The Escape - The online web log of Tom Wittlin www.tommy-boy.co.uk

When I was younger, I assumed there were no arguments among adults. I thought that you got to a certain age and everyone just ‘got along’. A difference of opinion was completely regular but accepted. Should a voice become raised or a ‘heated discussion’ ensue, then it would be swiftly dealt with and everyone would go back to being friends within minutes. After all, what else in the world could cause arguments larger than ‘Sticklebricks Vs Lego’ or who the best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is?

How wrong I was.

So next I went through a phase of trying to get everyone to see my opinion. I didn’t particularly want to fight, because I didn’t enjoy it. So as long as your opinion fitted with mine, there were no arguments. For most part this worked. I hated work, people, and washing up - pretty standard stuff for a teenager I’d say. This attitude I hasten to add lasted until maybe my early 20’s, and soon made me aware this wasn’t perhaps the best one to adopt in my quest for understanding disagreements and matters of opinion.

So I needed a new rack to hang my ideals on. So whether it was wrong or not, I went the other way and got into assuming I was always wrong. About everything. As you get older you begin to hang out with people that aren’t all the same age as you. When you don’t know them or have a clue how old they are, there exists that mystery. So I tended to assume they instantly knew more than me - about everything. Occasionally this would cause much frustration to me, as when sat in front of them I’d simply nod in agreement not knowing entirely why, when much of what was being said was utter shite. It didn’t fit with my opinion but I was too afraid to suggest otherwise.

Soon, and only within the last few years, I decided that maybe I wasn’t always wrong. Maybe my Mum, my girlfriend or friends telling me that I had a lot to offer had something. I didn’t consider them stupid, (only some of the time!) so why would they be friends with someone who was?

The answer? I don’t suppose they would.

So gradually I began to strengthen my ability to speak up in situations where I thought things were wrong. I remember being in a meeting with a new client regarding their website and how it might be improved. I realised about a quarter of the way in that I had absolutely no idea about how they functioned based on what their website said. Usually I would’ve kept quiet and simply assumed it was because I was wrong and simply didn’t understand, but then something in my head said “this doesn’t seem like one of those occasions when you may be wrong”. So at the risk of losing their respect, and their work, I just asked “urm, I don’t get it”. It was like I broke the ice. Soon everyone else in the room kind of said “yeah, I’m not entirely sure about….” and the client themselves began speaking in a manner that made sense to everyone.

It also seemed to form something more of a bond with client. Like they respected my honesty for speaking up as opposed to staying quiet and therefore staying confused. How on earth am I supposed to better a website I myself don’t understand?

Today it amazes me how with certain people you just ‘get on’ while others it feels more like a chore to be around. That uncomfortable feeling when you just can’t be yourself around them and say what you’d like in fear of them thinking you were either crazy or just plain stupid. It’s even worse when they’re the very opinionated people that you remembered once being. For those I simply feel a little bit saddened. Recognising the people I connect with and those that I don’t is such a big part of my life, and I very much value the people that I do.

I’d really love to know what it is other than just ‘chemistry’ that makes this happen.

Now I find people I connect with quite a bit. I understand their point of view and automatically they see mine. We get on, we understand the thoughts and we connect.

Maybe it’s a creative thing, maybe it’s just being human, but if there’s one thing I’ll take to the grave with me, it’s that everybody, is different.

My latest culinary adventure, is, to the best of my knowledge, wholly new. Of course, I’m sure if you scoured the interweb you’d find someone else that has done it, but I’ve never had it, never tried it, and for that reason alone, I’m naming it. This is, The Turbo Roast. So called for it’s quickness in absence of being assed to cook a whole roast chicken.

You will need:

- 2 Breasts of chicken (preferably free range)

- Stuffing mix (Paxo or similar is just great)

- 4/5 rashers of bacon
Lay the chicken breasts onto a chopping board, cover with cling film and bash the hell out of them with a rolling pin or a shoe, until they’re about 1-2 cm thick.

Make stuffing, and pile into the centre of one of the flattened breasts (oooh). Then place the other breast on top.

