Welcome to the Escape Blog

I am loving the concept of Sitepoint. A website that brings together designers, developers and small businesses.

If you need a design or web job doing and you have a small budget, you can run a competition, offer a cash prize of your chosing and attract a number of entries. Then you get to choose the winner.

• As a small business, or start-up, you can get some inexpensive design and web work that could make a massive difference to your brand.
• As a freelance designer, programmer, or student, you can make an appropriate amount of money if your work is chosen. It may even start your career.

It’s quite a simple idea, and I’m sure it’s not unique, but it brings people (who need each other) together. I am not sure the ratio of work you’d have to put in against the amount of return you could make would justify the effort. But I guess that is down to a bit of trial and error.

Big news for us this week. We’ve just signed up as the event sponsors of our local music festival - Basingstoke Live. Hence the photo for the local press with Councillor Keith Chapman.

A website is currently being created, which included a crash course for Steve to create a Flash-based MP3 player module - not something we get asked for a lot. Needless to say, we have had fun with the forums, Google Maps and YouTube integration.

The event is new to Basingstoke and we are keen to promote some local talent. More news will be forthcoming as it happens but if you are into MySpace - why not become a friend to Basingstoke Live and help us get some good exposure?

Meanwhile, back in the commercial world - we launched two new websites for Aquivo and Your Health Screening.

We also ran the fifth of our free seminars about Online Marketing, which went down well with the audience. Only one to go on Pay Per Click if you are ineterested.

Long weekend in the UK this weekend - except for Jacqui, who is off to The Escape Cyprus office for a week. If you fancy a week there, let us know and we may do you a special friends and family deal!

Unfortunately not written by me but great articles that should make you think…

• Search Engine Land - The Search-Friendly Appeal Of User-Generated Content
• SEO Book - Information Architecture is the Most Underrated Component of Effective Search Marketing

Great viral video campaign here from the Bring Back The Love Blog. The relationship between an organisation and a consumer…

First wilfing, now philfing - Purposely Hiding something I’m Looking For.

E-Consultancy report on why philfing really gets on users nerves:

• Having to register before buying - this annoyed 57% of those surveyed  - 14% said this would make them abandon a purchase.
• 35% found hidden delivery costs annoying, while this would prevent 64% from buying from a website.
• No phone number being supplied on the website - 50% of people would not buy.

The Amazon Experience

36% of people who answered the survey did like the ‘people who bought this, also bought…’ information typical of Amazon annoying, while only 5% said this would put them off buying.

Yes, I can get away with it, but maybe you can’t.

According to this BBC Article, 39% of bloggers could face the sack for gross misconduct by posting derogatory or damaging details about their workplace, boss or colleagues on their personal blogs.

This article highlights two very different pay-per-click campaigns. One company spent $3,000 on pay-per-click ads over a three-month period last year and sold fewer than five boxes of chocolates. Meanwhile, a rival chocolatier sells about 30,000 pounds of chocolates each year from pay-per-click ads (figures not quoted).

The moral of the story is that the difference was an employee who took the time to learn about how to get the best from Google Adwords, all driven from a highly restricted budget:

With 100 employees, Lake Champlain is far larger than 25-person Charles Chocolates. And with an annual pay-per-click budget of $100,000, it also spends far more on ads than Charles Chocolates did. When Lake Champlain started experimenting with pay per click in 2002, its budget for all forms of marketing was just $5,000.

Pay Per Click, like any online marketing, requires a hell of a lot of optimisation but a lot of new advertisers still see it as a quick and easy way of attracting traffic - and it can. The problem is, the looser the advert, the less likely you will attract a serious buyer. No pain, no gain - a lot of time and effort is required setting up an Google Adwords Campaign:

• Choosing the appropriate keywords - quality, quantity and the way you bid on them (generic, phrase, exact)
• Writing adverts that attract clicks - the actual words of each individual advert and the number of specific adverts you create
• The landing pages - the actual web pages your adverts point to

What many new people to Adwords do, is create generic adverts with generic keywords pointing to generic pages (usually the website home page).

