www.dinghy-rope.co.uk

Over the past few weeks we have been very busy setting up our sister company Dinghy Rope.

As many of you know we are passionate sailors and can be found out on the water every weekend racing our Tornado catamaran.

After a lot of time spent researching we have decided to take the jump and get Dinghy Rope rolling. We are aiming for Dinghy Rope to be a cheap rope supplier for the UK, providing people with top quality products from English Braids, Kingfisher and Marlow ropes at a competitive prices under the RRP.

We started initially a couple of weeks back with our Ebay Rope Shop to test the water and see if the business was viable. This went very well and we were competing well with suppliers who have been there for years and are power sellers.

The next step of our journey was to set up our online rope shop which we have just launched this morning.

Being developers of online shopping carts we have set one up for ourself, the aim is to work on the search engine optimisation and rank above the others for many of the key rope search terms.

Now, we sit back and wait for that first crucial order….. Wish us luck!

Check out the site at www.dinghy-rope.co.uk

So far the UK Government have been flexible and have given all website owners until the 26th May 2012 to comply. Nobody knows where they will start and how they are going to find the websites which are not complying with the law.

Up to now this has all been very unclear as to what needs to be done on each website for it to comply, be legal and avoid a possible maximum fine of £500,000.

Here is a quick video from SkilTide, which explains about the law very quickly and in a graphical format

We of course want to help all of you out and advise you on the best way forward for your website. As the video says there are 3 options:
1. Ignore the law (we wouldn’t recommend this)

2. Stop Using Cookies (this can be done but it will affect the data being collected on your website)

3. Comply – The best option in the long run for your business and success of your website

Our recommendation would be to comply with the new law, it is not going to be too much work to implement and we would recommend the accordion slider as shown in the video.

If you would like some more information on how to get your website into shape then please contact us.

Every e-mail campaign you send out can generate lots of actionable data, which you can then use to refine your approach and future emails.

We’ve produced a number of newsletters and targeted email designs for a variety of clients. Some of our more recent are:

• The Spa Maldon’s newsletter
• The International Tornado Class newsletter
• Evolution Dome newsletter

Our clients have always found them beneficial and cost effective allowing them to communicate a key message or product for an affordable price.

The major advantage for many is the price, obviously at first there is an initial set up cost for design, build and testing of the template but after that it is only a small cost to populate the new content. Once you’re ready to go your email can hit as many people as you want depending on the information you have about your target audience.

Tailoring where your email goes is another great advantage, for example, if a user has not purchased in your online store for a while, why not send them a 20% off their next order voucher. You’re likely to get their custom back while adding to your sales and making money.

There are of course disadvantages, but in our opinion they are heavily outweighed against the advantages and benefit to your business.

We’ve put together some of the key advantages and disadvantages we see:

Advantages

• Instant contact for urgent announcements

• A direct sales channel to your consumer who more than likely sits at a computer for most of the day

• Cost effective – the highest ROI in the arena of digital marketing

• Ability to tailor content to your user

• Ability to cross sell and up sell

• Tracking of what attracts users – see the clicks through to your website

Disadvantages

• Spam – Emails can get stuck in the readers junk box or even marked as Spam

• Email overload – some users just subscribe to too much and your email can get lost

• You are making a commitment to produce weekly/monthly newsletter content

Our Top Newsletter Tips

• Collect customer email addresses – even if you don’t want to create a newsletter now, at least you have the information

• Always add an unsubscribe link to your newsletters

• Remove users who bounce back, constant failure to deliver emails can look bad on you

• Add an exciting email subject so your email stands out in the inbox

• Ensure your email reads well

More Information

If you would like some more information about email newsletters than please contact us. We are more than happy to sit with you, take down your requirements and provide a recommendation.

https://twitter.com/#!/smartArg

They used a series of Tweets on March 23rd, 24th and 25th to draw a moving picture as you scroll down. You see a Smart Car going through a journey.

The journey continues

Our answer would be Facebook page every time. There are a lots of interesting tools which will help you to analyse and monitor your fans to help boost your Facebook presence. Here are just some of them.

Analytics/Insights

A Facebook page allows you to see information and statistics on your posts and fans in an easy to read format. For example, see the graph below, this example is from the International Tornado Class Association Facebook page which we run.

The purple dots at the bottom show the dates where you made posts, the size of the dot shows how many people have interacted with that post.

The blue line shows how many people are viewing your page and the reach across your fanbase.

The green line shows how many people are talking about you or your subject matter.

As well as seeing the basics you can also view information on every single post you make, you can also filter this by the type of post. This information is shown below.

You can see above that the last post, made on the 24th of January reached 400 people, the reach is really key, especially if you are working on a page which reaches your customers across the World. Posting at the right time to reach different time zones can be crucial to how many people see.

The above information will also give you a good idea of what is working and what is not, look at the post at the bottom which was a photo with a question. The question was ‘If you could put a speech bubble beside the Helm and Crew what would they say?’ this was put alongside a photo of a boat about to turn over. The post was fun and invited users to add their comments, these are always the most successful.

Reviewing your statistics is key to your success, see what is and isn’t working and change accordingly. This is especially the case when posting products and items to buy.

Share Options

The Facebook team allow you to post in a few different formats:

• Status – update your fans with text
• Photo – upload and post a photo
• Link – add a link, maybe to a product or page on your website
• Video – upload and post a video
• Question – ask your fans a question

These options give you the flexibility to post a variety of content to your users.

