In fact Google put so much importance on the future of mobile web access that in 2010 they became a ‘mobile first’ company, meaning they develop their sites and tools for mobiles before desktop computers.

With the rise in popularity of mobile web browsing it’seeze websites launched a new website product at the start of 2012, aptly named it’seeze Mobile. “Our development team set to work last year on a new website system for mobile phones. It was essential that our mobile website platform still retained the unique it’seeze editing tool that all of our websites come with, enabling full editability throughout all sites” commented Karl Lewins, Business Development Manager at it’seeze. “Since our launch at the start of the year we have seen a massive surge in enquires for our mobile sites and I put this down to the popularity of smartphones and the number of people using them to browse the internet”.

In September 2009 mobile web traffic accounted for just 0.02% of all online traffic, but by July 2011 this rocketed up to 12.5%, and the latest figures from Westminster eForum from March 2012* say that mobile phones now account for a whopping 28% of website traffic! Meaning in under one year internet usage on a mobile phones has doubled.

With 42.16 million adults in the UK having access to the internet (representing 83.7% of the adult population)** it is increasingly important for businesses to have exposure for mobile phones.

The scale of which mobile web browsing has taken off can be seen from some interesting statistics below, taken from the latest Westminster eForum event titled ‘The Future of Mobile’, by Paul Rodgers, March 2012*

• There are more mobile phones in the UK than people
• The number of smartphone searchers doubles every two months
• 52% of people with a mobile phone have a smart phone
• 19% of search queries in the travel industry are from mobiles (was 11% in 2011)
• 16% of search queries in retail are from mobiles (was 10% in 2011)
• 19% of search queries in the entertainment industry are from mobiles (was 10% in 2011)
• An average of 4 Ferraris are sold on a mobile phone every month
• eBay forecasts $8 billion in mobile sales this year (one sale per second)
• 49% of all Paddy Power bets are made from mobile devices
• 28% of people in the UK have purchased something using their phone
• 38% of UK tablet owners spend more time on their tablet than watching TV
• 53% of people in the UK are ‘dual screening’ (using phone whilst watching TV for example)
• 20% of all YouTube views are from a mobile device
• 23% increase in search queries from tablets after Christmas day (due to them being given as presents)

“Mobile sites are now crucial to any business and just because you have a website, that doesn’t mean it’s geared up for mobile phones. It is very important to understand that desktop website design and mobile website design differ dramatically, and people using their phones to browse online need a different interface to navigate a website – standard websites are nowhere near equipped to handle this” adds Karl. “People expect quick load time, easy navigation, clean design and concise information as they view a mobile website on the go”.

It’seeze Mobile websites are available from as little as £150 plus a small monthly cost.

*http://www.gpmd.co.uk/blog/2012-mobile-internet-statistics

**http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit2/internet-access-quarterly-update/2012-q1/stb-internet-access-quarterly-update-2012-q1.html#tab-Users-and-non-users

Stuart
http://www.exactguiding.com/

Why does the bounce rate matter?

Gaining a high conversion rate is one of the main aims of a business website. Increasing your conversion rate means decreasing your bounce rate — your visitors have to stay on your site to convert.

Quality and relevancy natter

You only get one chance to create that first impression, and that chance only lasts 8 seconds. It’s not long is it? But, if visitors to your website do not see what they are looking for within 8 seconds they will leave. It’s crucial to reduce these single page visits, and improving the quality and relevancy of the landing pages will help.

6 Simple steps to reduce your bounce rate

1. Targeted traffic
   You need the visitors before you can even get a bounce rate. Visitors that are already interested in what you have to offer will go a long way to reducing your bounce rate, so it stands to reason that attracting targeted traffic to your site is the first step.
2. Relevant keywords
   Tailor each of your landing pages for one specific keyword phrase only and clearly define what you offer to ensure that your pages remain relevant to what your visitors are searching for. Make your headings work by making them compelling and using your keyword, and reinforce this term in your page content.
3. Focused landing pages
   A high bounce rate generally indicates that your site’s entrance page was not relevant to your visitors. Don’t lose sight of what your customer is looking for. Create a good first impression by remaining focused to your site’s mission to sell, inform or entertain. Match your heading with intent, clearly define what it is you offer and remember relevance and quality at all times.
4. Create trust
   Add signs of trust, from badges and logos from professional organisations to user reviews and testimonials. Including a testimonial from an existing customer is very effective in building trust with prospective customers. Adding trust icons next to your form submit buttons as “point of action assurances” will result in a higher conversion rate.
5. Social media networking
   The impact of social media on bounce rate is becoming increasingly important. Use social media to interact with your target audience; gain like-minded or interested fans and followers on the social media networks, participate on forums and blogs relevant to your product or service and establish authority in your area in order to attract your audience.
6. A single call to action
   Determine your visitor intent in order to convert them into clients, customers, or subscribers by creating a single and focused call to action. A high conversion rate requires a straightforward call to action.

