SimpleClick go skydiving!

As a result of some competitive, double-daring one-upmanship, Richard & Claire managed to talk themselves into signing up to do a tandem skydive on 12th May 2012 for the brilliant local charity Out & About.  Neither of us have ever done anything like this before so we're slightly petrified.

We're jumping alongside some other brave people who have offices at Basepoint on Ransomes Europark, and everything that we raise for the charity will be doubled.  It's good to have that at the back of our minds as we prepare to jump from 10,000 feet!

Please dig deep and sponsor us if you can - £700 is our joint target but of course we'd love to try and smash that.

Thanks everyone - every donation helps, even if it's only £1 it would be very, very much appreciated.

Donate via JustGiving

Read more about Out & About

Turning dreams into software

SimpleClick recently launched a new website for Ann Larson, of www.lujos.co.uk, and here she writes about her experiences of turning her requirements into a living, breathing website! 


It’s easy to think about software as dull. Even though I worked in the industry for years, and never thought it was dull, I could often see people’s eyes glaze over when I’d talk about my job! 


I understand this. Most people, even those who commission a software development project, don’t think about the work behind the scenes, they are merely looking for the business need that the software fulfills. 


But in actual fact, this is the hard part. You know your business needs ‘something’, whether it’s customer analysis, a small presence on the web, or a fully-fledged website. But how do you describe it so that it can turn into something real? 


Take my company, Lujos, for example. We already had an e-commerce website, but it was looking very dated, and didn’t offer enough ‘informative pizzazz’. In our business, we feel that much of our job is to educate our clients in a friendly, open way - to change the way they think about skincare products. 


So we took our problem to SimpleClick. We need a new web design, something that reflects the Lujos ethos, said I. I know what I don’t like, but I can’t tell you what I do like. Sound easy? Well, believe it or not, the SimpleClick designer took those words and turned them into a fresh, new design. With one take. Yes, you heard right. It was so perfect that we needed no second take, no re-design, nothing. Take my word for it, this is not at all usual! 


So we have the design, now let’s look under the covers. We also wanted to offer our customers guidance as to which products would be good for their skin, a “skincare prescription”, as it were. Once again, we simple detailed what we had in mind, and passed them to the SimpleClick head of development. He and his team turned our ideas into a module that is easy to use and flexible. I can change the information myself in the SimpleClick CMS, which means that I don’t need to go back to them when I want to make changes. 


The development process was simple and easy to follow. I talked directly to SimpleClick staff, who handled my questions and suggestions quickly and efficiently. Most of the development was programmed in their China office, which meant that work was done “24/7” - changes I asked for one afternoon would be available for me to look at the next morning. This is a fabulous way of working. 


So yes, even though it sounds melodramatic, my dream of a website that helps our customers, and reflects our business values has come true. SimpleClick have turned our quite nice, but dated site:

into this - a stunning, fresh, and helpful Lujos website:

What is involved with creating a website?

As a business owner wanting a new website you need to ask yourself 3 questions:

1. Who do you want to visit your website?
2. Why will they be on your website?
3. What do you want them to do?

The complexity of the build and the time it takes to create a website is directly affected by your answers. Here is a little insight into what goes on behind the scenes during the build of a website.

Documentation

We wary of a web developer who starts coding immediately. A good website developer will spend time understanding your business needs. Then project plans, project briefs, technical specifications, design briefs, test plans and should all be prepared and approved by you. Just think, how can you expect your website to delivered on time and to spec if these steps haven’t been fulfilled?

Off the shelf or customised?

A simple information based website where the level of complexity peaks with a contact form is a significantly different project to one where there is a requirement for bespoke templates and functionality.

Content, content, yet more content?

The number of pages that you require for your site doesn’t really affect the build if it’s a Content Managed Website (CMS). Sourcing, collating, writing & proof reading takes time, a lot of time! Typically this is undertaken by the site owner and the time allowed for this process is often underestimated, especially as writing for the web is very different to writing for a brochure.

Type of content

Remember content isn’t just text. Content includes images, videos, audio, documents for download and forms. These can take just as long preparing as it will to write the copy and then there is the time it takes a developer to implement.

