Six Reasons Your Business Needs a Blog

Having a blog in addition to (and linked to) your website has some distinct advantages over just having a website. By understanding the potential advantages of business blogging you can better plan how to exploit it as a medium. Here are some of the benefits you could look to gain with your own blog:

The Risks Of Using Third Party Services

The web offers a plethora of hosted third-party services offering functionality that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive for small or medium sized businesses to develop themselves. From content publishing platforms like WordPress, Youtube, and Twitter; to business services like Google Docs, PayPal and Shutl. Utilising these services correctly can save businesses substantial sums but it’s important to understand the risks of doing so.

Successful Website Specification

It can be a little daunting knowing quite what you need when setting up or refreshing a website. Although a good web designer will be able to advise on how your web presence can support your business it never hurts have thought through the basics. Here is one way of breaking down the areas you need to discuss with you web designer.

Understanding Bounce Rate and How to Improve It

You might have a lot of visitors (hits) on your website but if those visitors leave without looking around you are missing opportunities. Bounce Rate is the proportion of people who leave your site having only viewed one page. Although a crude measure the Bounce Rate shows whether your website is engaging visitors or turning them off. A high Bounce Rate shows potential customers lost before you’ve even had a chance to set out your stall. Worse still, if you’re utilising any pay per click advertising you’re paying for those ‘bounces’ too. Although it’s impossible to eliminate ‘bounce’ completely there are some strategies to reducing it.

How To Structure Web-Readable Content

You might know what content your audience wants, but knowing how they’re going to read it is important too. People read web-pages differently than how they read printed materials. If you’re producing content that’s difficult for web-readers to consume it’s likely they’ll find someone else who isn’t. Getting the structure right (as well as the content) will get more of your text read. Here are some key tips on how to structure for web-readers.

Three Steps to Positive Web-Analytics

They say a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Well a lot of knowledge can be equally perilous when it comes to using web-analytics. They can tell you an enormous amount about who is using your website and how they’re using it. The trouble is with that myriad of data comes the problem of sifting the useful information from the chaff. Without a solid strategy for what a business wants to achieve it’s easy to drown in a mass of data without adding any real value. Here are some tips on how to ensure your analytics add value.

Six Top Tips For Getting Your Blog Read

Blogging is a great way to keep an open dialogue with customers and add currency to your content but only if your posts actually get read! Below are some generic methods to drive more traffic to your blog. However, no blog will succeed without well written, engaging content. Once you have created some quality content your audience will want to read, here are some ways to promote it.

eSlice Website Refresh

It is a little overdue but we’ve finally found time to put to our own website. Our distinctive brand is still unchanged and still makes up the core visuals, but the new look and refreshed content is clearer and more attractive. Proof positive (as if more were needed) that sites with accessibility and standards compliance at their heart need can still be easy on the eye.

Structuring Promotional Copy

I recently worked with Iver Therapy on some promotional materials and I thought they were an excellent demonstration of the importance of getting the right content and design to ensure you connect with as many potential customers as possible. The piece of work in this example is a flyer design to promote Iver Therapy’s hypnotherapy service to help people quit smoking permanently.

How Accessible Web Design Benefits You

Accessible Web Design is about making sure that websites are readable and usable by everyone, particularly disabled users who may have a visual or other sensory disability. But accessible web design isn’t just about getting that warm and fuzzy feeling of doing some social good. Accessability is essential to ensure your website is legal, profitable, manageble and opens your content up to as many users as possible.