and graphics
• search engine optimisation and search engine submission
• full web statistics package
• one year’s free web hosting with emails

Taking the plunge

A lot of small businesses have yet to take the plunge in getting on-line, thinking that it will be too complex, too time consuming and too expensive. Hot Lemon’s small business starter package aims to remove those obstacles.

Find out more – get in touch for a no obligation chat

If you want to find out more, please see www.hot-lemon.com, or get in touch with Hot Lemon on 0845 094 3391 (or use our contact form) for a no obligation chat about how Hot Lemon can help you and your business.

* limitations do apply, please see www.hot-lemon.com for further details.

But how exactly does Google Google?

Bust the myths first!

One of the first things to get out in the open before any discussion about how Google Googles is that no one really knows for sure! (Well apart from those people which actually work at Google that is.)

This is an important fact to consider, especially given the huge industry that has grown up in search engine optimisation (SEO) and search marketing in general (optimising web pages and marketing strategies to gain high rankings in search engines). Whilst the basics are well known because they have been proven to work in the real world, Google has kept relatively quiet about the actual specifics of how it ranks web pages!

Why? Quite simply to avoid unscrupulous web designers and the like from abusing the system! In the good old days (sepia tinted images come to mind) when the web was young, search engines used meta tags to ascertain what a website was all about, and it used those tags to return search queries. However, these were so abused by certain websites that they became almost useless as a means of ascertaining what a webpage was all about!!! Hence, Google (and other search engine providers) do not generally publicise how they rank pages, using fiendishly algorithms instead…

The simple mechanics

Anyway, I digress, back to the question in hand.

The simple mechanics of how Google Googles (try saying that quickly) is relatively simple, and is a three stage process:

Stage 1 – the Googlebot!

The Googlebot is Google’s web spider. A web spider is an automated programme that trawls the internet visiting pages that it can find and harvesting data from them! The Googlebot is the foundation of how Google works!
The Googlebot (like other web spiders) on visiting a site will download information about that site to Google’s servers, this information includes the meta data, content (abridged), keywords and the location of content and keywords. Further, the Googlebot will also “deep-crawl” a website, harvesting links which will be “crawled” in the future.
The Googlebot will usually “crawl” a webpage once a month, for the more popular websites and those sites which have regularly changing content (such as news media) this will be more often!

Stage 2 – the Indexer!

Once the Googlebot has crawled a webpage, the results of that crawl are downloaded to Google’s servers and indexed (using the indexer). The content of a website is indexed (alphabetically) by search term (the indexer generally ignores common words such as “is, on, in, or, of”.. etc.), together with the location on the document where that term appears (this is why you need to give your search terms prominence – but that’s a different discussion).
The output of the indexer is a database which stores the location of words (and their location) on every website crawled by the Googlebot. This index is used by Google’s query processor to generate search results.

Stage 3 – Google query processor

The final stage, is Google’s query processor. This takes a user’s query (perhaps a single word, or a more complex search query), compares it to its search results (as stored in the indexer) and then returns the results to the user, based on the prominence of those search terms on a particular page, their proximity to each other etc.. Sounds simple?

However, considering there are approximately (as no one really knows for sure) 25 billion web pages in existence (Google itself admits it’s only trawled a fraction, only several billion!!!), the above methodology in returning search results would be somewhat haphazard and unlikely to give the user relevant results!
The Google difference – relevance

So what makes Google different, and what makes it so successful? In a word – relevance!

Google strives to produce relevant results for every single search query it handles. The effectiveness of this is reflected in Google’s market dominance of the search engine market. But how does Google do this time and time again?

The search algorithm and PageRank

Google spends a lot of time and effort in refining its search engine in order to deliver relevance to each and every search query it handles.
Internal!

Firstly, its spidering and indexing of web pages is highly effective – this is the backbone of producing relevant results. Google has produced algorithms and processes which can, with a high degree of accuracy, determine what a particular web page is about by analysing the text, layout, headings, images and links on a specific web page.
Web designers, well the good ones at least, therefore design their web pages to be as Google (and other search engine) friendly as possible. This is often called “internal Search Engine Optimisation”, and classified, by some agencies as a separate service to designing a website (???).
Internal SEO aims at making a website more easily read and understood by the Googlebot (and equivalent web spiders) by making sure that certain standards are met, that links and images are properly labelled and that the text (content) itself is appropriate and is actually written in a way that can help web spiders “understand” the page’s subject (use of key words, proximity, and position of key words etc.). Most search engines will deliver broadly similar results here.