Need an online shop?

The technicalities of adding a shop to a website can be pretty straightforward. What isn’t quite so straightforward is the customisation that is often required. Do the templates need to de designed and styled to suit your business? Does it need to be integrated with a stock control or EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) system? How will you take payment (PayPal, SagePay, Worldpay?)? and do you want to offer different currencies?

Get the most from your site

Large or small, regardless of website size you should always consider your audience. A good agency will talk to you about usability (or user experience) from the start. It maybe a case of them simply applying their experience to your site, or conducting a usability study. Either way, time and money spent upfront will save you time and money in the long term.

Social interaction

Blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+, polls, comments… the list is endless. Do you need these in your site? Effort associated to include these within your website shouldn’t be underestimated – and that’s before you even considered the on-going support these interactions require to generate usage and then monitor how they are being used.

Change requests

Changes happen and they can be necessary, this is a fact. But the site owner needs to consider the impact for asking for a change during a build as it can have significant consequences to those behind the scene. A typical change mid project will involve additional time from a Project Manager, usability expert, designer, programmer and tester.

Ability of your web developer

Think about your requirements and ask questions in order to assess whether or not you developer has the required skills to complete the job. Check out their portfolio and speaking to their customers is a great way to qualify them. A good developer with a good track record will have no problem answering your questions and allowing you to speak to their customers.

Quality Assurance, aka testing

Always allow time for testing. Testing takes time and shouldn’t be underestimated. The web developer needs to test, and you need to test, after all, who will be left embarrassed and out of pocket when a customer cannot complete an order?

To conclude

A website project is an involved process that has many stages. Done well the project may take time but they will be reflected in receiving a quick return on your investment.

Experiencing my first office job

We were recently contacted by a training company who asked us if we would be interested in taking on an apprentice. We think it's a great concept; giving a young person the opportunity to enter the workforce and train on the job while working towards an NVQ qualification. Our new apprentice is Shannon Timms-Mitchell (Junior Marketing & Admin Assistant). Here, Shannon writes about her first week at SimpleClick.

On Monday, October 10^th, I started my first full-time office job at SimpleClick. At first it seemed a little daunting, but within a few days I felt settled. My confidence is slowly growing from the little I had and I think in time I will ‘come out of my shell’.

People who have never worked in an office before tend to have a stereotypical view of a working environment; however the office atmosphere is more welcoming, open and outgoing at SimpleClick.

Being an outsider to the website design business, one thing I find remarkable is being able to see what goes on behind the scenes. I don’t think many people realise all of the work that has to be done to create the finished website, therefore most people often take this for granted. When creating, building and developing, often a cycle is used starting at analysis, plan, design, implement and test - this type of cycle can be used for almost anything, including websites.

I feel another interesting area within the business is the search engine market and Google analytics. I knew these sorts of things had to be in place for websites to exist, but like most of the general public, I never really thought about it in too much detail, as it hasn’t really concerned me.

Google analytics is used on 49.95%, almost half, of the top 1 million websites. It amazes me how every click you make while on the internet could be recorded and placed into a database.

SimpleClick use Google analytics in websites they design and create, it is a smart way to be able to see many different things about how visitors use the websites such as which is the most popular page to the amount of time visitors spent on the website. As the owner of a website I would imagine this sort of data / information would be very useful for many reasons.

Another thing I find interesting about the company is the way in which they make the websites easy to use. As a user of the internet, we all know what it is like when something doesn’t go the way we want to, and in the end give up. SimpleClick make the websites they create user friendly to try stop this happening, as it could mean a sale lost or a visitor which never returns. 

Acronym overload! SEO, SEM & SMO??

Don’t we web marketing professionals just love an acronym? Is it because we want our clients to think we’re oh so clever? Why not just say it as it is?

Well the main reason for these acronyms is that the full terms are just so long and clunky!  But we in the web industry do need to remember that not everyone speaks the lingo.