Wrap cleverly all the way round with bacon making sure it’s covering the edges to try and avoid any loss of stuffing. (nobody likes losing out on a good stuffing)

Stick onto a greased baking try and into the oven for 25 mins at 200C. Remove from oven, stick a knife in to make sure chicken is cooked through, if so, slice into 2-3 cm slices and serve.

Good with, veggies, potatoes (ideally roasties, but this actually defeats the object of the ‘turbo’ element, so think of something else clever) and of course, gravy.

Easy, tasty and relatively healthy I suppose. Enjoy.
Oh, and if you didn’t already - take the cling film off the chicken

While discussing how best to describe the policy and effect of making changes to your website to affect the actions of users today, Rob and myself stumbled upon the theory of the Funnel.

Essentially it’s (potentially) a combination of a funnel and a sieve, but more on the sieve later.

If you think of the shape of a funnel, it has a wide end, and a thin end. Consider the wider (top) end to be the traffic entering your website, while the thin (bottom) end reflects the number of those visitors who complete some form of action (be that a purchase, an enquiry or whatever) within the site. The centre of the funnel represents the website itself and the experience / process all visitors will face once they arrive.

This centre can be made wider (action being taken) therefore allowing more people through the bottom end and through to a potential sale by adding / taking away various elements to your website. For example, if your “Contact us” button is hidden away at the bottom of another page, you can pretty much guarantee there will be far less enquiries than if you moved it to the top, in clear display and perhaps even with a telephone and email option without having to click anything.

Simple usability considerations can make all the difference to the number of people achieving not only the goals they want to, but what YOU want also.

We also have the added concept of the ‘Sieve effect’. This is effectively ‘holes’ in your website that allow potential customers to escape via poor functionality and design as well of course - usability - as per the example above.

We’ve even devised a philisophical phrase to accompany The Funnel for you to remember:

“The ultimate Funnel is not a Funnel at all, but merely a tube”

For some time now I’ve begun to start doubting the legitimate nature of SEO. With the shift towards user generated content, sharing, linking and bookmarking which is done in unison by tens of thousands of people, is there really any way making some minor adjustments to one site barely anyone sees, one person can topple something thousands of people flock to everyday?

Sounds odd. If someone was to offer you this on the street it would seem too good to be true, and for perhaps too long SEO has itself existed in the marketplace as a bit of a chancer, cashing in before it’s inevitable end of days. The thing is, as it currently stands, our agency offers SEO as a service. Not anywhere these days to the extent that it did 2 years ago, but, we continue to get people asking us almost daily about SEO and what it entails, but this is now very much in review stage.

Rob (our senior developer) and I were chatting about the subject just recently, and both agreed that as opposed to optimising websites for Google, site owners, and any online marketing folk, really ought to be optimising sites for people. By making your sole aim pleasing the user with your content, and ensuring this it’s informative, original, well written and link-able (eg, not flash or a dirty great image) then it will automatically gain genuine interest from people actually wanting to read, respond and share. It’s not just a cheap one time fix of logging yourself on 1000’s of directories, that, despite reigning in traffic, isn’t what one may refer to as quality traffic - in the sense it’s totally random  - whereas having someone post a link to an article on your website from DIGG or some such, will be in context, and therefore attract the right (or at least, more suitable) sort of audience.

At a show recently I found myself explaining to people more and more who were asking about SEO,  would they rather have 10,000 uniques a day that all left as soon as they arrived as they got the link from somewhere irrelevant without context, or 2,000 uniques a month that all signed up to a newsletter, made an enquiry, or best of all, stayed and bought something. Most agreed, the latter was preferable.

The problem is, and this is the main problem, this all takes time, or, money.

There’s no quick fix, and quite frankly that’s the way it should be. People who can’t be bothered to put the effort (or money) in, really, let’s be honest don’t deserve to convert any traffic to quality visitors. The internet is awash with blog, tweets, news,  reviews and everything else, and I’d bet more than 50% of those are probably seldom updated - like this very blog! But then I don’t expect to make money, I don’t expect to get 10,000 visits per month, I use it as an outlet for my thoughts - for which it works well, but doubtless disappoints any subscribers (Mum, are you reading this?). But if you do have subscribers, and you’ve built up a relatively successful following, then you have to keep this up, there’s a reason they subscribed, and they’ll soon forget to come back if you fail to keep on top.