Viva la diference – PageRank – External

However, what makes Google’s results more relevant for the majority of users, is its use of the PageRank algorithm (named after Larry page – one of the co-founders of Google). Once a website is Page Ranked, it is assigned a ranking of between 0 and 10. With “10″ being the best! Higher Page Ranked websites will be listed higher on Google’s search results than lower ones (page rankings are logarithmic, meaning that there are a lot of lower ranked pages to higher ranked pages).

Put simply, PageRank is an algorithm that assesses a pages relevance for a particular subject (search term) by the number and quality of inward bound links (links pointing to that particular web page) that are relevant to that search term. The theory being that good websites with good content will be linked to already by other pages. Quality is important too – with links coming from highly ranked website accounting for more than other links (significantly more in certain cases).

Optimising a website for links is often called “external Search Engine Optimisation”, and can be done in a number of ways, from link exchanges with similar websites, to posting articles on article boards to blogs (quick tip to get your site listed on Google faster is to start a blog on Blogpedia.com linking back to your site).

Don’t cheat!

Oh, and one last thing. The web has always been open to abuse by unscrupulous web designers trying to beat the search engines! Firstly, it was with meta-tags, then key words in the text of the document, and now with link farms (websites set up full of links to other websites, serving no other purpose than to link to each other and manipulate search engine rankings).

Google, and other search engines, have highly complex algorithms and have processes in place to identify manipulation of links, keywords and meta-tags. If a search engine decides a particular website is guilty of such activity, that website could find itself black listed!!

Not so simple after all

Search engine optimisation, either internal or external, whilst relatively simple in generic terms can get complicated. Hence the SEO industry!!! So whilst this blog entry is simplistic, don’t necessarily be fooled that getting a high ranking website is an easy thing to do!

Please feel free to get in touch if you want to discuss any of the above, or just simply want to find out more.

What should a small business website look like?

What content should a small business website have?

The above are questions that many small businesses will be asking themselves when it comes to developing their own websites. They know they need to be on the web, they know that there is potential value to their business in being on the web, but their not quite sure how or what apart from the need for a website….

This article is aimed at helping small businesses use the web effectively and to get their first website up and running and working for them (or to redevelop an existing site).

We will use a series of steps which can help any small business plan its website and help to create that business an effective website.

Step 1: Define the purpose of the website

Believe it or not, defining the purpose of the website is something that is often overlooked by many small businesses when it comes to planning their website.  Primarily this is because most small businesses think they know what they want, but because they haven’t defined it, they often miss the mark.

Simply put, only by defining a purpose of your website can you ever judge whether your website has been successful or not, or what you need to do to make it successful!

For example, you may want your website to deliver any (or all) of the following:

• sell your products or services on-line (an on-line shop)
• promote your business (advertising)
• support your business (many customers expect you to have a website)
• provide information to potential and existing customers (brochure site)
• provide support to existing customers (technical information, questions and answers etc.)

Once you have chosen what you want your website to deliver, you can then start to plan it much more effectively in terms of what you need to include on that website and how it should look and feel.

Step 2: What do you think you need to communicate to achieve your objective (purpose)

Having defined the purpose of the website, we now need to structure some relevant content to “sell” the business.

From a business owners point of view, this could include:

• What we do, what we sell – page(s) explaining the product or service that the business offers
• Our pricing for what we do and what we sell
• Where we are – if it’s a bricks and mortar business, then we need to tell customers where they can find us
• Our unique selling point (USP) – in other words what does the business do better than anyone else, or more simply – why you should do business with us (this could be one factor – “we are the cheapest”, or it could be a combination of factors – “we offer the best service in your community at the best prices”

A key thing to think about here is that the internet is driven by “content”. Google and other search engines index pages according to what they “think” there about based upon the pages content. Therefore, it is critical to get appropriate content on your website, explaining what you do, where you are etc.

