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Written by: Kat

They may look nice sometimes, but there’s not much else good we can say about websites built in Flash.

Wikipedia says “Criticism of Adobe Flash have included questions of its usability, the problems Flash-laden pages cause for those with disabilities, security issues, limited platform compatibility, performance and compatibility issues on certain platforms, the inability for search engines to index data contained in Flash binary data, its use as a means to restrict access to content and the implementation of DRM.”

What does that mean in English? Well, Flash was originally created as a component to allow easy implementation of videos, music, photos, and other rich content into websites. And it worked, more or less… many years back. It was a fantastic way of really catching the viewers eye.

These days its a very different matter, many mobile devices (ipad, iphones, PDA’s etc) don’t support flash, which means you’re missing out of a big piece of the pie.

It’s not just mobile users that suffer either. Flash is notorious for its big files, so a website made entirely in flash is likely to be big, and big means bandwidth. Flash sites will generally need time to load, something that HTML sites don’t need much of.

So you like the animations, videos and music?

These days many of these can be achieved with code, HTML5 and CSS3 allow you to animate, stream video and play music; they’re faster to load and they can be optimised for search engines.

Accessibility is one of the most common grumbles surrounding Flash sites. Flash doesn’t support the browsers navigational buttons so the “back” button will just send you back to the site you were on before you came onto the flash site. Everything needs to be built in to flash where accessibility is concerned, there’s no way to make text bigger unless you program it in from the start.

Flash sites need to be programmed and have their content managed within the Flash application. There are some CMS flash sites around but they tend to limit you in a way that a normal HTML site wouldn’t.

For us one of the big problems with flash is that flash sites allow flash designers to “go crazy”, sound effects, flashing lights, autoloading videos – it’s all a bit much. The user experience becomes a frenzied search for the information that they need and often people will get fed up.

Perhaps the greatest issue, and its certainly one of the biggest issues if you actually want traffic on your site is that Search Engines are not able to crawl and index the content of Flash sites. This means that all that information on your products and services becomes redundant.

So what can you do? Well if your flash site is due an update it may be worth giving us a call, we can design a site that will have all the wow of a flash site without all the negatives.

Give us a call on 0845 643 9410 to find out how we can help.

Posted in Business, Marketing, SEO, Web Design | No Comments »

WildFire Client Training

Written by: Kat

We’ve been noticing the influx of customers asking us to show them how to make the most of their website. From simple “what does that do?” to more in depth questions about how to rank higher on Google.

Much as we love to answer questions and help our customers, enough of the same questions have been asked that it is a better use of our time to write some “how to” guides and simply point our clients in the direction of the blog post that answers said question.

With that in mind, we will be posting up guides over the coming months and adding any new ones that get asked for.

If you’d like to request a topic then get in touch and we’ll see what we can do.

Posted in Business, Training guides | No Comments »

Sage World 2011 – Day one

Written by: Kat

Today marked the start of the 2nd Sage World, those who know us (and some who don’t) will know we loved last years event, so much so that we’re there again this year! We even brought along a few of our clients.

I’m breaking this blog post into two parts as there’s just too much to say in one post.

The first day kicked off with Sage UK giving a quick run through what to expect followed by a brief explanation on how to use the SpotMe devices. Once everyone was in the know, Lee Perkins – Managing Director of the Small business division at Sage UK, spoke about the state of the economy explaining that “small businesses are the key to recovering from the recession”.

He also mentioned that Sage are building new products based on their customers needs. At last years Sage World they gathered information from their customers and have implemented the ideas into their software. He said that of all the data collected 42.1% of users wanted a mobile platform to access Sage software on smart devices which would allow them to be more productive, competitive and grow their business. They give the mobile platform away free with their 2012 software.

Next up we saw Andy Lopata speak about LinkedIn. I have seen a number of people speak about LinkedIn recently, however I never miss out on the chance to potentially learn something new about it. He gave plenty of tips on how to set your profile up to best use the platform to your benefit. He also spoke about using it to gain referrals and to get introduced to people outside of your network.

After a bit of a break we headed over to watch Simon Calver, the CEO of LoveFilm talk about how LoveFilm came to be. Now in it’s 7th year, LoveFilm now has 1.7 million active subscribers, 1.4 of which are in the UK. Amazing as that figure sounds it is still only 2% of the total market. He says it’s just the beginning and that there’s a market of 75 million potential subscribers out there.