Conclusion

Understanding bounce rates and the principles of creating the best landing pages is essential to improve your site’s conversion rate, and although this is not an exhaustive check list we hope it provides some useful key principles to help you optimise your landing pages.

At the start of last year we pulled together the page view counts from all our servers to produce the real-time counter that you can see on our home page. Back then it read 44,000,000, but with our rapid growth it passed the 100,000,000 early in the morning on 11th April.

To celebrate we held the it’seeze views competition to win a new iPad – check back tomorrow when we announce the winner. Some of the entries are shown below.

According to Cutts the update, which is due to go live in a few weeks, is planned to level the playing fields between those companies that can afford to spend thousands on SEO and the small organisations that have to work on their own web content.

It aims to give all sites the opportunity to rank well if they have good content, even if it hasn’t been search engine optimised, which is something many SEO companies have worked out how to do. Cutts explained that the websites which would be targeted and punished are those that “throw too many keywords on the page, exchange way too many links, whatever they’re doing to go beyond what a normal person would expect.”

Content should be driven by topics and not keywords. It should be about what the visitor wants to read and not what you think Google wants. This is something that Google has been working towards since the ‘Panda’ updates that were rolled out last year.

You need to write compelling content based on what your audience would find useful and relevant to them. Cutts says: “Make a compelling site. Make a site that’s useful. Make a site that’s interesting. Make a site that’s relevant to people’s interests… We’re always trying to best approximate if a user lands on a page if they are going to be annoyed… All of the changes we make are designed to approximate, if a user lands on your page, just how happy they are going to be with what they’re going to get.”

Creating that outstanding content is not difficult; simply think about what your visitors want first, and search engines second.

6 tips to making your content work:

1. Quality Content
Unique quality content has always been necessary and is more important than ever with the upcoming Google updates. Think about your audience and give them the information they want. Remember to make it interesting!

2. Fresh Content
Sites need to grow and Google favours sites with fresh up-to-date content, so update your site with quality and relevant content on a regular basis. This will give your visitors a reason to come back.

3. Relevant Content
Search engines look for the most relevant information and will display web pages that offer the best results in response to a search query. Making your content relevant to a search query is a critical part of content optimisation.

4. Quantity
Writing real quality content generally equates to quantity. However, some topics can generally be very laborious to read so ensure that it is interesting, relevant, focused and easy to read. Add headings using H1 and H2 tags, keep paragraphs short, and use bullet points if needed to organise information.

5. Keeping it natural
Over-using your keywords in your content will turn your visitors off and also search engines. Quality and focused content will naturally include your keywords so don’t go out of your way to add more keywords into your content.

6. Easy to share content
Content shared on social media platforms will give you a larger audience and will add more weight to the ranking of your site. Bing’s Duane Forrester explains that “If you’re not engaged socially, you’re missing the boat because the conversation is happening socially about you and about your content. Those are really important signals for us. Whether you’re involved or not is your choice, but those signals still exist whether you’re in the conversation or not.’

Write content for your audience and keep it focused, interesting and informative. Continue to develop new relevant content to ensure that your site is always kept up-to-date and fresh and at the same time build up your social networks where you can distribute and share your content.

Many web application companies take a ‘one size fits all’ approach, and shy away from custom development. After all, custom development is hard: you need to liaise with the client, draw up a specification, come up with a fair price, create the code, and maintain it as the customer’s business evolves over time. On top of this, if you don’t plan ahead then you end up with hundreds of incompatible variations of your core application.

At it’seeze we’ve avoided the final problem through good application design – there’s just one version of the editing system, used by all clients no matter what custom code they have – but there’s no getting around the fact that custom development is hard. That’s okay though – people will pay for good solutions to hard problems, and it sets us apart both from other web application companies who won’t take on this kind of work and from the dreaded IT consultancies who charge eye-watering amounts.

The top of the Homeship home page

The brief

Homeship is a new service from the nationwide logistics firm MIW. Whereas MIW targets business customers, Homeship is aimed at the general public. Their brief was simple – create a website where potential customers can generate quotes and pay online – and they even had an idea for the application flow.

This sounds like a developer’s dream: the client has come up with the specification, so all you need to do is write it down and implement it. This would be doing the client a great disservice. As a developer it’s important to remember that while the client knows more about their business than you ever will, they’re not an expert on application design – that’s what they’re paying you for. After discussions with Homeship we came up with an application flow so simple that you can get a quote in as little as 30 seconds

The application

A prominent form on the Homeship home page lets you enter the collection and delivery postcodes. You’re then taken into the application, which consists of a series of simple forms. Let’s have a look at the first of these:

Providing details of the items to be delivered

There are two lines of instructions, but you don’t need to read them – it’s completely clear what you need to do. This is the key to good web application design: people have arrived on your website from a search engine, and they can just as easily go back and click on a different result, so your application had better be completely intuitive.