Many pundits use the phrase “content is king”, so when your planning your website, think how you can get appropriate and relevant content onto your website that will both be interesting to your customers and search engine friendly. Many business for example have “how to” guides on their websites, the on-line equivalent of a friendly authoritative shop keeper.

Step 3: Get into your customers shoes…

OK, so we have decided what we want our website to achieve and we have decided on some appropriate content that will “sell”. Now for the harder part.

Some businesses will find this intuitive, others won’t. We need to get into the customers shoes and find out what they want to know, what they need to know about the business in order for them to interact with it and (depending on the objectives of the website) become a customer, be that make an order on-line, pick up the phone, or pop into your office / shop.

Key things to consider here are:

• trust – how does a potential customer know that they can trust you?
• professionalism – how does a potential customer know you have expertise in your particular market or that your a professional business
• image – your website will be a shop window to your business – is it dressed to impress?

Typical ways of trying to overcome the above barriers inlcude:

About us pages – you will find many sites with “about us” pages on them, it is a good way of communicating that your business has some substance to it / has been in business / has happy customers and staff. This helps to give your website visitor confidence in your business.

Testimonials – another excellent way of building trust and demonstrating professionalism. If visitors are unsure about your offering, one of the best ways of reassuring them is to show them what others have said and done.

Case studies – a great way of demonstrating expertise and professionalism, this builds on a testimonial in terms of trust building, but depending on the way it’s structured can significantly help in demonstrating your professionalism.

Terms and conditions – no need to make this high profile, but having T&C’s, which include a refund policy for example, can greatly help in the building confidence stakes.

Contact details – whether your business is based at home or anywhere else, having full contact details – address and telephone number – is important. The majority of visitors will probably not contact you (depending on the objectives of your business), but its reassuring for them is they can.

Presentation counts – having a well designed website is critical. Whilst “content is king”, unless it’s highly relevant and appropriate content, visitors won’t read it unless it presented well. Remember, for many industries, presentation will matter more.

Step 4 – review and simplify

After following the above steps, you probably have a huge list of things you want on your website.  However, very few people will want to read a huge list of things on a website (unless they are really really interested).

Therefore, you need to review, simplify and review.

For your home page, you want to focus on one thing alone – your proposition to the customer. By all means have other things, but keep the focus simple and concise. Engage your customers in increments, so instead of making a do or die pitch for their business in two paragraphs, try to get them to click onto another page for more detail. In this way you can then focus the page the customer clicks on to that specific service, product or feature without overwhelming them.

You navigation structure – the way your pages link to each other needs to be simple too. There is a reason why the majority of website navigation bars are at the top of the page underneath the header – that’s because people expect them to be there and it’s now intuitive.

Your presentation – don’t try to crowd too many things together. Keep it simple clean and concise. Your customers will thank you for it. Too many times you see web-pages crammed with everything under the sun, from animated graphics to news wires.

Step 5 – peer review

Your an expert at your business, unless that business is communications or web design, don’t expect to be an expert in that too. Ask for peoples advice, your peers, your colleagues, your family. You might not agree with them, but they can provide a different and important viewpoint.

Above all, check out what your competitors are doing, whether there local or not. See which ones you would do business with them (from just looking at their websites) and then ask yourself why!

Concluding remarks

Hopefully this article has given you some food for thought if nothing else. It’s not designed to be a how to guide, or a technical guide, but more a guide on structuring and focussing your content and overcoming some of the barriers you as a business will face in the on-line world.

Further, always keep a foot (or two) in reality, if your business isn’t viable in the real world, don’t necessarily expect it to be viable in the on-line world. Likewise, having a website doesn’t guarantee thousands of visitors, you will be shocked at how few visitors the average business website gets!

And (nearly finished), when you have published your website (whether you have done it yourself (bad) or used an agency (good)), remember to keep track of how it’s doing. Web statistics are critical here. See what works, what doesn’t and review regularly.

The Hot Lemon team.

