Welcome to the Escape Blog

We shut the office this week for a day and headed out for a day at the local country park, picked up by a couple of stretch limos - like you do.

See the Escape Massive - ya get me! See the full photo-story on Flickr.

As well as getting our heads into some real life Escape issues, we also got to sample some cracking Escape food, courtesy of everyone there, including some Cypriot Meatballs, Bruschetta, paté, quiches, pasta, cous-cous, some carrot cake, cookies and scones, as well as some healthy fruit salad. Not forgetting some very creative sandwiches, courtesy of Andy and Gary.

Meanwhile - back at The Escape Mansion we delivered a nice web project for Noggin - a new web design and structure.

Lisa delivered a marcomms plan for Aquivo. She also had to rush down the pub on Tuesday night with their team to take some photos of their outdoor television screen which is making waves in the leisure industry.

Apart from that (and our park day out) everyone has had their heads to the grindstones this week but it does look like we have finally found a five a side team, when Laura showed her footie talents.

Copywriters Crucible has a sweet little article about converting customers with the opening gem…

My website is still yo-yoing around Google’s rankings for the search term ‘copywriter’. But that’s ok as I still haven’t worked out how to convert my business visitors into clients when they arrive.

That’s the kind on honesty online we all need to afford ourselves. (In fact, we can’t not afford not to.)

The realisation that my process isn’t quite there yet to deserve the next step and deliver what my potential business customer may be looking for.

Matt then goes on to highlight a recent report from Enquiro Search Solutions about converting business clients…

• When a purchaser becomes aware of an interesting product or service offline (e.g. advert / exhibition) they tend to follow up with online research.
• Over half will begin their research through a search engine.
• 74% click on organic results, and 19% on sponsored links.
• The top four organic listings receive 53% of all click throughs.
• When arriving at a website they’re most interested in finding simple and clear product/service information in a downloadable format. This makes it easier for them to share their research with colleagues and present it to the ultimate decision maker.
• Support information is also highly desirable i.e. general company information, case studies, white papers and knowledge bases.
• The least desired content was the ‘bells and whistles’ such as podcasts, webinars and multimedia presentations.
• Half of the 1000 B2B buyers interviewed would follow up their visit by purchasing online.

So, some more new knowledge and new power to adapt what we have already, and as Spiderman knows only too well, with great power comes great responsibility.

Great article on Improve The Web about people and how they use your website.

They hunt for information, follow the funnel to conversaion and flow like water on your website.

Nice read.

It’s easy to get hooked on Pay per click, especially if you sell to the consumer and it is delivering you results.

I would imagine however that as more companies focus on using it to drive traffic, it will become less efficient. What worries me slightly is that as Adwords, for instance, becomes more widely accepted by the masses, as it now is, advertisers are not doing their homework and don’t tend to really understand how to maximise their return. Good for Google with people paying more for wasted click-throughs than they need to. (more…)

As most of us look to give our website the X Factor - that special thing that will differentiate us - how many people actually stop before they start and work on the why factor?

I was talking to Gary this morning about a conversation he had with a non-technical friend who couldn’t understand why he had to struggle to book a holiday online the way he wanted to and on the face of it, he is right.

A website that has been ‘why’d’ would be able to deliver information for Gary’s friend because the outcomes and requirements would have been sorted based around what he wanted and needed, rather than the other way round. He - being the customer. (more…)

From Gigglesugar comes this amazing piece of Photoshop work - almost.

Can you spot the error (the big white arrow gives it away).

The Pay-per-action model from Google is now being rolled out internationally (as a Beta).

It is invitation only to companies using AdWords receiving more than 500 conversions from their cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand impression campaigns in the past 30 days.

Pay-per-action allows advertisers to pay for their advert only when a specific action is completed by a user on their web site. You could choose to pay when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter or completes any other clearly defined action that you choose (more information on pay-per-action). (more…)

Rob and Lisa relived their own version of planes, trains and automobiles this week trying to get to Harrogate for the CIH Annual Conference, experiencing the joys of an internal flight. Guess which one was John Candy? Anyway, Lisa gave Rob a run for his money on the networking evening collecting cards and creating empties…

Simon spent the day at the home of great football - The Emirates - where we produced a video for Nimbus Partners for their 10th Annual Conference.

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It’s not the easiest of tasks to take on a project for search engine optimisation on an existing website. Especially if it an old site built in tables with inline styling, or is wrapped up in a content-managed system that doesn’t allow for too much optimisation.

That said, it can be done, and quite successfully with appropriate and realistic targets.

But, the best time to think about search optimisation for your website is before you actually start to design and build it. If you can analyse what you want from your website and where you may get it, you have a better chance of achieving your goal.
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An article on Campaign Monitor - How Far Does Permission Stretch? - got me thinking about e-mail newsletters and how many companies waste new prospects by not following up.

I mean, have you ever subscribed to an e-mail newsletter on a website promising you articles or free tips and heard nothing for months, if at all?

If you have a website and you have bought into the whole permission marketing approach; if you promise something, you need to deliver, especially something as simple as a newsletter.

You have done the hard work encouraging someone to subscribe to your newsletter - yes, that’s the hard bit, getting someone to trust you up front. So, not delivering something you promised is not only very wasteful, it will lose you that trust pretty much straightaway. It’s like letting someone walking out of your shop without even talking to them.

I see, even now, subscriber lists growing on some websites that sit… waiting… waiting for that first e-mail. It’s like having a ready made list of sales prospects sitting on your desk becoming more and more irrelevant with every day that passes.

Would your Sales Director let you get away with that? I think not.