Finally, on the subject of SEO, there’s the inevitable argument that it’s not just about link building, but also code enhancements using CSS and all the rest - true, but then, if a client is looking to promote a site that isn’t already  written using compliant markup, then I’d question many things, not least their concern for the quality of the site, and no doubt, content.

Google is not God. If you build it, they will come. Then Google will follow.

Sometimes people just deny you of things. Where you doubt the people themselves are at fault it’s merely their lack of awareness, simply pull out and play the below card for instant 5 star treatment.

Download the “Do you know who I am?” Hi-res card in Jpeg format. Free. (Which when you consider the untold riches and success this may bring is an absolute bargain)

Start the engine of evening, start the journey at Chilled deep house-ville, which after a short drive leads us down a progressive avenue, eventually ending up in tech-town.

Oh dear. What the hell does that mean?

Anyway, if you’re interested, it’s available to download or listen to here

Tracklisting:

1. Nightlife - Pete Gust
2. So Deep Inside - Pete Gust
3. Lost in Memory (Aki Bergen Remix) - Doomwork
4. Pompadour (Gorge Dub Mix) - Chelonis R. Jones
5. A Glass of Chianti - Dished Out Bums
6. I Love You (Ben Watt Blackness of Night Mix) - Unity
7. Velvet feat. Holly Morris - STP
8. Train Comin (Dousk Remix) - Sunset Blvd
9. The Longest Road feat Lissie Deadmau5 Vocal Mix - Dengue Fever
10.Tonight (Club Mix) - Dirty Vegas
11.Pressure (Sultan & Ned Shepard Remix) - Dirty Vegas
12.Stay (John Dahlback Remix) - Steve Smooth

There are few ‘bargains’ left in the UK, I mark the Fish & Chip shop and stamps as 2 of our main ones. But I decided after my years of designing I wanted to put all the work I’ve done which has never seen the light of day online for people to view, and, if they like - use.

Starting with everything from 2004 it’s a collection of design ideas I put together, some for clients, some just personal mess about projects, but when I look back, it’s good to see there is a definite improvement in my work over the years.

Go on, have a nose about at 2004’s work, I’ll be getting round to putting everything up until today on there over the next couple weeks.

If there are any files you’d like sent, PSD or PNG, just email me a request. No charge. There is such a thing as a free lunch after all.

I’ve just visited the new deepend website absolutely gorgeous design and despite being full flash, still proves that Deepend are one of the worlds best digital agencies - however….

On their company information pages, they have a rather annoying transition of about 6 or so images constantly rotating, which, if you’re actually trying to read the copy beside them proves extremely hard to do.

It then dawned on me that I too have advised clients to use a similar rotating image function in the past as a way of cramming all those images into one space, but in future I will refrain, siting this as an example of bad practice.

I can’t actually believe I’m having a dig at Deepend, so I’ll just say, aside from that - lovely job fellas… :S

Last month I vacated a property I was letting in Bournemouth with a friend. The property was managed by a company called Realty Property Solutions ltd, and they provided us with one of the worst attempts at customer service I have ever experienced.

I moved to Bournemouth late last Summer with a friend. We are both 31 years old, professional and have a combined income well in excess of the agents requirement. We let a fantastic flat out in Milton road, Bournemouth which was to a reasonably high spec, and it seemed that the agent for the landlord (Realty Property Solutions) were doing a very thorough job of ensuring everything was in place for us when we moved in. Prior to making any agreement to have the flat, Realty were constantly chasing us and being very helpful as to whether or not we were going ahead. I took this as a good sign though as its obvious they wanted the business - I considered them to be very professional. How I was wrong- They just wanted the business.

The week before moving in and signing and agreeing for the tenancy I made several phone calls to confirm whether washing machine fridge etc would all be left in place, I never had a response. When I did it seems “oh I don’t know I’ll find out and get back to you” appears to be part of the company branding whatever cheap agency Realty hired. Numerous similar calls for other bits of information were met with the same response. Once they had our signatures on that sheet of paper, they couldn’t care less.