To clear up any confusion, here’s an explanation of each, and what it should mean to you, in plain English:

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation can be summed up as ‘Carrying out activities on the web with the aim of getting to the top of Google (and other Search Engines) for the keywords that are most important to you.’

The first thing you need to know when you look at search engine optimisation is how the search engines work.  Once you have an understanding of that then you can go out and tweak your website accordingly.

It’s all about relevancy.  If you are trying to rank highly for ‘washing machine repairs’ then you need to make sure that your website actually talks about washing machine repairs!  And then try to get other sites that talk about washing machine repairs to link to your website.

It’s slow work but will be worth it in the end – promise.


SEM = Search Engine Marketing
This includes SEO and also PPC – another acronym!  PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and covers Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter (Bing).

In a nutshell, ‘You appear towards the top of the search engines for the keywords that are most important to you, and you only pay when someone clicks on you’.

This can appear to be a really easy option, but it pays to be careful.  It can cost you a fortune for little return if you don’t pay attention to how you set up your campaigns.  Read this great econsultancy article about the seven deadly sins of PPC.

We wouldn’t advise setting up your own PPC campaign unless you’ve already had some experience or training – although once its set up you should be able to manage it yourself with a quick training session.


SMO = Social Media Optimisation
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, blogging, Flickr… the list is endless.  This is all about using social media to drive traffic to your site and build up relevant content that points back to your website.

You might not be able to use them all, indeed some of them might just not be relevant.  Don’t beat yourself up about this, you only have so many hours in a day and not everything suits everyone.

Start with just Facebook and Twitter and see how it goes - you might surprise yourself.  Make sure you keep linking back to your website from your tweets (Twitter updates) or your Facebook wall – this will help with SEO.  And try to engage with your followers / likers rather than just talking at them – you’ll get a much better response.


Need help with your SEO, SEM & SMO?
Well at least you now know what they mean!

You can do the basics of all of the above yourself if you have the time, but it can get quite involved and time-consuming.  If you need help with SEO, pop into our office in Basepoint, Ipswich for a chat and a cup of tea or drop us a line.

(More about what we do - Search Engine Optimisation Ipswich)

Is your website open 24/7 ?

Here at SimpleClick we pride ourselves on building websites that look great and are easy for your customers to navigate. But while we’re all about keeping things simple and logical for your customers on the front end, we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty ‘under the hood’ to build features into your website to enable that thing our customers like most – sales! 

Building payment processing and shopping features into a website can be a daunting prospect for some – fears about security and managing payments can result in businesses avoiding the issue altogether and sticking to traditional retailing methods. But with online retailing booming, customers expect to be able to buy items and services directly from a site using their credit or debit card. 

Why tie up your valuable time and resources manning the phones to take sales when your website could do it for you? And once the shops there, it’s working for you day and night – wherever in the world your customers might be.

We’ve recently launched sites that enable quick and convenient purchase through PayPal - take a look at http://www.houseofelliotcollection.com/ or http://www.lujos.co.uk/ for example. Managing payments via a trusted service like PayPal is easy. And sites hosted using our CMS also benefit from features that make managing orders and promotions really simple too.

We also recently completed a project to enable a customer to bulk process thousands of payments through Sage Pay (www.sagepay.com) in a fraction of the time it took previously. We built an application that allows the customer to simply upload payment files which are then processed automatically through the Sage Pay DIRECT API. It’s fast, secure and has greatly improved what was once a laborious process.

So whether you have an existing relationship with a payment service provider (such as Sage Pay, Google Checkout, World Pay, eWay, SkyPay – in fact, pretty much anybody!) or not, if you think your site or business could benefit from adding or automating payment services, come and speak to us. 

Blogging for business - is it worth it?

This month, SimpleClick asked one of our clients, Ann Larson from www.lujos.co.uk to write a guest blog for us. She wrote about what she does so incredibly well - blogging! To read Ann's own fantastic blog 'Leaving the fast lane for a slow life in Spain', go to lujos.wordpress.com.

There is no denying that blogs are everywhere. You can find a blog that deals with almost every aspect of business and life! There are thousands of blogs, and even more readers of blogs.