A large part of Hot Lemon’s online business is helping our clients redevelop their websites because their current websites  are, for want of a better phrase, “not fit for purpose”. These are not websites our clients have done themselves, in which case you could forgive them, but so called “professional” websites developed by “professional” web design agencies.

This has eventually prompted me to write this guide to choosing the right web design agency for your small business to help other small businesses of repeating those very same mistakes.

Who’s to blame for bad web-design?

Quite simply, the agencies developing the websites and the small businesses commissioning them. So, that would be everyone!

The agencies are to blame because they don’t engage with their clients,  they cut too many corners and they try to template design and technology too much in order to meet a specific price point. The small businesses are to blame, because they are driving the market to a low price point, they don’t want to invest much in their website, and they don’t get involved in the process as much as they should.

Bemusement – the internet is important

Of constant bemusement to me is the way some small businesses go about developing their online presence – their website.  The internet is so persuasive now, and used by so many consumers in many different ways, that a robust, professional online presence is a necessity for any business, no matter what sector, no matter what size.

However, many small businesses still approach the development (and use) of their website in a casual manner, to them, the website is of secondary importance rather than primary. Unfortunately, with this mindset, many small businesses will never experience the benefits of what a good online presence can deliver,  and why it is so important to invest time and resources into it.

The race for the bottom – the bargain basement website

This attitude by small businesses can be characterised by the increasing preponderance of web design agencies offering “all inclusive”,  ”professionally designed” and “tailored for you” websites all for the princely sum of £199.

Now fundamentally, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this bargain basement web-design.

However, you really do get what you pay for. Bearing in mind these agencies have overheads, and they are businesses too therefore they need to make a profit themselves, the actual development cost spent on a website like this might be as little £80 to £100. The agencies in order to meet this price point need to pare down the design process to a minimum. Hence use of templates, generic pictures, generic text.

The resultant website might look ok. But does it work for your business?  Does it reflect your brand? Does it communicate what you do properly? Does it sell your business? Can you find it on Google?

An old adage: “you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”

Top tips for choosing a web design agency

Hot Lemon has developed some top tips  for any small business to use when choosing a web design agency, these are:

• recommendation - use your network, if a colleague can recommend an agency you can use their experience to help you with your choice
• talk to several agencies – don’t just go to one agency, talk to several. Do they treat you as a client or as a potential cash-flow?
• don’t make a decision on cost alone – cost is important, it’s why we budget for things. However, the cheapest is seldom the best. Saving money in designing a web site can lose money in the longer term  from lost business
• do they use English? – English is a wonderful language, however, many people don’t use it and decide to use jargon instead. If an agency can’t be bothered to talk to you in plain English that you will understand, can you really expect them to spend the time getting to know your business
• do they understand you? – Has the agency bothered to get to know you, get to know your business, your market? They are designing your primary communication channel, they need a  good understanding of you in order to do that effectively
• benefits not features – the web is full of features! But what real benefit are they to you? Be wary of long lists of features, this is especially the case for e-commerce sites
• beware of the up sell – you are getting someone to design you a website, be wary of agencies trying to sell you other online services for your business, whilst often useful, they can tie your business down
• copy-writing – is the agency going to help you write the content of your website, or just design the website. Writing effective web copy is not an easy skill
• templates - have a look at the agency’s portfolio, do they all look the same? Are they designing to a template? Many low cost web designs are template based -  it’s where they save the money – not necessarily a problem, as long as the template is good for you
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 1 – the agency should offer internal SEO as an integral part of their service – not as an add on. SEO is so important it needs to be done from the start of the design process
  • SEO 2 – get the agency to explain what their SEO services are in plain English. Get them to explain their internal and external SEO services to you and their costs. Further, ascertain whether they do this in-house or sub-contract it
• Content Management Systems (CMS) – many agencies make CMS a key feature, but do they tell you everything about CMS and is it right for you? Key things to consider:
  • ease of use – whilst you don’t need to be able to code in order to update a website with CMS, many of them are not as intuitive to use as they should be, indeed, quite the opposite
  • proprietary or published – CMS’s can come in two forms – proprietary (i.e. written specifically for a specific  website), or published (Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, Coldfusion etc.), in which case the CMS is adapted for your website. Proprietary is usually more intuitive as written specifically for you, but can tie you in. Published can be less intuitive and more templated.
  • templates – CMS websites generally follow similar template designs, especially the published varieties, your choice in layout and design may be limited
  • flexibility - because many CMS designs follow templates (with some agencies just changing the logo on the template and then selling it to you for £500) they lack flexibility, you may well be limited in what you can do within your budget
  • content - just because you can update your website, should you? Were not all copywriters, and this together with the relative inflexibility of CMS websites can lead pretty quickly to some messy websites. Further, if your being sold a website with CMS is the agency going to help you out with copy-writing and SEO? Do you know enough about SEO to write search engine friendly copy?
• e-commerce – many small businesses are attracted to the online world because of e-commerce and the ability to compete with the big boys on equal terms. Err no. The first thing any agency should do is to administer a dose of reality to your e-commerce dreams. It’s not impossible to be successful, but it’s not as easy as you may think. Things to consider asking your agency about e-commerce are:
  • software – your agency is very likely to use commercially available e-commerce software for your website,  the larger agencies may have their own software which they re-use.  Find out which one their using and Google it! You might find out that your paying an agency just to change the logo
  • beware of the up sell – many e-commerce packages are hugely capable, able to list and manage thousands of products and do wondrous things – this might be over-kill if all your after is a simple e-commerce website selling a few items
  • ask for options – if you’re just going to sell a few things online, make sure your agency gives you a range of options, from the cheap to the expensive. For example, PayPal provides a free e-commerce facility that can be used with any website!
  • understand the amount of work involved – often, the easiest part of setting up an e-commerce site is the design itself, understand that inputting your product details with appropriate tags and descriptions can be very time consuming – will your agency help?
  • templates – because e-commerce websites are usually based on published software, and have very complex databases related to them, they tend to be very similar in how they look as they are generally set up using templates. This could be an issue if you want to differentiate how your e-commerce site looks compared to your competitors, ask you agency how they can differentiate your site from your competitors
• beware of the plugins – use of specific plugins  might make your website look fantastic, but understand that not all of your customers will have those plugins (for example Flash, Quicktime, Java, Real player files etc. ). Ask what happens to your sexy looking website when the visitor doesn’t have Flash installed for example (iPhone’s don’t play Flash). Also, the content of Flash files are not indexed by Google, so you need to make sure your agency is communicating the content of them in other ways for search engines
• standards matter – ensure your agency codes their websites to international standards. Those standards are there for a purpose, to ensure that websites work regardless of browsers and operating platform. As a minimum you should insist that your website adheres to W3C standards for HTML / XHTML. There is no excuse for not designing a standards compliant website, apart from laziness!
• testing - find out what the testing regime is at the agency. Web pages display quite differently in different browsers and operating systems, what works in one browser doesn’t necessarily work in another.  Find a computer with Internet Explorer 6 on it (still the default browser on 10% of all computers)  and test your website on it (IE6 is usually the worst culprit for displaying websites incorrectly)
• relationships are key – above all else, do you feel that you can do business with the agency and build a working relationship with them. Things do wrong – fact of life – do you feel your agency is going to be there to help and support you when it does?

I think that’s pretty exhaustive list of tips and things to consider when choosing a web design agency for your small business.

Things to consider

Whilst the above is pretty comprehensive in terms of assessing web design agencies, it’s not all one way traffic. Small businesses equally need to consider several points as well before beginning the web development process. For example:

• your website is likely to be the primary communication tool of your business – your shop front to the world. Therefore dedicate appropriate time and resources to getting it right
• understand that you get what you pay for. You will not get someone understanding your needs and the needs of your business and then design an effective website for £250!
• if you do not understand the internet, find someone who does. Find out why SEO is important, and what drives good SEO (chances are, the £250 option will become less attractive on doing this) – as a wee plug, Hot Lemon is quite happy to chat
• do not trust anyone who can’t explain things to you in plain English
• don’t get too drawn into CMS and fully featured e-commerce sites, understand that your good at your business, not necessarily at copy-writing, graphic design or web design
• whilst most websites have similar structures (it’s intuitive!), don’t be satisfied with a template design. Your customers will recognise that you can’t be bothered with your own website – so why should they?
• your website is a critical tool for your business, don’t treat it as an add on, treat it as an integral part, and commit the time and resources appropriate to it.