He says there are 3 key things that their customers wanted in 2005:

a good range of titles
good value for money
a convenient service

These days however, he says things have also had to become digital to keep up with the competition. It’s not been without it’s problems, in 2005 they launched the digital streaming service and it failed, mainly due to software issues.

In 2007 they relaunched the streaming service on several platforms; PS3, Sony Tv’s and more recently the iPad.

He says their success is down to the way they market the service. He says of those who leave LoveFilm, 80% recommend them to friends or family. He says this is down to them giving customers the benefit of the doubt, if a disk is faulty they send a new one out no questions asked. He also mentioned their referral service – if a customer refers friends they can earn themselves a free gift. The more referrals the better the gift.

Simon says they have made it through the recession by some pretty clever advertising. Their “Staying in is the new Going out” campaign saw sales soar.

In 2010 they started talks with Amazon to “merge” companies, and after much to-ing and fro-ing they finally became part of the Amazon family in February 2011.

Next we went to see Jim Scott talk about delivering exceptional customer service. He said that there has never been a better time to start a business and that technology now allows us to communicate with our customers better than ever before. He said that customers fall into one of two categories, generation x – born before 1976, who were loyal but less likely to embrace new things and generation y – those born after ’76 who are more tech-savvy and open minded.

He went on to say that some customers are more interested in price over quality and yet some will pay a premium for a great service.

It’s important to choose what aspect of your service is most important, most companies will offer all 3 but must excel in one:

Best product
Most efficient
Best customer experience

He gave examples of companies who excel at each area, Sony won the best product category – no matter what they bring out it is always a beautiful product in both its look and how it works. Easyjet were the most efficient offering a great service at a low price. And First Direct gave the best customer experience, keeping customers in the loop with all aspects of their accounts.

He left us with words of wisdom “Create memories for your customers”.

Last up was a favourite of ours, Geoff Ramm. He gave a similar talk to last years events, but fresh anecdotes and stories made sure it was still engaging.

He advised us all to “do something different, when your competitors go one way, go the other”. If your competitors are sending lots of email marketing, look back to conventional mailshots and flyers.

He said that giving things away for free without diminishing your brand was a great idea. He spoke of a trip to Ted Baker in search of some clothes, at the door he was greeted with the question “would you like a beer or some chocolate?” Who wouldn’t remember a free beer!

He also spoke about the end of direct mail and that he doesn’t believe it will happen. He explained that a training company had enlisted him to help them with a campaign. They sent out a left sports shoe with the words “looking for the right trainer?” printed on the side and the contact details on the other. Business soared.

Geoff gave us one tip to get past the “gate keeper”, simply put “private and confidential” on the envelope and your mail will make it to the person you need to reach.

After Geoff’s talk we headed out to the main area for a glass of bubbly, some canapés and a bit of cake and caught up with a few people we’d chatted to throughout the day.

Phew… home time.

Sage World 2011 – Day two

Posted in Business, Conferences, Marketing | No Comments »

SEO = Blank faces

Written by: Kat

We get a lot of funny looks when we ask clients about their SEO. Funnily enough many don’t change when we elaborate “Search Engine Optimisation”. It’s only when we say “You want to do well on google, right?” suddenly vacant looks turn into smiles and vigorously nodding heads.

It’s the hope for every website owner to have a site that ranks highly for their given keywords. It is also the hope for most people that they can get there with very little effort and by spending very little if nothing. People learn very quickly that you don’t get something for nothing. It’s also a fairly good rule of thumb to be very wary of any service that seems to offer something to good to be true.

We’ve spoken before about cowboy webdesigners and how to speculate to accumulate with your website design. We haven’t spoken much about SEO before and it’s not because we don’t have much to say on the topic, far from it in fact, there’s plenty to talk about.

Perhaps the one thing we do speak at lengths to clients about is getting it right. Very few people have the budget to spend a few hundred pounds a month to move up the ranks in google and this is especially true for new businesses. So what is SEO? What can you do? and What should you do?

Search engine optimization or SEO is the process of improving the ranking of a website on a search engine such as google. There are different types of SEO, organic or non-paid SEO is reliant on new unique content being generated, generally in the form of a blog and onsite optimisation of tags, images, code and website content. Optimisation is generally performed to increase the number of keywords and keyphrases, to ensure that google will list the site when people search for a particular word or phrase.

