Welcome to the Escape Blog

Back in October 2005 I posted about Google Fight on this Blog - Google Fight is a fun little tool on Google.

This morning I did a Google search for Basingstoke Design and guess what came on top!

Now, I am a big advocate for aggregation. As search traffic becomes more and more important we understand that you need to speak to the web and with the web. That may include other web sites, other blogs, forums, the choice is expansive.

You may be suprised where our traffic starts coming from - keep it relevant though and pepper in those keywords.

Great post here from Hello World about how they differentiate their company.

This post contains language that may f******g offend you! (I was saying flipping!)

According to market research company GfK
Marketing Services, the Internet has not only established itself as a
significant channel across all consumer technology markets, but is also
growing at a faster rate than sales on the high street.

Source and full story:  Retail Bulletin

With my web design and usability hat on, it would make sense to make sure that your [on-line] shop is in order. The only difference being that you don’t want to put bread all the way at the back of the shop so people browse the other aisles - because they won’t on-line - get in, get out as quickly as possible.

In fact, you can’t help wonder that if Amazon ran Tescos, they would be saying… People who bought bread also bought butter and cheese….it’s here on the very next shelf!.

Our latest newsletter "One Lump Or Two?" covers an event later this month of a usability workshop.

• What is usability?
• How does it affect your company web site?
• How it can improve the traffic to your site, and also the click-throughs when they get there.

If you are interested in taking part, it is on the afternoon of Thursday 26th April from 1-5pm.

Please e-mail Craig KIllick for details.

If you are interested, you can also subscribe to our e-mail newsletter here:

The W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium, keepers of international web standards) announced today that they will be opening an office in Beijing, China.

To gain a better understanding of the size and enormous growth of
China’s internet user base, consider the fact that in 2000, there were 12 million internet users in China, and in 2005 there were 120 million.

Read more about China, W3C and the web - Wired

I always thought there were special books to help me learn more about the internet, especially how to ‘trick’ the search engines. I know a lot of people think there are, but you know what; I don’t need an idiots guide to make me realise that the internet carries so much information in itself that I probably don’t ever really need to buy a book again.

Take learning about web sites, design, content, SEO (search engine optimisation), etc. Everyone wants to know how to manipulate Google.

Why? They tell you how to play the game on their own website.

Welcome to Conversion University from Google.

We are eight years old today - amazing to think back to those times when we first started and how far we’ve come. Even more exciting is the future.

For those of you who don’t know the story, we have had quite a ride when you look back:

• 1998 - Working under a staircase - Rob and Craig - running out to answer the phone because young children were in the house playing and being noisy (one of these children has just turned 11!). One computer, one car, one phone - "Rob, one day we’ll have our own network and you will have your own computer"
• 1999 - Our first employee Jon (who only recently left after relocation). By then we had moved from the staircase, into Craig’s mum’s spare bedroom, then into a lovely office above a Vets Surgery.
• 2000 - By now we had picked up a bit of speed doing work for Toshiba, Pavilion Housing and had invested our first big money into digital print.
• 2001 - After taking on more people we moved to our current location and into Unit K of Loddon Business Centre in Basingstoke. More work, more expenses, more fun!
• 2002 - More work and more people as we began to grow, also taking the first forays into web design. Definitely being taken more seriously and not as a couple of fly-by-nights.
• 2003 - Bursting out of Unit K, we have to move into Unit E, where we start to have some space to move again. This little start-up also begins to grow-up as Jacqui Sanwell joins (later to become Operations Director). She soon whips us into shape.
• 2004 - More work, winning new business, especially in the housing and local government sector working for some big, big authorities, including a big win of the Haringey People Magazine for Haringey Borough Council.
• 2005 - Time for a little more growth as we buy local design agency True Colours and go about integrating the two businesses together. Again, we had to look at more space which created the Unit D sandwich as we took on Unit C with ECS in between.
• 2006 - We turn eight! We have our best ever year as the integration (and costs involved) begin to settle. With a great all round team, we have become a lean, mean, design and marketing machine.
• 2007 and beyond - Watch this space!

Happy Birthday to The Escape and a big thank you to everyone has helped get us this far - Escapees, Customers and Suppliers, even the bank!

Thank you!!