Anyway, the topic is still highly appropriate and relevant, especially the discussion on coming out of a recessionary environment, and how businesses with a strong marketing presence can take advantage of the upturn (when it comes). As per always, all comments welcome and appreciated.

Viewpoint: Marketing in a recession: three reasons to keep on marketing

It’s a recession! How many times have you heard that recently? The answer: probably thousands. Every newspaper and news programme seemingly has an unending list of recession related stories; “the longest recession ever”, “the deepest recession since records began”, “the worst recession on record”.

Batten down the hatches, cut costs!

The approach taken by many businesses in a recessionary environment is to batten down the hatches, cut unnecessary spending, reduce non-essential investment, eliminate waste and focus on the key priorities of the business. Believe it or not, these are good things! They help to develop leaner more responsive, more profitable businesses for when the good times return – call it natural selection for businesses if you like – only the good survive.

However, for many businesses, particularly Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME’s) which have developed in primarily niche vertical markets, they consider their investment in marketing (product, services and brand) to be non-essential. As such, a lot of businesses are reducing their investment in marketing, focussing on selling and reducing costs.

Wrong, wrong wrong. Whilst for some businesses that will be the best option, for many others it is not, and could indeed be damaging long term for that business and its prospects. The recession, whilst generally being bad for the majority of businesses and consumers, does offer the switched on business some great opportunities though.

Marketing can help deliver those opportunities, and the rest of this post focuses on the three key reasons why you and your business should continue to invest in marketing during the recession. Were not suggesting that nothing should change, we are all under pressure to reduce costs and expenditure in times of reducing margins, but your focus on marketing your business, if anything should increase. By all means market more effectively, make those pounds shillings and pence stretch more, but don’t lose focus on marketing.

Reason 1: Generate new business!

Generate new business? You must be mad! There’s a recession on don’t you know? How on earth can you generate new business in a recession???

True, there is very little “new” business around, in terms of business that was not there before the recession. However, probably like your own business, many businesses and consumers out there are looking at reducing their costs, in terms of can they continue doing something or purchasing something, at a lower cost or with increased functionality (which in turn would reduce overall costs to them).

For the average consumer on the street this might mean doing the grocery shopping at a discount retailer rather than at a premium supermarket, or for a business, reviewing their supplier list in terms of looking at cheaper alternatives or reducing the cost of the product or services those suppliers are providing.

Consumer review – the opportunity exists

In simple terms, the recession is causing a lot of consumers to review their existing commercial relationships. Be those relationships with a mass market retailer or a bespoke web design agency.

Nothing too insightful there you say. Until you consider how hard it is to get a consumer (either a business or a person in the street) to change their purchase habits normally. If a consumer is generally happy with a service, they will very rarely change (even if it’s more expensive!). However, the recession is causing consumers to do just that.

Coupled with the fact that many businesses are too complacent when it comes to looking after their customers (i.e. expecting to maintain existing margins on business during a recession), there now exists an excellent opportunity to generate new business – to steal business – from your competitors. Provided, that is, you are prepared to compete on a cost basis, or on a “perceived value” basis.

Consumers are now in the market reviewing their relationships looking for lower cost alternatives. If you can provide that, then you have an excellent opportunity to win more business. But you need to get your message across, you need to aggressively (dependent on the market) get your message out – you need to market yourself. Develop a strong cost or value based customer proposition and get it out to your potential customers.

No need to despair, it’s not all about money…

Compete on cost? You must be mad! We will be trapped into a price war, our margins will be destroyed!!!

True, if you don’t thinks this through, you can end up in a difficult situation where you’re selling at low (possibly unsustainable) margins, and then subsequently find you can’t easily increase prices when the good times roll. However, there are ways you can counteract this.

Firstly, review your proposition and understand your potential customers, can you cut out the frills without compromising the customer offer? Thereby reducing the cost of your service whist still giving your potential customers what they need. To do this you need to know your market, your competitors, and most importantly your customers. Spend time researching them all!!!