Offsite SEO comes in the form of backlinks (which are also referred to as inbound links).

A “backlink” is nothing more than another website which has a link to your site on it. Google and other Search engines see this as a recommendation and will move your page to a higher rank.

Getting backlinks is a fairly easy business, getting good backlinks is not. I would stress that while there are a lot of cheap services out there that offer thousands of links back to your site, they are not all to be trusted. Good backlinks from high authority sites with a high page rank will be hard to come by, so the service of finding them is more expensive.

However the alternative, buying lots of cheap unrelated backlinks can ultimately damage your site. In the industry, backlink farming is seen as “blackhat” SEO, and as the name suggests, it’s not good practice, nor good news. Blackhat SEO can ultimately leave you blacklisted from search engines as they see blackhat tactics as trying to cheat the system.

So how do you get good backlinks?

One way is to start writing articles for other sites. This involves writing an article on a topic that relates to your company and submitting it to a similar company, for instance, if you are a landscape gardener you could ask your local gravel merchant if you can write a guest post on their blog about “creative uses of gravel to give your garden a new look”. You simply ask that you can have your keyword “landscape gardener” linked to your site.

Another good way of getting backlinks is to offer advice on forums and link to content on your site. For instance if you are in a gardening blog and someone is asking about the best pot plants for a small garden, you can direct them to an article that you wrote on your own blog.

Well we hope that cleared up a few things and that SEO is less of a mystery now.

For any more information get in touch with us on 0845 643 9410

Posted in Business, Marketing, SEO, Web Design | 1 Comment »

Top tips for networking at conferences

Written by: Kat

In 2 weeks WildFire will be taking a few days out to attend this years Sage World, held at Event City in Manchester. Being that it’s just down the road, and having thoroughly enjoyed last years event, it would be rude not to.

There’s an amazing line up this year, with Simon Calver, the CEO of LOVEFiLM, Jo Malone and Alexis Conran to name but a few, who will be joining last year’s speakers Andy Lopata and Geoff Ramm (both of whom’s talks last year were great).

There’s also plenty of Sage’s team giving talks and members of the HMRC speaking about Finance, tax and other crucial aspects of business.

Lunch times, break times and the end of the day are set up for networking and with that in mind we’ve got some top tips about how to make the most of the time you have to network with other businesses.

1. Do your homework.
Generally speaking most conferences will post details of the delegates on their website. Sage World does it via SpotMe devices, which delegates can use to read profiles, track people down and send messages to each other. Look at the list of conference delegates and highlight delegates who may be of interest. Try and locate them during the course of the day. If you don’t manage to meet them at the event, try and contact them afterwards.

You can always use the conference as a reference point.

2. Arrive nice and early.
We like to be pretty punctual, but arriving early gives us a chance to catch up with anyone of interest, get a cup of coffee and scope out the venue and have a play with the SpotMe devices.

3. Don’t be scared to start the conversation.
If you see someone on their own why not approach them? Like you, they will probably welcome someone else to talk to. You never know, they could be just the person you were looking to network with.

4. Don’t be tempted to stay close to home.
Don’t get caught in the trap of talking too much to people you came with, it wont get you anywhere; make the most of the opportunity to meet new friends.

5. Icebreakers.
It’s perhaps a little bit “nerdy” for want of a better word but having a few icebreakers will help you out if you are not naturally very chatty. For example:

• Hi, I thought I’d come over and introduce myself.

• Hi are you here for the XYZ event too?

And some more in-depth questions:

• What are you looking forward to at this conference?

• What organisation are you from?

• What is your role?

6. Engage.
Concentrate on the person you are talking to. Try and have a quality conversation that requires being a good listener as well as a good talker.

7. Be confident.
Explaining to others what you do and who you work for is sometimes a bit nerve-racking. Keep it fairly short and try to relax. Develop your own simple elevator pitch so that you don’t have to think about it when you’re asked.

8. Don’t be afraid to blow your own trumpet.
At the end of the day a part of networking is to impress. Whilst it’s great to find a friend at events, you also wouldn’t mind getting a good business relationship going with someone, so tell them what you do and don’t be too modest.

9. Take notes.
It’s no good getting back to the office and having a wad of business cards and having no idea what you spoke about. Keeping a note will give you something personal to speak about when you contact them. The SpotMe devices have a great feature where you can exchange contact details on your device, and you can even write notes on your device and they all get emailed to you after the event.

