I certainly know how this feels . . . . !

What I hear from clients, more than anything else, is that they’re worried about writing their text.

It’s a funny thing, everyone assumes that it’s a difficult job, as though they’ve been set an essay question, but really, writing your website is the easiest thing in the world.

Introduce yourself, tell me what you do and tell me about your experiences. It’s a simple thing to do over the phone (pretty much everyone does that with Aimee when we first get in touch anyway), so why is doing that in a word document any different?

It’s only a psychological difference, people can talk for hours about their company, but putting it down on paper somehow seems a bit final. But it ISN’T.

Firstly your text needs to go through me, and I’ll plump it up a bit where it needs plumping, or take a few words out if it seems a bit long. We’ll get rid of your spelling mistakes and makes sure it all makes sense.

And after that, if you’re still not happy, you can always make changes through the CMS.

So, please don’t stress about the words. You know your business better than anyone; trust yourself to write about it.

Paperwork piles are like quicksand - the deeper they get, the more dangerous they are . . .

The last few days I’ve been up to my ears in numbers, getting some accounting done. Ironically, last night I was watching the first episode of Black Books, when a desperate, drunken Bernard is trying to do anything to avoid doing his accounts.

Accounts are pretty straightforward when you’ve just started a company, but they can easily go rogue and try to kill you if you don’t stay on top of them.

If you keep your receipts in a bag, have no other record of sales or purchases and don’t look at them until the end of a year, your accounts are going to eat you alive.

But instead of having a fight to the death and then turning your receipts into a fashionable rug or stylish pair of boots, you could just set a little time aside each month to get things in order.

Even something as simple as keeping payments and receipts in separate piles and in date order is going to help you enormously. And at the end of the month, you can go through your bank statement and tick each item off, without spending 4 hours searching for the receipt for The Red Porcupine where you all went for lunch to celebrate the invention of the pint.

And if it’s too late, if your paperwork is already piled too high for you to possibly cope, don’t go out and insult a bunch of Millwall fans in the hope they’ll put you out of your misery, try and find yourself a Manny instead – that is, hire someone else who doesn’t mind keeping things organised.

If a website can be a unicorn . . . why can't a duck?!

A professor of English has been in the news today because she was thrown out of a New York branch of Starbucks for refusing to use the chain’s choice of phrasing.

Apparently she was ordering a plain multi-grain bagel, and the barista wouldn’t serve her unless she used the phrase “without butter and cheese”.

Now, during my long and distinguished career serving coffee (part-time when I was at school), I’ve never told a customer they can’t make an order unless they use the designated word combination as authorised by the company.

Starbucks are pretty smart by controlling the words and phrases used in their shops, by using terms like ‘grande’ instead of ‘large’ they’ve altered the vocabulary to give them a more continental and classy feel. Changing the phrases gives them control and branding beyond the products and into the actual process of ordering itself.

However, you get to a point where your carefully crafted vocab ends up being a barrier to effective communication. If staff only speak Starbucks, and can’t translate ‘large’ into ‘grande’ then you’re in trouble.

Personally I think I’m going to start calling Edge of the Web designed sites ‘unicorns’. We’d be the only unicorn designers in the world – even gods can’t lay claim to that one!

Business unicorns ready in 1 day. It’s catchy, but something tells me we won’t get much business if we insist all our customers ask us for unicorns!

"Interpretive dance Friday" coming to an office near you!

A friend of mine has introduced “singing Friday” to his office.

“Singing Friday” involves people forsaking the dull, boring medium of speech, and singing to each other instead. Thus far it has proved controversial, with half the office embracing the magic, and half being miserable killjoys (is it obvious whose side I’m on?).

But “singing Friday” also reminded me of a customer of ours, The Conservatory Centre, who have testimonials on their site. One of the testimonials isn’t a letter, or statement – it’s a poem!

It’s really quite striking when you see it, not to mention that someone writing a poem about your business really shows how highly they valued it.

A little bit of variation in communication keeps things interesting, and shows quite a lot of imagination.

My friend is now looking forward to next week, and “interpretive dance Friday” . . . . I may get him a leotard. . . . !

I like money!

Once you’ve got a shiny, workable, awesome website (assuming you got one from Edge of the Web, of course!), there are things you can do to make even more money out of it.

There are two main forms of online marketing that can help you climb search engine rankings and attract more clicks and customers.

Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing is the most immediate way to get your site noticed and probably the method that brings you most control.

Organic marketing requires more time and effort, but can bring about a far more lasting and productive result.

Pay Per Click

PPC ads usually appear on the right of the main listings when you search. It ranks websites by how much they are willing to pay to appear in the listings for particular keyphrases. The more you are willing to pay for a click, the higher your company will rank.

One of the great things about PPC is that you keep tight control of how much you are paying, and how much benefit you are getting from it.

It also means you can tinker with your keyphrases and how much you spend on each click, so that you can work out what gives you the best return for your money.

Organic

Organic marketing is less immediate than PPC, but is a highly valuable way to optimise your site.

Organic listings in search engines are hard to climb, but are more likely to bring you high volumes of traffic, as most people click on organic listings before the paid for adverts.

The best way of getting your site to rank higher in search engine listings is through inbound links. Links from other websites to yours are very valuable, when search engines find them they know that your site is considered credible by someone else, which is taken into account when they rank you.

However, search engines are not easily fooled. If you go out and buy 100 links from online directories in a week, search engines know you’re just trying to improve your ranking, and won’t play along. The best links to get are from people in similar or related industries, relevant blogs or articles.

Simply turning up on a blog and posting an ad and a link to your site isn’t very helpful (it’ll probably just get you deleted for spamming), but involving yourself in the discussion, and including a link as an explanation or for extra info could be very useful.

