Website Design Blog

Hello Twitter Friends

June 25, 2010 By Mick Say Leave a Comment

Hey Twitter Followers

Hello Twitter friend, thanks for following me from Twitter, I really appreciate you taking the time to come and check us out.

The Website Design Company is owned and operated by Full Column Ltd, read more about the UK Website Design Company <here.

You can read more about Mick Say the Website Developer and online marketing strategist <here

We’d love you to read about our website owners, website management and online marketing training course < here. If you would like to learn more about our advanced Twitter Marketing course please follow this link “Advanced Twitter Marketing” to our sister website, the Online Marketing Academy.

Thanks again for following me Mick Say, fancy a chat? Give me a bell, 07719 061 835

Hope to speak soon

Regards – Mick

Filed Under: Website Design Tagged With: Mick Say, Twitter

Google Caffeine New and Improved Search

June 10, 2010 By Mick Say 2 Comments

Google has just announced that it has completed the rollout of Google Caffeine.

Google Caffeine New and Improved Search and indexing

New Google Caffeine

Google caffeine is the new, improved web indexing system that now powers the world’s largest and fastest search engine.

In August of last year, it was revealed that Google was working on a new version of its search engine. The project, named “Caffeine,” was initiated in order to create a faster and more accurate indexing and search system. It was also designed to better handle rich media and real-time content in the current web 2.0 era.

It’s been a quite some time since we heard about Google Caffeine, but today Google says that Caffeine is live on its servers.

Here’s how indexing on Google Search now works, according to the technology giant:

“Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.”

Website Design with Caffeine Standards Built in

Like Goolge say we should notice the changes that Caffeine brings to the SERPS quite soon so it may be worth checking your websites SEO and making sure your website is up to the web 2.0 job.

Have fun – Mick

Filed Under: Website Design Tagged With: Google, Search.Caffeine

Social Media the New Mass Market

June 9, 2010 By Mick Say Leave a Comment

Gone are the days when online was isolated and lonely. Today we are witnessing the opposite, thanks to Social Media

A new online ethos and available technology is driving people to connect online and then meet up with others, in the real world. This new trend is begging to be turned into new services for your customers.

As predicted by the futurists over a decade ago, hundreds of millions of people are now living a major part of their lives online, and enjoying the experience!

However, this has not turned an entire generation in to house-bound, anti-social animals: Instead social media and mobile communications is fuelling a new generation of face-to-face meetings and group interactions that defies every cliché about diminished human interaction in our ‘online/digital era’.

So please forget a future in which consumers lose themselves in a virtual world where children never see daylight, instead expect people to meet up in the future like they never did in the past.

Thanks to social media and online evolution, many of millions of people are now searching for, finding, connecting and staying in touch with likeminded people in the virtual world, with regular updates and mobile access now bringing an explosion of networking, socialising and meet-up’s in the real world.

People have a biological need to connect and be social

Thanks to new technology online Social Media feeds the existing, fundamental human need to interact with other people which goes far beyond enjoying one another’s company, or being emotionally dependent on other people.

So, no surprise then that hundreds of millions of people are now adding and farming socialised business and personal profiles making it really easy to discover, or stay in touch with, likeminded peers.

Think friends and family, colleagues, romantic interests, and those sharing similar working lives, out of work interests, political persuasions and causes. And all this ‘befriending’ takes place in bewildering numbers.

Never before have people been able to build and maintain such extensive and relevant personal networks and this will only accelerate in the future.

Interesting Social Media Stats from PewInternet:

Twitter: 100 million+ users, with 50 million tweets sent each day.

Facebook : nearing 500 million users. The average user has 130 friends, spends 55 minutes a day on the site and receives three “event invitations” to real-life gatherings every month (in December 2009, the company stated that 3.5 million events were created every month). Next? According to The New York Times, Facebook will soon incorporate ‘location’ in two ways: its own features for sharing location and APIs to let other sites and apps offer location services to Facebook users. This could well be a MASS MINGLING killer app.

LinkedIn : over 65 million members. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second.

A ‘veteran’ MASS MINGLING engine like Meetup has 6.1 million members, handling 2.2 million RSVPs and 180,000 meet-ups, in 45,000 cities a month.

Foursquare has one million users, while Gowalla: 150,000 users.

Nearly three quarters (73%) of online teens and an equal number (72%) of young adults* use social network sites. 73% of adult profile owners use Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% use LinkedIn. (Source: Pew, Feb 2010.)

There are countless millions of personal web pages, rss feeds, status updates, tweets, profiles, blogs and mashups:

Thanks to fast broadband and mobile connections young people will stay linked possibly for the rest of their lives via their blogs and other social media integrations which will leave life-long Google imprints that will make it easier to find them.

Whilst the rise of the online world has resulted in an orgy of real world activities that are all about connecting and meeting, from cultural events, business interests and seminars, even concerts to a global bar audience to a retail renaissance, to tourism & travel now being one of the world’s largest industries, employing over 220 million people and generating over 9% of global GDP.

New Online era and a new way of doing business

In short, people have always and will for a long time to come enjoy interacting with other people so today and more so in the future, there is no online, there is no offline there are just connections via technology, leading to connections in person.

For business the message is clear – Does your website allow you to be social?

Filed Under: Website Design Tagged With: Social Media

Are you getting a slice of the Pie?

June 4, 2010 By Mick Say Leave a Comment

Did you know that 26% of the worlds population are Internet users? The numbers beggar belief.

World Population 6,767,805,208 of which 1,802,330,457 are Internet users. And as you can imagine the users are all in the developed world and the majority of them have disposable income and they might just want to spend a bit of it with you and your business, but only if you are visible online.

