Welcome to the Escape Blog

Around 130,000 UK businesses now sell online, in a market representing about 2.5 per cent of all household spending (over £18 billion a year in total) according to this article at the Retail Bulletin.

In the last five years, internet retail sales in the UK rose by over
350 per cent, compared with growth of only 20 per cent for all retail
sales.

In 2005, the typical online shopper spent £560 online, and
forecasts suggest that this could grow to over £860 per year by
2010.

News like this is sure to continue the rise of online retail. It’s funny though, how in the beginning, as Amazon was actually building up their online presence, the high street failed to take note. Now they are all rushing to make sure they get their share. The problem is, in my opinion, that they are still thinking like offline retail shops. A bit like TV companies and ‘old school’ marketing people - ‘let’s just take what we’ve always done and stick it online’.

The problem is, this doesn’t work. People don’t want adverts, they have choice and they are fickle. Which is why, if I were them, I’d be sh*tting myself about the future. Well actually I wouldn’t, because we realise (at The Escape) that change is the only constant). I would have my head searching the web, reading blogs, taking notes, joining in and getting down dirty with web 2.0 and the way forward.

The BBC reports this morning that the UK’s largest listed companies are not doing enough to make their websites accessible, a report says.

According to internet company Nomensa, 75% of the FTSE 100 companies it tested did not meet the minimum requirements of the Disability Discriminations Act.

The five most common problems:

1. Poor quality web code

2. Poor use of lists
3. Not using headings and lists
4. Missing alternative text for graphical elements
5. Using pop-up windows

Is your web site compliant? if not, maybe you might want to start thinking about it.

How come when it comes to justifying our own passions, it’s okay - the £2000 stereo system, the second set of golf clubs this year. That’s alright, because we understand it. But, when it’s someone else’s passion it seems weird.

Over at Creating Passionate Users, Kathy Sierra has written a great article about why people need tools to justify their passion.

"So, what can we do to help our users explain their passion to
others? Sales and marketing people put a ton of effort into providing
the "rational justification" for a buying, joining, whatever-it-is
decision, but once they’ve accepted the justifications and paid their
money, that’s it. Yet as they start to become truly passionate, this is
when they may need justifications the most! Not for themselves, but for
others. And it’s a different kind of justification…

"Your passionate users don’t need you to help justify the product, they need you to help them justify the passion."

It is a very valid problem. I am passionate about the web and creating great web sites. I can show people stats to back me up. They get very excited. But, I don’t give them the tools to go off and tell the people that they need to justify buying a new web site to.

Lesson learnt - it’s pen to paper time (well finger to keyboard time).

IE 7 is out as beta (the real Beta) Tabbed browsing - how innovative - doesn’t Firefox already do that?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is becoming more and more important on our web sites. It also needs to be for our Blogs argues Teen Web Masters.

Of course, they’re right. Every time we write something for the web, we need to think about important keywords and optimisation, as well as linking in the right place.

A Blog is the perfect tool to help drive traffic, as it changes so regularly (another bonus) so it makes sense that we should optimise them as much as we can.

Our Top Blog Tips

1. Think Carefully about the Title of Your Post (keywords).
2. The first paragraph is the most important part of your post. Ensure it draws people in, and add a slight peppering of keywords. You also need to think that the first few words will be what people see in their news readers - do they want to click on it based on what you’ve written? You can always try using the excerpt feature if you are using Typepad.
3. Keep your Blog posts short. If it is a long article, use paragraphs in bite size chunks and add sub-headers to break up the text.
4. Highlight the important bits as bullets.
5. Make sure you have links on the relevant bits (don’t just use ‘click here’, be more descriptive, eg. - find out how you can create a better blog).
6. Always reference!

Of course, probably the most important bit has having something to say in the first place.

Impressive Advertising, pointed out by Advertising For Peanuts.

Any questions on what they do?

That’s the best way to advertise (in my opinion) - give it to them straight.

By the way, we do great web sites and great design!

The BBC reports on statistics from security firm Sophos show that China is fast catching up the US as a source of junk e-mail.

According to the report, 23.1% of spam comes from computers in the US and 21.9% comes from China. The UK is tenth on the list of spam sources.

TOP SPAM NATIONS

Great Live Ads here (courtesty of Advertising For Peanuts) for Folgers with the coffee cups placed over the steaming manhole covers in New York.

Article in IT Week about a report from market research firm Ipsos Insight suggests that the mobile
internet will become the dominant platform for web browsing over the next few
years.

As evidence, the firm cited robust growth in many markets, singling out
France and the UK for showing the strongest gains, and Japan, where four out of
10 phone users browse the mobile internet.

You can see the full report here.

According to this article at WebMetrics, users misspell terms in 10% of their search queries.

Interestingly enough, recently one of our clients had a PDF newsletter with the word ‘minimum’ spelt as ‘minium’ in the phrase ‘minimum wage’ on a link on their web site.

It made up 33% of their search engine visits over a period of a month!

We aren’t suggesting you start spelling things although it is a guerilla tactic that some companies use, especially with Google Adwords. It is also a widely tipped suggestion for finding bargains on e-bay (see Trick #60).