The quotation, with the option to proceed to payment

After filling in this form, you’re presented with your quote. You enter your name and e-mail address, and have two options: proceed to payment, or just be e-mailed the quote. If you choose to proceed to payment you’re asked for the remaining details – your desired delivery date, collection and delivery addresses, and telephone numbers – and then it’s off to PayPal to pay. That’s all there is to it.

The administration system

Let’s face it: administration systems are boring. That’s no excuse for them to be ugly as well. Sure, only you and the client will ever see it, but don’t they deserve better than monochrome Times New Roman? They’re going to be using this system every day, so seize the opporunity to make their lives a little more pleasant. Let’s have a look at a page from the Homeship administration system:

Managing zones in the Homeship administration system

The visual similarity with the front-end of the site is obvious, and this consistency makes it easier for Homeship employees to use the system. This kind of attention to detail is the hallmark of our custom development work, and it delights our clients.

Simple, elegant typography

Simple, clean typography, if done well, can have a greater impact and deliver a stronger message than type filtered with special effects. I’ve included some examples that illustrate the use of simple typography to great effect:

Omni TI Website

Digital Mash Website

Estate Black Website

Stylized, clever typography

With a bit of skill a designer can make the typography work in a slick and pertinent way. Over-styling or using naff built-in filters (Microsoft Word take a bow) can create unforgivable design disasters! Here’s some examples of stylized typography relevant to its subject matter:

Tips for typography

This would be a very long blog if I were to bore you with the rules of typography. So I’ll do what any self respecting designer with no time on his hands would do and give you some links to find out for yourself:

Getting Started – A Beginners Guide
10 Typography Tips
40 Killer Typographical Posters (Advanced Effects)

When developing a website it is really important to not confuse your vision for the website with what is going to work for your business and attract your customers. Should you sabotage your business website because of what you like, or what you think is important to you?

The Plantabox home page

Very often an individual within a company will only consider what they want to project, emphasise and shout to the world. This is a danger as very often it is not what the world wants or needs from them.

All too often the text content is directed not at the world online, but is instead directed at either their local or existing customers — or, even worse, it has no direction at all. The concept that anyone anywhere who has a computer may see their website and be a potential customer has just not filtered through.

So what should the website content actually say? Common sense should prevail, — what do you look for, what would draw you in? The website must be designed for the visitors, not the owner, if it is to be successful.

The home page

The home page should introduce your business its products and services without jargon, embellishment or waffle. This page contains the main navigation (buttons to click to get around the site) and this should be clear and practical. This page should contain text that includes possible search terms within meaningful sentences. For example, if you wnat to be found for producing pink fluffy slippers in the Devon area, a sentence such as “We produce quality pink fluffy slippers in the heart of Devon” will help the site to be found.

The Ink2Paper home page

About us

The visitor is looking for an introduction to you or your company — they need to know your pedigree. They want to know your experience and ability level in order to gain confidence that you can be trusted to provide the services they require, or can produce the products they need in an efficient and timely manner. Name-drop branded customers or partnerships if you can, or better still link to testimonial pages or full case studies to underline your experience and capabilities.

Products and services

Regardless of whether or not you actually sell online, thepromotion of your business, products, or services should be professional, informative, and concise but always designed to draw your visitors in.

Again think what you would want to know if you were the customer and knew nothing about the product. What is it? How does it work? Are there colour or functionality options? Is there any restriction on sale or use? What is the cost? Is there a delivery charge? Once they have this information they can make their informed decision.

You must then make sure that the site navigation leads visitors effortlessly with as few stages as possible through to the sale or selection of you as a supplier.

Subsequent pages

Further pages should all follow the format of being text-rich with keywords to aid good SEO, but still must remain informative and clear.

The recipe

So the recipe for a good and successful website is:

• Remember that the website is for your customers, and not for you
• Good design — attractive and visually pleasing
• Easy navigation — customers must be able to get to where they need to be easily
• Customer-based information — text content should be composed to be informative and helpful to the customer, and remember to create keyword-rich content to aid search engine optimisation

This year’s Christmas party was at Steps Bistro, a lovely little restaurant near Torquay’s harbourside. The food was fantastic and the cracker jokes were awful.

The whole gang together

Each year, instead of giving Christmas cards, we have a collection for Great Ormond Street Hospital. This year we raised over £30 to help keep the Christmas magic alive for their remarkable children.

The Secret Santa was a new addition to our festivities. After our Christmas buffet we gathered around the Christmas tree for the big reveal…