The Questions option is one of our favourite, it really does engage users. Maybe run a competition too (be sure to check competition rules first), answer this question correctly and we’ll send one lucky person a £25 voucher, for example. Questions are also useful for customer feedback and future planning, ask your users what the next product they would like to see is.

Info Tab

With every Facebook page comes the ability to add information about your company/product/organistation/club etc.

Make sure you fill all of this information in, the more the better. Add your values and your business goals into the information, grab the user and ensure they hit that like button.

Nice Welcome

You also have the ability to create additional tabs for your Facebook page, see the below image from our friends at Evolution Dome. A nice graphical welcome showing their number one product, the trident dome.

Our Recommendations

• First of all, remember, everyone is watching your page, whether they are a fan or not
• Check your page, Facebook recommend that this is done in the morning and evening
• Tell your story
• Post a question, involve your followers and create a dialogue
• Ensure your posts are worth sharing, if your fans share their friends will also see the information
• Keep your page open, allow people to post and interact but keep a close eye on it, there are some idiots out there who want to post content which is not wanted
• Measure and optimise your content and posts
• Reply positively, even if the user is giving negative feedback. Offer them a money off voucher for next time, this is obviously dependant on your business but it shows others that you are willing to listen and genuinely sorry for the bad experience your customer has had
• Take advantage of plugins, put a like button on your website pages

Conclusion

We’ve only touched on a few items available with Facebook pages, if you have a page which you feel needs some work then why not contact us to see how we can boost your fans and business.

The letter was sent into Sainsbury’s customer services and they replied with an excellent response, targeted at the 3 year old.

This then hit Facebook and other social networks and was shared across the World. It doesn’t only show Sainsbury’s excellent customer service but also the fact that they are willing to listen to customers, no matter what their age.

More information can be found on the BBC website.

Click here is a commonly used term across the Internet for links to various things weird and wonderful, but is it the best text to use for a link? No is our answer!

Here are a few examples why.

Search Engine Optimisation

When putting together a website, the first thing you should think about is Search Engines, let’s face it, if your not doing it right in their eyes then nobody is going to find you. Search Engine Optimisation should be at the heart of your website planning, it is something we urge our customers to think about all of the time.

Having click here as your link is useless, Google and other search engines follow links on the page to see where they go and if links are meaningful. If your link says click here and then the user is taken to a page about ‘mint choc chip ice cream’ the two don’t tie up. A link should tell the user what to expect, if you’re linking to a page about mint choc chip ice cream tell the user about it.

For example, ‘check out our mint choc chip ice cream selection’

Search engines will then register that your target page is about mint choc chip ice cream and will rank you higher.

Designing Links

If your links are designed so they stand out you won’t have a need to use the term click here. It should be obvious to the user that they can click, for example, add an underline or a bold change of colour which is obvious, even to those with poor eye sight.

If it doesn’t stand out as being different the link isn’t going to do it’s job.

Accessibility

You’ve got to remember, not everyone can see your nice pretty styled link on the page, what about blind users who rely on screen readers to tell them what’s on the page? Does click here mean anything to them?

The experts at W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) provide this click here advice.

When calling the user to action, use brief but meaningful link text that:

• Provides some information when read out of context
• Explains what the link offers
• Doesn’t talk about mechanics
• Is not a verb phrase

Content Flow

Another angle to take is whether your content reads nicely, I find when reading websites if the same things are repeated or if all links say the same thing I get distracted and annoyed, or maybe that’s just me.

Read your content through again and again, or better still get someone with an unbiased and fresh set of eyes to take a look.

Morale of the story

I guess the morale of this story is to take time with your content, think it through and ask yourself whether it makes sense to your new potential customers.

• Think about links on your site, both internal and external
• All links should make sense
• Take the user to where they clicked to go

If your content doesn’t make sense, change it quick!

This little piece of kit will more than likely provide a lot of fun for me in 2012 and will give us the cutting edge in adventure video. Over the past few years I’ve become a big fan of the Go Pro camera, it’s a great little toy for all action sports and provides HD video or hi-res image files in various styles. It can also shoot images every 2 seconds.

I was first introduced to the Go Pro by Geoff Gritton of Team Before Ego (TB4E) when we worked on the Tornado Class 2010 Nationals video together. When we set off from Brightlingsea Sailing Club for that windy weekend we didn’t realise that over a year and a half later the video would have had 13,195 views on YouTube, not too shabby for a sailing video!

You can see the video here -

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3xKyh77jko

Bringing Wi-Fi technology into the sport of sailing will allow live video streaming for sailing events on a budget. This is surely the future, the success of the Extreme Sailing Series and Americas Cup daily and live videos has shown that. However, these guys do it with a MASSIVE budget, an option which is not available to sailing classes in the real World and without sponsors such as Oracle and Red Bull.

The flexibility of the Go Pro camera and ability to stream live to the Internet will surely prove to be a big success, allowing people to get random video angles never seen before while showing the emotion and passion on the sailors faces.

I am sure this will also be the case with other sports such as Snowboarding, Surfing, Mountain Biking and many more.

The only doubt we have is how reliable the Wi-Fi signal will be. I have no reason to expect a poor performance and if the Go Pro equipment I’ve used so far is anything to go by then it should work like a dream. We’ll be testing how it all works from the minute the parcel arrives on the door step. Maybe not on the water just yet, it’s pretty cold in the UK at the moment.

We’ll keep you all updated as soon as we have more to share.

The website is a more flexible solution that we had before so expect more news, updates and portfolio items.