Posted in Business, Conferences | No Comments »

Recommended Agency

Written by: Kat

Some great news arrived in the WildFire inbox yesterday as we were informed that we had been awarded a position in the RAR (Recommended Agency Register).

The RAR is a completely independent service to help companies in need of a particular service to find and engage with suppliers. The agencies on the register must gain endorsement by having their current clients rate their services. This allows companies to make an informed decision based on information that the RAR has gathered from the service providers past clients.

There are only a small amount of agencies that have become recommeded (around 500) so we’re delighted to be joining them.

So what does this mean for us?

Well, it means our clients are very happy with the services we provide them. Well done us!! We’d like to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of our clients who completed the survey.

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Help my website is falling down

Written by: Kat

Lately I have been watching a program on Channel 4 called Help my house is falling down, hosted by Sarah Beeny. I have to admit that I do love a good DIY program and this type is right up my street.

For those who are not familiar with the program: Sarah Beeny meets a family who, about 10 years ago, noticed a bit of damp in their lounge or had a botch-job done, ignored it and it has now caused countless other issues. She explains that fixing something like this is going to be very costly. She asks what their budget is, they give her a small figure and she looks quite worried. She then explains that the budget will be eaten up by only one of the issues – cue eyes popping out of heads, and then she demonstrates what will happen if the work isn’t done. After scaring the living daylights out of them she informs them that actually the work can be done for a few hundred quid if they do most of it themselves. After a quick How-To, the family have saved themselves a few hundred quid and that budget can go to work on something that requires professionals.

So why am I writing about this on the blog? It’s got nothing to do with websites?

Actually it has. All too often we meet people who believe a website should be a cheap commodity, something that you put a small amount into for a large return. They don’t understand that good design costs and that just having a website is not enough.

I cannot count the times that a client has come to us for a redesign after their current website has done nothing for them. It either doesn’t function as it should, looks vile or gets nowhere in the search engines.

Let’s do a bit of roleplay:

Mr A wants his website redesigned. He owns a plumbing business in Didsbury, Manchester. He paid a “web designer” £150 4 years ago and got himself an online presence which he thought was good value for money. The site was poorly coded in non-standard code, which doesn’t comply with the w3c industry standards and is an eyesore. He is on page 54 of google for his biggest key phrase “plumbers manchester” and can make no changes to the website. In short he is sinking, the wallpaper is peeling, the roof is off and he has a bug infestation.

What does he do? Calls another design company to see if he can get it sorted cheaply.

What happens next? The website again becomes useless after a few weeks.

Mr B has just started a new pork pie business, he has a small but reasonable budget and has spoken to a local company with a good portfolio. He advises them he can start small but would like to extend his site in the future. He understands he has a small budget but would like to have a good looking site that can be found on google under “delicious pork pies”. His web company explain that although they can make him a great looking site that will serve his business well, he may have to put in a bit of work to market himself online as his budget wont cover it. They propose that he have a blog on his site, so that he can write about just how delicious his pork pies are and other yummy information about the pork pies that customers may find interesting, such as where the meat comes from, is it organic, is his packaging eco-friendly and some information about who he is. They say that along with using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, he can help his google ranking.

What does he do? Speaks to a professional company, giving them a realistic budget to create a website that will be easy to maintain. He gets himself on Twitter and starts chatting to people who love pork pies, writing blogs about the ingredients that he hand picks to make a yummy pork pie and speaks about future pies he is thinking of making.

What happens next? Mr B builds his business and connects with his customers, he makes enough money to extend his site and get himself to the top of google, which in turn gets him more clients which will allow him to buy that sporty red number in the local showroom.

A website is an investment, much like a house. You get out what you put in. If you patch it up and don’t get things done by someone who knows what they are doing you run the risk of having a site like Mr A. If you are a bit more realistic about your budget and don’t mind a bit of hard graft then you could end up like Mr B and his new wheels.

Posted in Business, Marketing, Web Design | 1 Comment »

Small design company, big advantages

Written by: Kat

I see a lot of tweets from large corporations talking about their brand new website design and when I look at these design companies I see that they are also another huge corporation.

It got me thinking, why do large companies use other large web design companies and not smaller ones?