We paid up front a month’s rent, plus another month’s rent as a deposit plus an additional £100 plus other “admin charges”. Once we were in, there were a few problems, nothing major, radiator leaks, door entry system not working and blinds falling off the wall, but even so, it took Realty maybe, 2 months to actually get someone out to look at the problems we reported.

Towards the end of the initial 6 month tenancy agreement they sent a letter asking of our intentions to remain in the flat or vacate. Their preference being we signed for an additional 6 months. We had to let them know by a specific date, and when we did there was (wait for it!) a £50 administration charge -  for ‘letting them know’.

In the end situations meant we had to leave, and upon doing so the place was cleaned thoroughly and any minor repairs were carried out - yet of course, this didn’t fit well with Realty who, upon inspection announced they would be withholding over 50%  of the deposit for ‘cleaning’ and my personal favourite, the ‘replacement of 4 freezer door trays’ (which fell off when you opened the door anyway!) to the tune of £45 each! I dare say there was a fair old spinkling of admin charges, bank charges, turning the PC on the check you’d paid charges, accepting a phone call to let them know they’re a bunch of scam artists charges…. you get the picture.

Realty Property Solutions, Poole - hats off to you, you truly are a dying breed of out and out thieves.

Understanding the importance of  the difference between a company’s logo (eg a typeface, a device etc) and the brand (eg, the ethos, the style, the vision etc), particularly online, is something that I have not only become more and more involved in, but also something I have been helping clients understand too.

As we witness the web taking another turn in it’s journey into maturity, we find ourselves more and more concerned not just with our company’s existence online, but also it’s core message, customer service and attractiveness - eg, it’s brand. Many people confuse the word ‘brand’, often taking it to mean the actual logo which a company manifests itself as in an area of printed material. Web, newspapers, TV, when in fact this is merely just the identity. A company ‘brand’ is far more wider reaching and encompasses everything that the company stands for and is about.

Considering a company brand to be nothing more than their logo would be the equivalent of seeing a person as only their name as opposed to the person who they actually are (which in the case of people like Paris Hilton and Peter Andre isn’t probably such a bad thing). You don’t. You know their name, you seldom think about it, as you focus purely on who they are and what they say.

Companies (larger ones especially) spend millions of pounds and countless hours working on building their brand, it’s not something which happens overnight, and it’s not something you just do once and forget about. I always used to wonder why, when I was younger I kept on seeing TV ad’s for Nike, Coca Cola and Nescafe. “Everyone knows they exist”, I thought, “so why keep spending money on telling us about you?”  But then you realise simply by constantly reminding people of yourself is to confirm in people’s minds what you are.

A good way to understand brand I find is by choosing companies, and think of the first thing which comes to mind when you see or hear their name eg:

• Ferrari (expensive)
• Lidl (cheap)
• Innocent (fun and healthy)
• RSPCA (caring )
• Google (big but friendly)
• Red Bull (cool)

You don’t need to see their actual identity to immediately have a certain feeling about them, you just think of them in a certain way - and this is part of what a brand is - human perception of a company.

This includes everything from (just like celebrities) places to be seen; (Red Bull carefully choose what events to sponsor and usually involve outdoor extreme stuff; skateboarding, air racing and more recently F1); to the message you give to your customers, (google customers, while not actually having anywhere you particularly can call, still feel safe handing money over to as, well, it’s Google, whereas NatWest make a big thing about their customers being able to walk into the bank on a Saturday); to the tone of voice (innocent smoothies are laid back and friendly, HSBC are corporate and serious); and of course the balance of quality / price (you don’t expect to walk into a Lamborghini garage to see if they have a sale on, whereas you do into HMV).

Just like PR has existed in the offline world, making sure the company is delivered to it’s audience in the best light, this is now happening in an online capacity. If your company has a Facebook Group, a twitter account and a youTube page people instantly associate them with ‘now’ and goes that little step to strengthen the brand in people’s minds. People like to feel the company they are dealing with is on the pulse, and that they understand their customer.It’s more than just owning a website now.

So a word of warning to any company looking to have their ‘brand’ looked at - be sure to choose a company who can not only come up with a clever little logo to sit in the top left of the page, but also how they will move forwards, set the tone and future for your company and how they will work with you to achieve the result that you want to acheive.