Itʼs easy to dismiss blogs as just another form of media that is mainly used for social purposes and is just another fad. However, they can have big impacts on your business, with added customer value and SEO benefits.

Here are some ways we feel that blogging has helped our business:

• It has established us as subject-matter experts. It may seem odd, but blog entries are very convincing, and tend to be given a lot of credence by its readers. (You have to be careful not to abuse this trust, but it can be useful as a tool to win over your readers to your opinions)

• It gave us free publicity through search engine results. Google likes regular content updates, and creating frequent blog pages, with relevant keywords, can increase traffic by improving your search engine ranking chances. This can be a cheaper alternative to Pay-per-Click advertising campaigns and means you are doing your own Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

• It brings more web traffic to our business website. Readers of our blog come to our business site to find out what itʼs all about.

• It makes our business seem more lively and friendly. Rather than being just another anonymous business, readers of our blog see us as friends. They comment on our blog frequently, and often send emails asking for more information or advice. Itʼs almost the equivalent of being a friendly corner shop!

• It has built a following of regular readers, who may turn into clients one day.

• It allows us to provide additional information in a subjective forum – again, all part of establishing us as subject-matter experts.

The Lujos approach to blogging

Before we even launched the Lujos business, we decided to create a free Wordpress blog, that would be additional to our website, without directly being a part of it. This was a deliberate decision, as we felt that blogs that are part of the business website tend to have less credibility -they are seen as just another business tool.

We wanted our blog to attract visitors to the Lujos business site that we might otherwise not reach - in short, to channel blog readers who were interested in the Lujos ethos to our product site. We also felt that the blog should not just be all about the Lujos products. We talk somewhat personally about our lives in Spain, our olive farming, skin care in general, and so on. This is partially due to Wordpress frowning on direct selling via their blogs. The main reason, however, is that we felt that we wanted to win “hearts and minds” to ourselves and our business, rather than the more traditional “pitch” to buy.

This approach, of course, may not suit all businesses.

Our blog is linked to from our business site, as well as featured in every newsletter, email and PR spot.

The downside of blogging

We think blogging has been great for our business! However, it is not without cost. Just like your website, your blog content must be kept fresh. If you donʼt blog frequently, visitors will stop coming to your site, and automatic feeds from your blog will be turned off.

For a small business with already over-stretched staff, blogging can be a step too far. But if you are willing to commit to regular blogging, it can be a valuable addition to your business.

To find out how Ipswich web developers SimpleClick can help you to set up your own blog, branded to fit your business, visit www.simpleclick.co.uk and get in touch.

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What is Google's +1 Button?

Google has begun to roll out its latest tool to improve your search results, the +1 button, in their latest effort to make your web searches personal.

Essentially the +1 button acts like a Facebook “Like” button, pressing it on a webpage displaying the button will tell the world that you thought this website was useful and worthwhile. If you are signed into Google, when searching, you will see the websites that your friends (on the networks you have connected to Google) have “+1’d”. This will be in the form of a small annotation next to the site in the results, letting you know that your friend has recommended that link.

However the +1 is public, meaning that your rating has the potential to affect the ranking of a site, although Google are remaining cagey on how exactly these ratings will be taken into account.

Elsewhere, Google’s main rival Bing has begun to roll out integration with Facebook making use of the Facebook like button, and showing you the results from your Facebook friends.

But why the emphasis on social search? Well, with Social Networks now firmly established as aspects of our day-to-day lives on the internet, companies are beginning to realise that we are more likely to listen to the recommendations of somebody we know, somebody we trust. When a friend tells us that a particular film was worth seeing, we might be more likely to listen than when a critic on the television tells us the exact same thing.

So the search giants are seeking to incorporate that type of feedback into their results, improving the information you receive, personalising it by using data harvested from your networks of online friends, and as you travel through the internet rating the websites that you love or those that give you the answer you were looking for, you provide feedback to the web as a whole, improving search results and filtering out the spam.

So you become your own Search Engine Optimiser, with websites moving their focus back to content, giving you an experience that will make you want to recommend that site to your friends. Or so the theory goes.