Secondly, consider introducing new customer time limited discounts. Yes you will get a hit on the margins initially, but longer term, when the customer has become entrenched with you – the margins will come back up.

Thirdly, think about how you present and market your business. Can you do it in a way that seemingly offers better and greater value to the customer than your competitors? Can you add extras to your offering which whilst cheap for you, could be expensive for your customers (think banks offering free accidental insurance on purchases etc.)

Reason 2: Protect your own business!

Read above and reverse it! For every one of your competitor’s customers reviewing their providers, yours are too!!!

You cannot sit and do nothing! If you do, you run the very real risk of allowing your competitors to steal your customers away from you.

True, there are some customers who probably cost you more in terms of time and resources than you actually make from them, but that’s for a different post.

So, what can you do to stop your customers defecting? Well….

Firstly – get to know them better, research them, talk to them, find out what’s going on in their heads – are they feeling price pressure? The process of researching your customers will tell you a lot, not only how to retain their business, but hopefully, how to sell more to them as well!

Secondly – develop relationships with them. The more one to one relationships with your customers you can generate the better. If you have a personal relationship with a customer, they are less likely to defect, even if it is in their interests to do so. Building relationships and trust is key, to a large extent, this is what a “Brand” is all about.

Thirdly – reinforce their purchase decisions! Don’t let your customers think their making the right decision in using you, tell them they are! They need reassurance that you are the best provider for them. If they feel reassured that they have made the right decision, they are less likely to review that decision, even on a cost basis. A key part of this during a recession is to make yourself visible, with so many businesses retrenching or going bust, you need to be out there shouting from the roof tops that your still here, offering a great service, and providing what people need!

Fourthly – be aggressive! Don’t wait until you start seeing defections to a lower cost competitor, by that time it’s too late! Pre-empt any price competition, but do it on your own terms. It’s no use just cutting prices if you haven’t got external pressure to do so, that just reduces your margins and makes you significantly less profitable.

You need to know and understand your market and your competitors. Don’t necessarily jump straight in with a price cut, think about the ways you can generate and retain business with any price cuts you might introduce. Consider discounts, they can be time limited “20% off this weekend”, or targeted at new customers “new customers get 10% off” or targeted at existing relationships through loyalty schemes or other limited term discounts. However, do your math first! Don’t go offering discounts your business can’t afford!

Reason 3: Prepare for the upturn….

Growth is coming! There will be an upturn! Well, the politicians keep saying so, and there never wrong…?

The economy is cyclical, periods of growth followed by periods of retrenchment. Politicians might have thought they had consigned this to history, but it’s too deeply ingrained, and is too psychological to be influenced by economic policies alone. Anyway, at some point, probably relatively soon, the economy will start growing again.

What this means is that you and your business needs to be in the best position to take advantage of that growth. When your customers and potential customers start thinking again about taking on additional products and services, you need to be there in front of them, ready and willing to do business with them. Remember, there is a lot of latent demand in the market, a lot of customers have put off purchase decisions during the recession, and waiting until economic conditions give them more confidence to spend there well earned money.

However, the thing about latent demand is that the purchase decision isn’t made once the consumer decides they can afford to spend the money, the decision is made in the run up to that point. In other words, those decisions are being made now.

So what must you do to be ready for the upturn, when it comes?

Step 1: maintain your market profile – keep advertising, keep your customers and potential customers aware of your products and services, just because there not making those purchases now, doesn’t mean there not making decisions! If you do need to reduce costs, look at cheaper more effective means of getting your message across, look at online marketing, review your website (search engine marketing), use the local press (usually much cheaper than national alternatives), if your market is local even consider sponsoring a local sports team. But above all, keep your profile strong.

Step 2: build your relationships – relationships are critical at any point. Usually, they are quite dynamic in terms of you give, you get (i.e. you put the effort in, and you get a reward – say business), however in a recessionary environment they might become less so. However, they are critical for the future success of your business.

