Outsourcing

Super-cool plug-ins, the latest CSS3 wizardry and a streamlined mobile site are all well and good, but without killer content, your site is wasted.

Here are the top 10 tips to create powerful, persuasive copy that will bring true value to your reader.

1. Understand your goal: 
You need a plan and every word you write should support that plan.  Powerful, persuasive copy is vital to your cause.  Unless it is supporting your marketing plan, it’s just wasted effort.

2. Inspire a response:  
Know the response you want, and keep it in mind.   If, after reading, your readers aren’t inspired to DO some kind of action, your copy is useless.

3. Keep it simple: 
Do keep verbs active not passive.  Don’t use three words where one will do.  Do use everyday vocabulary. Don’t use complicated sentences. Do avoid unnecessary jargon. Do use short, easily digestible sentences. Finally, Do use correct punctuation and spelling.

4. Write for your audience:
A big mistake when writing copy is talking about “us” instead of “you”.  You have about 3 seconds to hook your reader and to present your product or service, or show them how they can be cleverer/wiser/healthier or wealthier, etc.  Be informal and chatty where appropriate.  Be respectful and honest. And if you can throw in a bit of humour without being cheesy, you are on to a winning formula.

5. Short and sweet:
We manage our lives in lightning-speed-micro-chunks, so get your point across quickly and clearly.  Aim for around 200-300 words per article.  Naturally, some articles will be longer, so have a “read more” link for readers who want to carry on reading.

6. Write with confidence:
Be proud of your products or services!  You need to show your reader your passion for what you do.  If you are not passionate about it, how can your reader be.  Lacklustre copy leaves your reader cold, so make sure your copy sings with confidence.

7. Show off your USP: 
Why should your reader contact, shop, browse, book, or reserve with you?   Demonstrate your individuality with tangible evidence.  It’s a cynical age.  Shout your distinctions from the rooftop, but make sure you can back it up.

8. Empathise:
Showing that you recognise your customers pain demonstrates an understanding of their issues.  It builds a sense of trust and helps your reader walk a little further down the path to purchasing your product or service.

9. Be their best solution:
After demonstrating your understanding of the issues,  you need to offer the customer the solution to their problem and compel them to continue reading.  It’s the best way to convince them that you really do have a solution to their problem.

10. Edit:
And edit, and edit again.  First drafts often contain nuggets of greatness, but there’s plenty of “fluff” to strip away!  If you find editing hard, give it to someone else.  They can be more objective than you.  A cheaper option, if you are on a tight budget, is to write your draft copy with all the salient points, and then pay a copy-editor to polish it.

For getting cost effective, powerful and professional copy for your website, contact us by clicking here.

Once upon a time, web developers designed beautiful websites to be viewed on desktop computers. There were variations between browser types and screen resolutions, but that was all in a day’s work.

Massive growth in mobile phones is causing a huge re-evaluation in web design and development.  Designers must adapt traditionally-held beliefs about web design and embrace the new mobile era, or go the way of the dinosaurs. Here’s how:

1) Streamlined layout:
Limited display size and speed of use both dictate that mobile web designs are simply laid-out, without any of the peripheral clutter of a desktop website. Designers should make sure that everything presented on a mobile phone screen should be accessible, usable, and readable.

2) Simplified navigation:
Simple, stripped-down navigation should be prominent and central on a mobile phone.  Top-level navigation can be condensed to four or fewer items on most mobile phones.  Everything must have a clear purpose and function and every option must encourage the user to take action.

3) Shrink-wrapped content:
Content is still king, even on mobile devices, but it must be hard-working scalable copy with a clear purpose, a strong call to action and absolutely no “fluff”.

A mobile phone design cuts out the peripheral non-essentials, but must keep and enhance functionality (buttons, logos, boxes, etc.) in order to offer a meaningful mobile web experience.

Questioning everything is the only way to strip a website down to its essential elements, which is what needs to happen on a good mobile phone website.

4) Design-lite:
With the limited rendering capabilities of mobile phones, designers should incorporate:

1. Lightweight graphics for quick response to user requests
2. Touch-screen friendly actionable copy (links) that don’t need expanding
3. Well spaced links to allow for ease of use
4. Logos which always appear at the top

5) Gimmick-free:
Splash screens, meaningless animations and fixed-width layouts are out of place on a mobile phone.  Everything should be relevant and completely useful:

1. Is the content critical, and does it serve the core purpose of the website?
2. Is the website easy to use and understand?
3. Does it contain the same the core functionality as the main website?
4. Is the navigation unconventional?
5, If so, is it critical to the function of the website?

Web designers should bring value to a mobile phone website.  Does every feature help increase profit? Can the design be changed to improve business? The task is to make it easy to browse, shop, book, reserve or contact the client online, whether the customer is at their desk or on the move.

For cost effective, professional and affordable ways to develop your design ideas to the mobile web, contact us by clicking here.

As a marketing agency, graphic designer, or design agency, adding web design or development to your portfolio might seem an easy service to offer, but in reality many great marketing and design professionals can find themselves coming unstuck by undertaking their own in-house website development.

Here are 8 reasons why you should outsource your web design and development projects:

1. Outsourcing your web development or design gives you more time to focus on your core marketing or design business.  This helps you win more clients and ultimately makes you more profitable.

2. Boost your bottom line. Outsourcing eliminates the need to hire, train or retain web development staff, thereby saving huge sums in staff overheads.

3. You can tap into up-to-the minute expertise of highly skilled web developers and designers who will create or develop your clients site idea into a profitable, traffic-rich and efficient PR machine in a fraction of the time it could take you.

4. Outsourcing your web development process can ensure that your site is optimized for best search engine rankings, using the latest search engine optimization techniques and tricks that you may not be aware of.

5. You can achieve a significantly quicker turnaround of your web project by using a dedicated, specialist web development team, all working to YOUR deadlines.

6. Outsourcing your web design and development eliminates the need for in-house operations and maintenance support – its all done for you.

7. Developing a good partnership with your web development team boosts your manpower, with none of the overheads.

8. By outsourcing your web development and management projects to a company who integrates, shares and manages your social media content, both you and your clients are free to reap the rewards and benefit from greater brand awareness.

To save time and money, with cost-effective, professional, affordable web development, contact us by clicking here.

Remember the good old days?  When a wall was just something that you could lean on?  Or just kept people out of your garden?

Sadly, those days are gone.  Now someone can write on a Facebook wall, and grant instant fame or notoriety worldwide to just about anyone else.

You can spend 20 years building a business, and a misplaced or mishandled comment on Facebook or Twitter can bring it all crashing down in a virtual instant.

So what do you do if a disgruntled customer or employee strikes? This is a specialised use of social media management.

The only way you can manage negative comments on the internet is to swamp them with positive comments, at the same time as handling the source of the negativity.

This needs a strategy and a bit of persistence to see it through.

The good news is that if you do persist, you can come out the other side a lot stronger than before. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have had more drivel written about them than most people can even imagine. But the positive comments still end up out-weighing the drivel.