Adding these buttons to your website has been made as straightforward as possible, both can be achieved by pasting a couple of lines of code into your site

To add a Facebook button to your website visit this link: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

To add a Google +1 button to your website visit this link: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html

Be sure to check out the +1 button out on the web and at the end of this post.

Hate networking? Try WiRE!

I had the pleasure of going along to a WiRE (Women in Rural Enterprise) event last night. It was the first one I've been to after meeting the wonderfully enthusiastic Sue Hall at the ISSBA exhibition last month, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

I'm one of those people who doesn't really enjoy 'traditional' business networking. I would much rather go along to a friendly, informal event with none of the pressure of 60-second pitches and the like, and meet like-minded people who might be able to help one another in their businesses. Hopefully making new friends in the process.

And that's exactly what I got! It was hosted at Ladies that Lunch, on Fore Street in Ipswich which is a perfect venue (especially for an all-women group!) , and there were so many of us, we almost didn't have enough seats.

The theme of the evening was Twitter, something I've been using for a long time, so I wasn't sure there'd be a lot for me to learn. But of course there was; we had a great teacher in Sally Ormond of Briar Copywriting who re-introduced me to Tweetdeck after I'd given up on it a couple of years ago. All of the members were split into small groups according to their level of experience, and we all shared our knowledge and tips with one another, which was great.

I went away having met countless new local business women, a renewed enthusiasm for tweeting and lots of new Twitter followers. I'll definitely be back to the next WiRE event which I hear will be all about yoga, acupuncture and posture control - can't wait!

For more information about WiRE South Suffolk, visit www.wireuk.org/south-suffolk

To follow me on Twitter go to www.twitter.com/simple_click

Social media for business - where do I start?

We talk to people every day about social media for business and how they can get involved, but what we hear, above all else, is that they don’t know where to start. So we decided to put together a few simple pointers. Obviously we can’t cover everything here, but it should at least set you in the right direction.

It can be very daunting if you’ve never used social media before, but we have seen it work and know that it can be highly beneficial for your business on several levels.

Not only does it help you to get your marketing messages and promotions out there, but it also helps to build your brand profile. Being involved in social media says something about you and your business – you are forward thinking, dynamic, knowledgeable in your industry and not scared to express your opinion.

So it is well worth the effort. It doesn’t have to be all consuming, or overwhelming – don’t be scared into thinking that you need to update your profiles 50 times a day – feel free to start small and slowly.

1. Set up accounts on the main networks

We would recommend Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. There are countless others, but you don’t need to be on all of them if you don’t want to be. These three are the ones that everyone expects you to have.

Facebook

To set up a Facebook page, such as www.facebook.com/simpleclicksolutions go to www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. This should then walk you through setting up your page – easy! You now have a ‘Wall’ where you can post status updates as your business.

Twitter

Go to www.twitter.com and enter your full name, email address and password on the home page and click Sign up. This will take you to a screen where you choose your username (make sure it is identifiable as you, and relevant! Ours is @simple_click).

LinkedIn

Set up your own LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) profile using your company email address. If you add in the name of your current company when you set up your employment history, then it will be set up as a company on LinkedIn. It may even be there already if you already have a profile or if your employees do. So long as you log in with a company email address, you can go to your company page and add lots of information about it, including separate pages for specific products and services.

With all of these profiles, you can do a lot of customisation. Don’t worry too much about this initially. Focus on getting the profiles set up and having something to say.

2. Set up a service that posts to all your pages

We use www.postling.com – it’s free and easy to use. There are others out there that do the same thing but this is our favourite.

It saves you time, because you only have to log into one account and make one update, but it appears on all your pages.

This service is great for initial status updates, however if you want to interact fully with your profiles and with other people, you will need to log in to your individual accounts – so make sure you remember all those usernames and passwords!

3. Have something to say

This is where most businesses struggle with social media – we hear all the time from people that they don’t have anything to say. But those same people will sit in our office and chat for half an hour about their latest clients, projects or events – we tell them that this is all perfect for social media – go tweet it!