Unfortunately for them, a web user, when performing a search, will type in a much more specific requirement. ie. They wouldn’t be looking “web design agency” when they can type in “web design agency in Hampshire” and get a more specific result.

So, as users becomes more sophisticated, less patient, and whilst they have abundant choice, when it comes to pay-per-click, advertisers surely need to put a hell of a lot more time and effort to get their attention, and, make the whole ‘click-through’ process as logical and straightforward for the user.

Fortunately for those who do put the time and effort you can attract more relevant traffic with better adverts and lead a buyer into a page on your website that is further down the selling process, increasing your chances of a sale. The flip-side of better optimisation is actually reducing your advertising costs, not wasting time on ‘loose search phrases’.

I watched The Apprentice last week with interest; it was the ‘branding task’ week.

Both teams had to create a brand for a trainer: A brand that would stand out in a crowded market place: A brand with an idea behind it.

One team came up with an interesting idea – it was a bit crass – but it had a concept behind it. The other team came up with an identity, created their ad, but there was no idea behind it. They lost the task.

The second team missed a fundamental part of what was requested because they simply didn’t listen to the client. Also, they were far too self-indulgent.

Now, I don’t claim to be a branding expert, but then again, one of the losing team was a global branding ‘expert’ and another was an advertising specialist, but with that said, the whole episode did follow a pattern I see far too often in businesses without rigid brand guardians.

Design Without Purpose

Many clients come to The Escape with a big picture idea. They rely on us to sort the good points from the bad points but to have their end goal in sight and to make it work. And making it work is what it’s all about.

Design is not there to be indulgent with. Design is usually about reaching an audience, and we are not the audience. We facilitate the designed-piece so that it is accepted, appreciated, and acted upon, by the [target market] audience.

Any business that spends money on design understands that it is an investment that needs a return, a project with a start and a finish that aims for a specified outcome. So, it makes sense that any approach to a design project by the individuals involved needs to be pragmatic: Agency and Client Side. The design is simply what makes the idea look good and design alone can’t, in most cases, make a bad idea good.

That may sound incredibly boring but design without any purpose is just bad art. So, if you want to be subjective, if you insist that something is the way it is just because you like it, or if you want something designed with no end goal in mind – become an artist.

A recent survey by Robert Half (Financial Recruitment) found that 44% of UK companies appreciate the importance of having a brand strategy, reports Personnel Today.

They recognise the importance, but what are they actually doing about it? I am constantly amazed at the amount of companies we talk to, when it comes to starting on a project, that don’t have clear brand guidelines, leaving visual treatments up to to us.

Now, when you think brands, you may be thinking Coca-Cola or McDonalds, but there is no reason you can’t apply some brand strategy to your own business, no matter how small.

As any company grows, engagement of customers (both B2C and B2B) relies on a level of rapport between your company ‘brand’ and them as a personality or business and that’s why the larger brands of the world invest so much money working out who their typical clients are, so they can attract them more effectively.

And, for growing companies (especially start-ups) that wish to move away from the personality of the owner, creating a clear brand strategy is also a route to clearer customer engagement - one that is more sustainable for the business over the longer-term.

Now, this may seem much harder for a smaller business due to cost, but there is nothing wrong with analysing the type of clients you are working for now and using this as a basis for adapting your own brand. Some brand development and strategy is better than none and you’d be amazed at how much you can do yourself.

Which brands do you aspire to now?

Move over you young whipper-snappers, its the 55+ age group that is the fastest growing age group on the web according to Heather Hopkins at Hitwise.

This follows news just a couple of days ago that it was young women??

Hitwise report that the silver surfers are catching up the 35-44 years olds who are still the predominant group. That said, with an ageing population, surely 55 is now actually still quite a young age leaving a much larger target group to measure?

Whichever it is, the news that older people are using the web in such numbers comes as no surprise and as designers and developers, it’s worthwhile remembering this demographic when creating websites. I think it’s fair to say that newer socially motivated sites are already doing this with clearer design and largest text for starters.