Welcome to the Escape Blog

Not sure the value of this just yet (it’s early days) but another website analysis tool has just been launched - Hit Tail.

The name is off the back of the Long Tail Theory no doubt.

Well done to Project Manager Debbie for completing this lovely piece for Headway.

Liaising with the client, manufacturers, our studio and production teams, this guide has been six months in the making. Worth the wait though.

Read the case study

Another new e-shop launch for The Boomerang Solution.

Nether Wallop Trading have some great products and some ideal gifts just in time for Christmas and now, a cracking website to boot!

With the uptake of broadband in the UK (predicted to be 68% coverage by 2008), perhaps many web creators have forgotten the bad old days of dial-up, when image optimisation was so important, because people can download so many meg per minute.

If you’re one of those, I would suggest reading this article on BBC today, which may make you revisit your assumptions.

If a website takes longer than four seconds to load, shoppers are likely to abandon it research by Akamai reveals.

It found that 75% of those questioned would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.

Time to turn that optimisation away from the search engines for a while and concentrate on the images!

Google Talk is a brand new tool from the search engine giant that lets you communicate with your friends and family for free. It’s very similar to Instant Messenger and allows you to VOIP, instant message, send files and leave voicemail. It works to open standards so it will work with plenty of other IM applications allowing you to talk to people even if they aren’t using Google Talk.

It’s still in beta and seems to only be available for windows at the moment, but considering its early days this may very well change.

All you need is a Gmail or Google Account and your all set.

Check out Google Talk here.

I have discovered Papa Stour this week. A very nice web site set up to showcase the talents of Scottish Artists, Photographers and Product designers.

It’s full of nicely designed, unique & quirky products plus some great art and photography. I think the web site itself looks great and manages to get across the quality of what is being created, whilst retaining a feeling of independance - cottage industries if you like.

Expanding on the above point you can even see profiles of all the artists, which i think is a great touch and gives a real personal shopping experience no matter where you are in the world.

With Christmas around the corner you might even want get something a bit different for your nearest and dearest. I know I am going to.

Google is making an update to the way you pay for your Google Ads based on the quality of the page your advert links to (your landing page).

Advertisers who may be providing a poor experience on their site will
notice that their traffic across the content network decreases as a
result of this change.

If you run Google Adwords, you really need to think about your site as a whole, rather than just rely on the Adwords, as this change may really affect the price you pay for your advert and the resulting amount of traffic you receive.

It’s very easy to stick up a Google Ad and compete on price. The Adwords system doesn’t work based on bid alone however (thank god) and this approach seems to be Google trying to improve quality of content yet again, which is good news for those of us that concentrate on this aspect of our web strategy. It will reward those people who put in the effort.

It also comes off the back of their recent announcement of their Website Optimizer Tool, which seems to tie in nicely with this latest Adwords change.   

First they are bringing out the zune to rival the iPod - too little to late?

Now, new free accountancy software for small business - this I like - ideaWins - The software really embraces the web and online culture with some nice integration features for online traders.

The design of the site? I really can’t make my mind up whether I like it or not. It seems as if they’ve got loads of techies in a room to analyse online design and then tried to recreate it. And, they didn’t quite get it right.

That said, it’s nice to see them trying.

Apparently, this image is about ‘computers’

The web is changing, or to be more specific, the content on the web is changing. Everyday users like you and me are creating content, not just the web masters and the marketeers. This is both good and bad and sometimes very, very ugly.

Take Blogs. People are talking and creating their own audiences. The topics are becoming more specific so an audience subscribes because they are looking (and most times getting) real value as a reader. If you start to slack as a blogger, you lose your audience - it’s survival of the fittest and it should make us hungry to impress.

The same could be said about Wikis. User generated content that is moderated by other users giving us more and more information.

However, there does need to be value and quality and there lies the problem. For every person making an effort on the web to create great content, there will be ten trying to cut corners that benefit them. Spamming links, linking from user generated sites to their own commercially driven sites, I guess that’s the problem with freedom.

A great example is istock. It has transformed our business (The Escape) as a photographic image that would have cost approximately £500 ten years ago, now costs about $5 and is copyright free (to a point). It’s more affordable and gives greater flexibility for us and our clients.

It works because any budding photographer can upload their own photos and make commission on every one downloaded. The cream rises and the rest sinks. The photographers get more money as we pay less and the website takes it’s slice (it’s an automatic system so the running costs are very low - everyone is a winner. I personally know someone that makes a living from this site just by uploading their work, they’ve escaped the rat-race.

Problem

The problem is that when a photographer uploads their photograph they have to tag the photo with keywords - it’s user-generated. So, people try to catch as much search traffic as possible and go for obscure words and phrases and plenty of them.

This is a problem because now, with more and more content, it becomes harder to find the kind of photo you really want because users are effectively spamming keywords. Great example: the photo above came from me typing in "computer" to the search. And, that’s the tip of the iceberg.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not slating istock - it’s great - but user generated content causes me a dilemma. I love a good blog because I trust myself to switch it off if it becomes boring. What I can’t trust though, is other people’s spamming techniques to try to make me pay attention.

And that’s the bottom line that is the balance we all must take with our on-line presence - gaining trust and not abusing it, whether we are bloggers or businesses with websites.

Some people get that, most people don’t.

Creating a site map for your website is always a good thing. It helps your visitors know where they are and it helps robots from search engines create a quick snap shot of your website with additional internal links to pages that are clearly marked out.

One step on is to create an XML or Text version of your site map and upload it directly into the search engines. Sound difficult? It’s not really.

As long as you have FTP access to your website files, it’s pretty straighforward. So much so, I created a Video Cast (It’s my first, so go gentle on me).