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

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.

Of late (and I suspect it’s due to burgeoning financial problems) I have experienced a large number of clients coming to me for suggestions on how to improve their website and make it do ‘more’ for them. This is great because for ages I’ve been encouraging them to use it as more than just a pretty picture telling people what they do, so I’ve put together a Smashing Mag style 5 point list on what I have been advising.

1. Email newsletters

It’s the obvious one, but seldom used as well as it should be. We have developed (here comes a mild sale pitch) an amazing enewsletter module for our CMS, it has SO much potential, but of the clients who own one, only a small percentage take advantage of its power.
If a person has expressly requested more information on your products or services from your site by signing up - that’s like someone walking into your shop and asking for something - these people are valuable and should not be ignored!
The enewsletter shouldn’t just be ’something else you can do every so often’ - if during this so called time of financial crisis you need to raise awareness of your products and services, or more importantly your BRAND, then enewsletters are the perfect way to do this.

Regular emails are the equivalent to TV ads, radio ads and billboard posters. Even if people don’t read or act on your story on how you have just moved into new offices, or your report on how the environment is being helped by your charitable efforts, or indeed the launch of a new range, they will have seen it drop in. Chances are they’ll delete it, but they’ll have you logo / name in their mind again and when they DO come to looking for that product or service again, they’re sure as hell more likely to select you over someone else they’ve never heard of.

Another thing is to Group your subscribers. Obtain as much information on where they’re from, what they purchased or requested more info on and send them only emails relating to this. If they asked for info on holiday only in the UK and you start firing off cheap flights to New Zealand, they’ll soon think you’re not paying attention to their requirements and probably unsubscribe.

2. Clear message, stronger calls to action

Just today I was looking through some competitors websites as part of my research for a new client, and one of sites I stumbled upon, had I not known what they did previously (by my client telling me), I had to read, click and re-read about 3 pages before I completely understood what they were about, and why I might want what they are offering.

I always think there is a tendency among companies to force themselves to appear more complex, advanced and ‘high-end’ than they really need to. Imagining probably that by using long, complicated terms it will elevate them from the competitor. Not true. If you think about when you are looking for anything online, what do you look for first - a site which is easy to use and makes it clear how to get in touch / buy / search for the product you’re after.

So BIG clear buttons, do away with a homepage explaining how the company was started in 1915 from a bike shed and has been through XYZ times, try and explain who you are or what you do in less than 20 words.

3. Integration of other elements (Social networks)

Everyone’s banging on about Social Media Marketing, and while it maybe the current buzz word in web strategy, it does have its reasoning for being there. Facebook, Myspace, youtube and twitter plus any others you care to mention, all have drawn huge audiences, and while it’s completely inappropriate for any company to wade in thinking they can wack a few phrases about and dominate Google’s rankings, it is important to understand what getting into these ‘circles’ entails.

It’s an entirely different or alternative form of marketing here. There is no taste, feel or touch, so you must go entirely on language - or ‘vibe’. Let’s say you’re selling mobile phones, to simply start targeting people on facebook that show the slightest interest in mobile phones and selling at them will most likely turn them the opposite way you want to go. However, if you show willing to offer assistance and guidance on selecting the right phone, while addressing them in a language they understand, you will build up a trust and in turn loyalty towards your brand. Once you have this, you’re half way there. There is nothing more powerful than a friend telling a friend to check you out as they instantly will trust their judgement. Brand loyalty is what can be gained from effective Social Media Marketing.

4. Know your audience

Websites, like English celebrities, date quickly. So if or when things change within your company, for example to adapt to the changing financial climate you’re company adopts a new method of working or selling or promoting, then your website should reflect this.
Quite often website owners base all the content along with the design, on what they feel they themselves, want or like. I know loads of business owners that have very little personal interest in what they do or sell, which is fine, as long as they know how to connect with their audience. If customers feel that you’re just putting up information on your site for the sake of it they are far less likely to feel engaged as with a company who sound like they love what they do as much as the people they’re selling to.

5. Manage content, stay fresh

Continuing on from point 4, to ensure people return to your site, it’s vital you update the information contained within it.

For months I was checking a favourite band of mine’s website hoping they would update it on when we could expect more songs / gigs from them but alas, they didn’t. Eventually I gave up, and only recently discovered they had released a new single a while back, through an online music store that happened to be promoting it - if I wasn’t subscribed to their news, I would never have been on and subsequently bought the track.

Many people always say to us “but I don’t have the time to update the website”. If this is the case, then I always give the same reply. “You have 3 choices; make time, get someone else in the company to make it their job, or employ us to manage it for you”. It doesn’t take a huge amount. It’s like anything, cleaning the bathroom, cutting the grass, doing the recycling; it’s something you make time for. But because those things physically exist and build up, you recognise the fact they need to be done. If you could physically see users leaving your website each month, perhaps it would persuade different thinking.

Part of our new strategy for larger clients with budgets, but not enough time is to effectively become their walking, talking (and most of all, THINKING) CMS’s. We are responsible for ensuring the content stays fresh each month. It would be our responsibility as a creative agency to call the client, find out what’s been happening throughout the month and report it in any way we see fit. Again, this won’t just relate to standard things like hitting sales targets or launching a new product range, we aim to ensure each time something is spoken about or acted on, it is another step in forming a relationship with the customers.

So there we go, just some ideas I’ve put together based on recent experiences with our clients, hopefully someone may also find it useful!