Welcome to the Escape Blog

Today it’s like the Mary Celeste at The Escape with Laura off ripping it up on her birthday (happy birthday Laura), Gary scooting round town in his new wagon and Jason sloping off early. Plenty more Friday cookies to go round though.

New projects in this week include a new website for the athletic legend that is Roger Black, who is keen to start using our new CMS system to create a more interactive web presence in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.

Our own new website is going full steam ahead and we are hoping to have this up before Christmas. There’s still lot to do but as part of a brand repositioning we are being a lot more measured in our approach - which is quite rare for us.

By the way, is it me or has the Christmas slowdown already started? I’m off down the pub for a warm toddy.

I often worry that I contradict myself when talking about web design, and I sometimes get looks as if I am not into creative web design. For me, it’s a balance, based around business goals. Or, as Jeffrey Zeldman suggests, in his article “Understanding Web Design“:

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

I came across a few articles I thought I’d share:

Scientific Web Design: 23 Actionable Lessons from Eye-Tracking Studies. Design is not just about making things look pretty.

Optimising Your E-Mail Subscription Process from Campaign Monitor.

Secret Strategies Behind Successful Viral Campaigns. Or, how the viral aspect is injected into the web.

“I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here” is currently on TV in the UK. I could pretend to be sophisticated and say I don’t watch it but the truth is - I do and I love it.

I like watching people put themselves in funny and awkward situations and because they are famous, it’s even better.

I don’t care about the people there and by Christmas I would have forgotten about the. I’m just a voyeur looking in. And I’m not alone.

I am often questioned about my Facebook status in the “real world”, with people asking me what this meant, or why I said that. And I do the same. I like logging in and seeing what people are doing, and who they are friends with.

When you think about it, it’s incredibly invasive. But really, the users are willing, even if they maybe don’t appreciate the implications.

Our profile pages on The Escape website are the same - people love them and it stimulates conversation.

And, that is where the usefulness comes from - creating conversations.

In a world where we crave that extra little bit of excitement in our own lives, looking into other peoples gives us an opportunity to watch from the sidelines but still be engaged.

Marketing in that environment with the right authentic message is a very big opportunity for many businesses, especially B2C.

Engaging with profiled Facebook users for example, and advertising to core groups of people in a relevant way will create powerful and real, engaging experiences. I’ve started playing with it, already getting some results.

Where it’s going, I wouldn’t like to guess, but at the moment I am too engrossed watching Rodney putting his foot in it with some classic “blokey” comments. I am sure Adam will have all the extra gossip as well on Showbiz Spy.

One in four small businesses has concerns over whether they made the right choice when picking their web address and one in three believes they could bring in extra revenue by changing it to something else, reports New Business.

I’d have to agree. I come across some right stinkers. Although there are very few available names to go around, my personal pet hates are:

Bad TLD (top level domain) choice

To get the right name, many companies move into the massive grey void of the alternative domain choices (.uk.com, .eu, etc.) If you are in the UK, selling to the UK, you should be getting a .co.uk. A person will try and find you automatically trying .co.uk or .com.

You also have to think about the perception that your TLD gives off. For example, I discussed .biz with a group of people recently and the consensus was that it comes across as very Mickey Mouse.

Initials

Back in the early days people had the impression that your domain name had to be short so people could remember it. If you think about random letters, how many can you remember and get the letters in sequence. How about next week, or next month? Isn’t it easier to remember a longer but more memorable name? www.basingstokebusinessnews.co.uk. Another advantage of these domain names is the potential use of keywords in your name - good for SEO.

Hyphens

Tricky one this because there is good and bad use. We have “the-escape” and it does bother me sometimes because when I am telling people my address it sounds like this, “the escape dot co dot uk with a hyphen in, t-h-e-hyphen-escape-dot-co-dot-uk”.

Example of both hyphens and initials: www.m-a-m.co.uk

What To Do

Firstly, I wouldn’t rush into a decision, especially if you have an established domain.