After all, small businesses have a big advantage over large companies, every single customer builds the success of the company and is therefore treated as a king. The reason many clients choose small web design companies is because the smaller companies focus more on keeping the client happy and making sure they keep them long-term. This creates confidence, trust, and a good relationship which increases client satisfaction. Questions are answered promptly, work gets delivered on time, to a reasonable budget, and to the highest quality.

Large companies of course have more people, but more work goes with that, so issues sometimes get put on a pile until a designer becomes available which may be too long to wait. They will charge to make small changes or to fix minor issues on the site and many charge monthly fees to maintain the site and to host the site (which is an inexpensive service for most websites). This will not happen with a smaller web design company.

WildFire believe that customer service is key. We are easy to contact via phone, email and social media and monitor these enabling a very fast response time. We understand that a delay in response can cause a customer to look elsewhere.

In a small company, the customer is not just a number. The designer is likely to be in direct contact with the client, allowing a relationship to build up and enabling the designer to understand the business of the client and care about its requirements. Work is not passed from person to person, but seen through from start to finish while, crucially, keeping the client informed every step of the way.

We take pride in our work, and your business.

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Busy times

Written by: Kat

It’s been a bit hectic in the WildFire office lately, we’ve have quite a number of new projects and new clients come on board so we have had less time to dedicate to blogging and our social media. Fear not, we will return soon with more informative web design news.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Find the one that fits

Written by: Kat

Finding the right web design company can be a difficult task. Your website is a very important part of your business as it is a great way to stay in touch with your visitors and also to promote your brand.

As a company owner it’s likely that you know someone who knows a little about making websites, perhaps you have had your site designed by a family member or friend of a friend. If you don’t then you may consider hiring web designers and developers.

If you are not a designer, finding a good web design company that can help design and develop a great website. However, with so many big firms, small studios and freelancers around, it won’t be easy to hire the right one for your company. There are a few things that you should keep in mind while making that decision. The first would be to make sure that you’re not dealing with a cowboy.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Before you start looking for a web designer, the first thing you need to do is to have a rough idea of what you want from your website. For example:

What is the main purpose of your website? Are you planning on selling products through it, are you looking to gain new customers, do you wish to raise your company profile?
How many pages do you think you’ll need?
Who is your target audience?
Would it require regular updates? If so would you want to update it or would you like your designer to do it?
Would you want it to rank well on google or do you plan to market through social media or offline media?
Last but not the least, what is your budget?

To Begin Your Search

If you are not tech savvy, finding the right web design company can be difficult job. There are companies and individuals who will exploit that.

One way to find the right company is to get some referrals. If you know someone who has had a website designed perhaps they can refer you to their designer.

Check out Your Potential Designer’s Personal Website

This is one of the most important things to do, checking the designer’s website will show you past work that the designer is proud of; if it isn’t up to snuff then chances are that they are not the right choice for you.

Things to look for in Your Potential Designer’s Portfolio

How easily the information is available on their website?
Is it easy to move around the site from page to page?
How user friendly is the navigation?
Is each and every page accessible? Are there are no broken links?
Is it a good example of consistency?
Is the Contact page and site map easily available?
Is text easily readable?
Are pages too heavy or the website is easy to load?

If the answer is “yes” to the majority of the questions, look no further as you have found a good designer.

It’s not just about the portfolio

Another thing that you have to consider is the business relationship that you will be building. It is very important that you meet up or at the very least have several phone calls so that you can see if you have a connection.

FREELANCE VS. DESIGN FIRM

Do you want to go for a freelance designer, or choose a design firm? The biggest advantage of a design firms is its credibility. However, this does not mean that a freelancer cannot handle all these responsibilities. At times, freelancers can come up with better designs in comparison to big firms.

Pricing and Guarantees

It is very important to read the small print in any business deal. The pricing and guarantees offered by different design services can sway a deal either way. Obviously, the prices will vary according to the designer/firm and experience.

Make sure you do your research and set out what you want from the first meeting. Most companies will formulate a proposal or brief, so make sure it is tailored to your needs.

CONCLUSION

The above tips should begin to help you finding a perfect website design service but really it boils down to how you feel about the designers you speak to. Some companies can feel pushy and others may not give the right first impression or perhaps are two technical. The main thing that you need to look for is that the person feels like they can help you. If the designer is friendly, has good ideas, is helpful and open with you, chances are you have found the right one.

WildFire pride themselves on being friendly and informative creative thinkers, if you would like to get in touch to see if we could be the right fit for you call us on 0845 643 9410.

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