It doesn’t have to be ground-breaking, or even particularly unique – just an update about how many products you’ve got to send out that day, or that you’re updating your website, or even that you’re working on your social media strategy is enough. You can give your opinion about breaking news in your industry, or your thoughts about a general news story.

Re-tweeting, or sharing is another great way to fill your page. If you like someone else’s tweet and want to show it to your fans / followers, hover over it and click ‘Re-tweet’. This will then appear on your timeline for your followers to see. You can do the same in Facebook, but the button is called ‘Share’.

4. Tell people about your pages

Put links to all of your social media profiles on your email signature and in the footer of your website.

Email everyone you know and ask them to follow you / like your page.

Facebook – ask people to ‘like’ your page. Give them the link to your page – initially this will be a long link with lots of numbers. When you get over 25 ‘likes’ you will be able to choose a more friendly link such as www.facebook.com/simpleclicksolutions so it’s important that you get to 25 likes as soon as possible.

Twitter – ask people to follow you. Give them the link to your page which will be something like www.twitter.com/simple_click.

LinkedIn – ask people to connect with you and follow your company. Send them a link to your profile and to your company page. These will be something like:

uk.linkedin.com/in/clairethorpe – this is my LinkedIn personal profile

www.linkedin.com/company/simple-click-solutions – this is my LinkedIn business page

The best way to find connections on LinkedIn is to search for them within LinkedIn and request a connection or by going to Contacts > Add Connections.

5. Be an active member of the community

Make regular updates to all of your profiles. There’s no need to go overboard – 3-5 updates a day is enough, 1 per day is a minimum.

If people post on your wall, or mention you on Twitter, make sure you respond, say thank you, and follow/like them back if they are relevant to you.

See it as a community and become an active member – find other businesses that you work with and follow them, asking them to follow you back.

6. Keep learning

Twitter in particular can seem quite advanced, but all of the networks come with their own particular jargon.

You don’t have to know everything to get involved. Keep your eyes peeled, don’t be scared to ask the social media experts – people like us do this for a living and we’re happy to share our knowledge.

And when you’re comfortable, you can set up Flickr, Youtube, a blog… the list goes on.

Happy tweeting!

More information

Contact SimpleClick for advice on social media Ipswich, Suffolk. Simple Click are a web design and development company based in Ipswich, Suffolk and their ethos is to keep ‘all things digital’ simple for you, and for your customers.

As well as building fantastic content-managed websites for our clients, they have the marketing and social media skills to bring people to your site, and the user experience know-how to make sure that it is all intuitive and easy to use when they get there.

They run web usability and social media workshops on a regular basis, sharing their knowledge with others and proving that they really do know their stuff.

Blog Catalog

How to select participants for usability testing

If you are thinking of doing a usability test on your website, then make sure you get the fundamentals right.  How many people should you select to take part in the test?  Is it important that you pick the ‘right’ people?  And is more always better?

Ipswich website design company SimpleClick Solutions are experts in the field of website usability and want to share their experience.

Usability testing is important for a number of reasons:

• Usability testing validates what you already thought was wrong with your site
• Usability testing tells you what site changes you should be making next
• Usability testing allows you to make informed decisions, not just make guesses
• Usability testing shows the world that you are serious about providing a good experience to your customers. Press release it!

Who should you choose?

Don’t get too hung up on selecting people from your target demographic.  This should never be the most important factor.  Think about it – a 40 year old man with no kids would encounter usability problems on a website aimed at new mothers, for example, in the same way as a new mother would!  Just because he wouldn’t necessarily use that site doesn’t matter – this isn’t a marketing exercise, it’s a usability test.

So, go out and grab family, friends, workmates and get them to take part.  It doesn’t even matter if some of them already use the site on a regular basis – they might have some great suggestions.  The only caveat to this piece of advice is that you should never use a member of the team who works on the website to test the website!

How many should you choose?

Steve Krug, author of ‘Don’t make me Think’, says you can get viable usability test results from as few as three people.  Jakob Nielson says that five should be the minimum.  Personally, we feel that you can get a well-rounded set of results from anywhere between six and ten.