Secondly I would look for variations of your company name and come up with a few options. escapeonline, escapedesign, escapeweb, etc.

Then, test them on people. Leave the names with them to mull over. One may become a grower.

Lastly, if you do change your domain to a new address, you must make sure the proper redirecting is in place so you may transfer your existing domain weight.

Final thought. It may be worth spending the money to buy a good domain name. It may cost a few thousand but it is an important asset. Sedo have lots of names for sale, I’ve just bought one myself.

I love Macs. Well to be more precise, I like the software. My actual Macbook Pro (I’m on my 3rd) is as flakey as the Singing Detective.

There is no denying they make innovative products though. The Mac, iPod, and now the iPhone.

But, is it just me getting fed up with their smug advertising campaign? Here’s the latest one from the US:

I had great meeting yesterday with a couple of people from Venues4u.com and I came out with a real smile on my face. The company won a web prize we donated to a recent Women In Business Event and the meeting was the initial kick-off to see what they wanted and to explain how the project process would work.

Why I loved the meeting was because we managed to add a different perspective to the way they could communicate online. From being relatively negative about what they could get from a website, based on past experiences, ideas soon start flowing on ways that the new site would be improved to attract the relevant clients they were searching for.

And, I’m not just talking about the design. Yes, we need to reposition the identity, followed through with tone of voice and message, but I’m talking about the way they could interact with customers online, and they way they could refine the audience they appeal to.

The key to this working is that they know their business and the way their industry works. We know how to convert that online into a relevant proposition. Putting those two things together creates excitment and positive intentions towards a web project.

Building a website is not just about nuts and bolts. It’s about assessing hopes and fears and turning them into opportunities, or adapting messages to overcome doubts.

Of course the proof is in the pudding but it’s a genuinely exciting project. I’ll keep you updated.

The BBC report today that we are facing a web slowdown by 2010 due to lack of infrastructure.

For users, the slowdown could see a return to the bad old days of dial-up, the report predicts.

Well, I have a few thoughts about this.

Firstly, it’s bloody slow as you like now at times. We have three separate 8Mb lines at the office and I have a 2mb line at home and sometimes, they can be rapido. But, at other times, I may as well be staring out the window looking at the grey Basingstoke skyline and my colleagues often have to put up with me shouting, “I can not work in these conditions”, like Christopher Biggins having a hissy fit.

Secondly, marketers like to show-off. They hear about video this and web 2.0 this and load their websites to high heaven with all sorts of unnecessary gimmicks. Yes, by all means have video, but make it load on request!

Final thought, we can all see the web is the way forward. Someone, somewhere needs to put the money in - estimated to be £66bn globally.

Personally, looking at some of the habits of my friends [even], I am not suprised that the way we are communicating is changing.

News (via BT Blog) from Hitwise, citing that the use of social networks has overtaken online e-mail for the first time last month.

Age does play a part, with older users still preferring e-mail. But, with the ease of use, and an almost centralising of communication that platforms such as Facebook bring, it makes sense to connect (at least on a personal level) using social networking tools rather than using mutiple single purpose tools such as e-mail.

So, another week hurtling towards the big C, and the window scrapers are out as the mornings of Basingstoke become ever more frosty.

One person who is not frosty, is our warm and fuzzy Louise who has just landed our biggest ever web project to start in the new year. The job entails developing a whole family of websites with a central property database - She da girl.

We’ve have also started a project this week to strategically re-position the Magic Mitre global website as look to expand.

Craig met Mark, who he actually met (hut-hum) 17 years ago, and has excitedly been telling us all about a product that Mark’s company Storepoint have developed that creates artwork automatically online, with translation and variable data. We are hoping to partner up as this solution has massive benefits to organisations looking to create marketing collateral across different languages quickly and cost-efficiently.

Lastly, it’s 37 days to go to Christmas and Jacqui “I wish it could be Christmas Everyday” Sanwell has already put our tree up. To be fair to her, we are shooting our Christmas video next week. That hasn’t stopped her humming Christmas tunes though and reminding us how soon it is.