The main thing with link building is to ensure you’re getting links from relevant or highly regarded sources. A link from the BBC counts for far more than one from justpayusforalink.com.

Of course, online marketing isn’t a one-or-the-other option, a mixture of both could be the magic blend that lets you make even more money online.

The internet is still a new opportunity for lots of businesses, even those that have been established for a while, but lots of people still find it difficult to work out how they convert that opportunity into a money-generating operation.

Far too many companies think that the internet isn’t the right place to do business, and simply don’t feel the need to get an online presence, but even if you’re a bricks and mortar firm, a website can help you find new customers and make more money – you just have to choose the right kind of site for what you do.

So what is the main idea behind your site? What do you need it to do?

Inform
An information-based site is usually the best option for a company that’s new to the world wide web. All it needs to do is provide the information about who you are and what you do. It can include anything you think is important; prices, service information, testimonials, but its main purpose is to promote your company.

This kind of site will augment your company’s ability to make money through greater exposure, creating a sense of professionalism (lots of customers have more confidence in a company with an online presence), and by making your business more available – visitors can get in touch whenever they want to, without you needing someone to answer the phones at half-past midnight!

Making money with an information site is also relatively easy to track. You can look at the statistics of people visiting your site and filling out your enquiry form (we provide our clients with an AW Stats package to keep track of these numbers), and it’s usually best to ask people how they found out about you if they call in too, as some people prefer to phone after seeing a site and get more immediate contact.

Sell
A website that sells, or an ecommerce site, is pretty self-explanatory when it comes to making money.

A website is a lot cheaper than a physical store, and it’s also open to a wider range of people for a much longer time. Making your products available for purchase by people all over the world at any time is a lot easier on the net than in person.

Again, you can use your stats package to find out the search terms people are using to find you and how long they stayed – useful information to let you know how your site is performing and how it could be improved.

Whether you’re looking to advertise your company online or directly sell across the net, a website can be a hugely valuable asset to a company.

Next week, I’ll be explaining how to make MORE money from the internet, by using Pay Per Click to manage your online marketing.

Mmmm, cake!

It’s Tom’s birthday today!

He reaches the grand old age of *, and is celebrating today with some fishing.

Requests for him to take his laptop with him were denied for reasons I can’t quite understand. Probably something to do with the temptation to just chuck the thing in the water, which I’d imagine would actually speed up the whole fish-catching enterprise.

Although I’m told this isn’t actually the point of fishing. Odd.

Anyway, happy birthday Tom, we hope you and all the family have a lovely day and that you don’t come across a megashark. Unless you happen to reel it in, which would be very impressive!

*removed for legal reasons

"Tie me kangaroo down, sport" - I hope you're singing the British version!

After a couple of weeks off due to Glastonbury (awesome!) and post-Glastonbury lurgy (decidedly NOT awesome), I’m back in the office.

After a couple of trips to a festival – particularly one as massive as Glasto, you start to become more of a discerning customer. Instead of spending most of your time at the big stages watching artists you already know, you become more of a wanderer, taking a listen of various bands before settling down with one you like.

It gives you a much better opportunity to find out who’s overhyped, who needs to bring on a string of guest stars to bulk up a fairly drab set list, who’s an utter legend, and who’s simply a lot of fun*.

Also you get to discover acts you’d never really considered – I returned home to download the entire Gomez and Mystery Jets back catalogues.

So I plan in future to spend a little more time shopping around. Not only is it fun, but you get a lot more for your money!

*for me this was Florence and the Machine, Gorillaz, Pet Shop Boys and Rolf!

Las Vegas and Warwick have a lot in common. Like the letter 'a'.

We at Edge of the Web are embracing the World Cup by doing what any respecting business would do – try and screw some money out of it!

So we’ve got ourselves a little sweepstakes (which is surprisingly difficult to organise when there are 5 people entering, and 32 teams!).

We’ve all put in a little bit of cash, and now have to rest our hopes on the unpredictable world of football to win us some cake money.

Here’s the draw.

Bhups – England, Algeria, USA, Ghana, Slovakia, Germany

Me – Nigeria, Mexico, Japan, South Africa, Ivory Coast, Netherlands, New Zealand

Mark – Uruguay, Greece, Switzerland, Australia, Chile, Honduras, Paraguay

Sam – Brazil, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, North Korea, Denmark, Cameroon

Tom – Argentina, South Korea, Serbia, France, Portugal

There were also 3 ‘blank’ entries to make up the numbers. Bhups drew one, and Tom managed to get the other two!

From these results, I have concluded the following.

I am resting all my hopes on the mighty Netherlands. Although no-one’s paid me to wear one of those orange dresses yet.

Bhups is slightly screwed by having drawn 3 teams from the same group.

Sam has clearly cheated. Spain, Brazil and Italy?! Come on!

Tom drew two blanks. And France. Enough said.

And Mark? Well, if any of Mark’s teams make it through to the semis I’m going to check the office for signs of satanic ritual.

So, let the tears and recriminations begin!

I love football!

What could be better than tea? Tea and biscuits!

My favourite person in the office is always the person who made me tea most recently (currently Mark – cheers Mark!).

A little tea or coffee break gives me a chance to step back from whatever I’m doing, and when I get back to it, I come back with a little extra energy and enthusiasm.

Whilst a caffeine-prompted energy boost might be good for my brain cells, I’m always very careful not to let it seep into my text. Enthusiasm is good, but let it show in the writing – not the formatting.

All that energy will usually make you look pushy, if not outright desperate.

So cut down on the CAPITALISATIONS and EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!!!

Trust me, you’ll look a lot more professional if you use them sparingly – and that way they’ll stand out more and have a better chance of drawing your customer’s eye.