We are not talking about taking your customers out for dinner! Relationships can take many forms, if you can manage a relationship electronically through your website and associated systems – fantastic! Otherwise, start talking to them, send them reminders, emails and get well cards! Remind them that you are there, that you have provided them with good service before and that you will do so again. Reward them for staying loyal, consider discounts or added extras (an added extra is often worth more than a discount, is often perceived as better value, and may cost you less).

Step 3: capability – make sure that you have the ability to deliver on your promises! Many businesses will have cut to the bone to survive the recession, and will only make a limping recovery, if at all, after the recession. You need the latent ability in your business to provide for the anticipated extra demand post recession!

The worst thing your business can do post recession is not to be able to deliver against the expected demand. A customer will very rarely go back to a provider that has failed them before! Yes, this will probably give you greater cost during the recession compared to your competitors but you will be able to capitalise much more post recession.

Yes, maintaining this capability will probably cost you more during the recessionary period, however, it does offer you the opportunity to review your systems and processes to see if you can maintain capability at reduced costs (using the web more, automated processes etc.).

Step 4: call to action – the recession has come to an end, growth has started, people are starting to re-enter the market – you need to be top of the pile! This not only means you need good marketing communications and a strong customer proposition, but you also need a strong call to action to get those customers spending again! Give them that irresistible offer to get them started.

Consider time limited discounts, added extras, packaged bundles. Anything almost! You need to get those customers doing business with you, before they do business with anyone else.

A point to remember here, whilst the recession will have caused deep financial hardship and woe to many, the majority of consumers (not necessarily businesses) will have a lot of disposable income at hand due to falling interest rates over the recessionary period. This is not going to last for long! Post recession, interest rates are likely to rise in order to control the expected inflationary pressures, and this will have the effect of reducing disposable income within the economy.

You may have noticed already, Hot Lemon has a new look and feel to it!

We took the decision to redevelop our website in order to focus more heavily on promoting our small and medium sized business services. Whilst we haven’t lost everything, they have been some significant changes.

Fresh look, fresh feel

Firstly, the look and feel, whilst still holding a family resemblance to the previous website has been completely updated. The key difference being the use of imagery (fruit – and not a lemon there at all!) across the website as backgrounds and banners. We had a bit of fun doing this, and through a wee bit of Javascript, you can have a play at changing the backgrounds too – all the way from plain white (very formal), to the more funky Kiwi fruit theme……. Look for the change icons on the right….

Focussed towards small and medium sized businesses

Secondly, we have focussed our text more towards our key target market – the small and medium sized business sector. As with a lot of websites, we get lots of visitors, but we need to increase the conversation ratio of those that take action on visiting our site. The re-focussing of the text and our core messages of cost-effective web design and marketing for the small business sector should help this.

Thirdly, we tweaked a lot of things round the back out of sight, this makes the process of updating and managing the site that so much easier.

Adapting Wordpress

And off course, we couldn’t not update our Wordpress theme (yes, this is a Wordpress blog!), to make it an identical twin to our main site. Consistency is a good thing as they say.

(If you would like a tailored Wordpress blog for yourself – why don’t you get in touch)

Not that it might make any difference to the frequency of Hot Lemon’s blogs, but we have come across the iPhone Wordpress application.

However, we are impressed.  Now, the opportunity for blogging from wherever and whenever is with us. The application is intuitive and well laid out (one of the better iPhone apps around) and connected easily with the majority of the usual Wordpress functionality still intact. Indeed, we found it so easy, we did this post on it!

There has been some comment in various forums about the reliability of this particular app. However, we have not experienced it ourselves.

So a hearty Hot Lemon thumbs up for the Wordpress iPhone app.

Another week, another website….

Hot Lemon is pleased to announce the publication of another small business website – www.ovenbettercleaning.co.uk !

As the name suggests – Oven Better Cleaning – the company is focussed towards oven cleaning and kitchen appliance cleaning. A sector of the market which is interestingly dominated by large franchise operations.

What we tried to do with Oven Better Cleaning was to take the clients existing identity (which was developed for some collateral produced to support the launch of the company) and build it into a strong visual identity on screen which communicated the professionalism of the client together with their focus on customer care and satisfaction.

Graphically we developed a site with a very clean layout, using the clients own artwork in the main, with our only indulgence being typography – we do like a good font or two….