The benefits of keeping a test relatively small are clear.  If you ever conduct usability testing on your own website, you will notice that in the first few tests, the same issues are coming up.  Each new person might find a couple of new issues, but generally, after the sixth test, you have pretty much captured everything you need, especially all of the high priority problems.

It also makes the process of reporting much simpler.  You are able to analyse, collate and write up the results far more easily – six sets of results are a lot easier to analyse than sixty!

Ipswich website usability company SimpleClick Solutions are experts in the field of website design and user experience are offering free 15 minute usability expert reviews – contact SimpleClick web design agency Ipswich for more information.

Suffolk Business Exhibition - 13th April 2011

We are delighted to announce that we will be exhibiting at the Suffolk Business Exhibition on 13th April 2010. The event is growing each year and we are excited to become a part of it.

The exhibition will take place at the Trinity Park Conference Centre, Suffolk Show Ground, Ipswich IP3 8UH between 2-7pm.  The event is organised by ISSBA (Ipswich and Suffolk Small Business Association) and the Suffolk Chamber of Commerce.

You can find SimpleClick on stand 30, please come and talk to us about any aspect of your online presence, even if you're just after a bit of advice we'd be happy to help!  We look forward to seeing you all there.

Webmasters beware McAfee Site Advisor

For those of you who haven’t heard of McAfee Site Advisor, in their own words ‘We test websites for spyware, spam and scams so you can search, surf and shop more safely’.  Users can download their software, which adds ‘safety ratings’ to the browser and search engine results.  This tells the user whether a site is safe or not before they have even clicked into it.  Sounds great doesn’t it?

And it would be – if it was always accurate.

At the end of last year we had a customer come to us to say that their site (built by SimpleClick) was rated as red by McAfee Site Advisor.  This customer’s site is really simple – no pop-ups, downloads or ecommerce capabilities – so we couldn’t see what the problem was.  Most worryingly, the warning associated with a red site is: ‘McAfee TrustedSource web reputation analysis found potential security risks with this site. Use with extreme caution'.

Of course, we contacted McAfee immediately to ask first of all for an explanation as to why the site was rated red.  We had to do this via a contact form, and I was told I would see a response in 5 working days.

Five days later I had a response telling me that, ‘SiteAdvisor engineers will look into your issue, and will issue a change if it is deemed appropriate.’  Their website says that all results will be shared - see www.siteadvisor.com/webmasters/index.html under the heading 'What happens after the evaluation is done? When will my site's rating change?' - "McAfee will e-mail the site owner to share the results of its evaluation.  If our evaluation confirms that our test data was in error, the site's rating will be changed within one business day after we complete our evaluation."

I checked the rating again myself the following day – it had changed to green, without us making any changes at all to the website.  Obviously we were relieved, but this didn’t explain why the site was flagged as red in the first place – and where was our apology?!

I tried to contact SiteAdvisor by phone, only for the receptionists at McAfee to have no idea what SiteAdvisor was or what I was talking about, and eventually learning that there is apparently no way at all to contact SiteAdvisor customer service by telephone.

So, I replied to McAfee’s original email and this time copied it to David DeWalt (McAfee CEO), Complaints and Support.   The majority of the email outlined the fact that inaccurately classifying websites as ‘dangerous’  can have an extremely damaging effect – not only to the website owner, but also to the reputation of the company who built the website.  The least that McAfee could do would be to issue a full explanation and apology that we could pass onto our client.

The response I received?

Hello Claire,

I am very glad to inform you that your site has been rated Green by McAfee SiteAdvisor.

Please click on the link below for more information

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/

We appreciate your patience during this process.

Sincerely,

Balaji
Avert Services
McAfee SiteAdvisor

I realised that I was banging my head against a brick wall.  Eventually, approximately six weeks after initially raising the issue with them, I received an email blaming the incorrect rating on the fact that McAfee had acquired TrustedSource.  Apparently during the database integration, something went wrong, and the site was incorrectly flagged as red.

So, after all that, what advice would I give?  Well – firstly keep an eye on your Site Advisor rating (it pains me to say this as it means more downloads of their software, but needs must!).  If the rating ever changes  from green, query it immediately and keep chasing it up.  Don’t expect a decent explanation and don’t expect an apology from McAfee.  And finally, blog about your experience.

Usability testing

We’re big fans of usability testing here at SimpleClick.  Usability tests allow you to get real, measurable customer feedback on your website.  In its most basic form, you gather together a group of your typical users and ask them to complete various tasks on your site.  You record their web session and then report on it, focusing on the issues and obstacles they had during the test.

We’re all web experts at SimpleClick, and we have years of internet experience, but even we don’t profess to know exactly what your customers want to see from your website.  A usability test does just that.
There have been many arguments on the web between usability experts as to how many people you should have in a usability test.  Jakob Nielson says five is enough, others say eight, or even twelve.  In our experience, eight is ideal and will pick up the vast majority of the most important changes that need to be made.

Don’t waste the time you have!  90 minutes is really the maximum time you should ask anyone to be present for a test, but your web testing might only take an hour.  Use the rest of the time to glean valuable feedback on new web design ideas, complete a questionnaire about their online habits and even ask for their opinions about your competitors’ websites.

Tests can be really basic or very high tech; from a PC in a small office with a camcorder, to a fully-fledged usability lab complete with eye-tracking equipment and two-way mirrors.  How far you go with this depends largely on budget, but in line with our philosophy of keeping things simple and getting the best return on investment, we would recommend somewhere in the middle.

In fact, the most crucial element of a successful user test is that you have the right expertise in place to analyse your results.  It is no good recording hours of testing footage if there is no way of collating the findings and actions.

Call us to talk about usability testing for your website.

We have moved!

We’ve just moved into a brand spanking new office at Basepoint Business Centre, on Ransomes Europark in Ipswich.  It’s a really good location, minutes from the A14 and has all the facilities on-site that we could ever need.

We’re all settled in so pop in and see us for a cup of tea or coffee.  Our full address can be found here.

A/B testing

Every good website owner keeps a close eye on their site analytics, whether you are using Google Analytics or a commercial product.  You know what your visitor numbers are, how many pages they look at, and you know your conversion rates.

You might even have some ideas about how these things can be improved, but you don’t want to start changing things without knowing what the effect will be.  And just because you think something will work, you’d prefer your website visitors to prove your right, or wrong!

The best and most measurable way of introducing changes to your website is through A/B testing.

A/B testing is a way of testing two (or more!) creative ideas at once to see which is most successful.  For example, an online shop may have a new idea for a home page that they think will increase the number of conversions from that page significantly.  They want to display their new home page to only some of their visitors and see what effect this has on conversions.

What’s the best way to A/B test?

First of all you have to decide on the technical solution for your A/B testing.  You or your website provider can do it in the code of your website, but there are free services out there that have been doing this for a long time and allow you to track everything that you need.  The most popular free service is Google Website Optimizer.

All you need to do is go to www.google.com/websiteoptimizer and create an account.

The next step is to build the new home page and put it up on the website, under a different URL – for example your original home page might be ‘www.yoursite.com/index.asp’ and your new page ‘www.yoursite.com/index2.asp’.

You then enter these URLs into Google Website Optimizer, along with your ‘conversion’ page (usually the checkout confirmation page), and Google generates a couple of lines of code that you need to put into your website pages.

Let the experiment begin!

Google Optimizer controls the whole process, ensuring that all of your conversions are tracked and measured, and they suggest that it takes around 100 conversions per page variation in order to come to a conclusion about which of the options is best.

A/B testing can give some really great insights into what works for your customers and what doesn’t, and often brings surprising results.

The important thing is that once you find an overall page design that works well for you, continue to tweak it and refine it, but continue to test these changes – this time through multivariate testing.

Multivariate testing allows you to try out many different elements within a single page at the same time, and is when you start to realise just how important it is to constantly update and test your website in order to achieve the largest ROI possible.

Speak to SimpleClick today about A/B testing, multivariate testing and how we can help you you improve your website conversion rate.