By visible I mean have a website which can be found!

World Internet User Statistics

Statistics are for December 2009.

In Europe 53% of the population are Internet users so if you take away small children and “old people” you can extrapolate that around 70% of working Europeans are online regularly and often searching for products and services to buy.

Importantly the numbers are growing at a mind-blowing rate. So if these numbers do not convince you that you need a website which works, then you are indeed a hopeless case!

Are you getting a slice of this pie?

If you are chasing business, your network is not big enough

You will often hear me say that your website is the HUB of your business, increasingly your website is the beating heart which pumps life giving revenue directly and indirectly in to your bank. When you are well enough connected via your website your business will begin to grow. But its not going to be easy.

You need the right kind of website and you need to drive traffic from a multitude of sources, OK this might sound like hard work, and to be honest it is, but if you don’t do it, for sure your competitors will and it does not take a professor to tell you what the result of this will be!

So my message to you is review your website and give it a health check and if it does not tick all of the web 2.0 boxes then get a new one!

Speak to us, you might be pleasantly surprised at the cost.

Ask us about our Website Health Check Clinic.

Filed Under: Website Design Tagged With: Internet, Statistics, Website Design

Web 2.0 for Better Business

June 1, 2010 By Mick Say Leave a Comment

Why is web 2.0 better for business and why is the traditional static website now prehistoric?

We ask the questions:

Do you have an old static website ? If yes, do you think you should be thinking of upgrading it ?

Hell yes, you should replace your old static website PDQ ! and here’s why

Website Life-Time Costs

Look even if you are approaching this question from a website cost perspective you should change your static website to a web 2.0 website very quickly because web 2.0 websites are (or should be) delivered with website owner Content Management Systems (CMS) you no longer need to suffer webmaster fees for simply updating your website pages or adding new content for you, you or your staff can now easily do this your self!

Now, Quick, React, be First, be Fast be Open, be Responsive

Blog Syndication

You cannot afford to wait to post content or reply to market or consumer demands, you need to communicate with your visitors and followers in real-time, your content should be syndicated to give wider and deeper coverage to a greater audience, your blogs should be syndicated, Twittered and FaceBook’ed within seconds of being posted. Your new modern followers will think you passe if you cannot achieve this.

Web 2.0 is about you sharing your knowledge and your experience with your followers: What’s that, FOLLOWERS ? do you mean website visitors ?

Well yes kind of, but you should be forging your business and promoting yourself as a leader in your field or your business the best at what is you do. If you are the leader and you write good and frequent content and you welcome an open and responsive relationship with your website visitors – they will become your followers and if you keep at it with integrity your business will grow as a result.

Blogging for Better Business

OK so you think that you are the best at what you do? Well maybe you are but how many people know that?

Your immediate family? Your Immediate clients? 10 people, 100 people ? Well unless you are a household brand name possibly no more than 1000 people would consider you or your business as the leader in your field, the best plumber, baker or candle-stick maker!

One sure-fire way to become the accredited leader in your field and to win more business is to write blogs about what you do and optimise those blogs for the search engines and syndicate the content to the entire universe.

Of course you can’t do any of that with an old static website ! You have to have a web 2.0 online marketing platform created by yours truly – Mick Say

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

OK so I am not going to write a great deal about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) in this blog but the search engines all like fresh new content and the more fresh new content you write the better the search engines will like you and the better search engine return results you will get and eventually if you write meaningful content that we humans like you will land the converted first page on google! But you gotta work at it.

And guess what, – Increasingly you cannot achieve any of this with an ageing static website, so you need to call in the A Team to build a new web 2.0 website or online marketing platform.

Call mick any time 07719 061 835.

You might want to read my blog: What is Web 2.0?

Filed Under: Website Design Tagged With: Better Business, Blogging, CMS, Content Management Systems, Mick Say, Online Marketing, SEO, Web 2.0

What is Web 2.0?

June 1, 2010 By Mick Say 4 Comments

The term “Web 2.0″ is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing and user-centred design and collaboration on the World Wide Web.

What is Web 2.0 ?

A Web 2.0 website allows its users to interact with each other as contributors to the website’s content, in contrast to websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.

Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs and mashups.

Our Web 2.0 websites are State-of-the-Art Mashups mixing interactivity with blogging, web pages, social media and syndication of content.

The Web we know today which loads into a computer screen browser is essentially just static screen fills and is only the embryo of the World Wide Web to come in the near future. The first glimmerings of Web 2.0 are beginning to appear, and we are just starting to see how that embryo might develop.

The Web will be understood not as screen fills of text and graphics but as a transport mechanism in to the ether through which interactivity happens. It will appear on your computer screen, your TV, car dashboard, mobile phone and your hand-held game machines, possibly even your fridge!

Web 2.0 is about community and sharing

It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis of FaceBook and Twitter.

It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

Web 2.0 draws together the capabilities of client- and server-side software, content syndication and the use of network protocols. Standards-oriented web browsers may use plug-ins and software extensions to handle the content and the user interactions. Web 2.0 sites provide users with information storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities that were not possible in the environment now known as “Web 1.0″.

Web 2.0 websites typically include some of the following features and techniques. Andrew McAfee used the acronym SLATES to refer to them:

Search – Finding information through keyword search.

Links -Connects information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, and provides low-barrier social tools.

Authoring – The ability to create and update content leads to the collaborative work of many rather than just a few web authors. In wikis, users may extend, undo and redo each other’s work. In blogs, posts and the comments of individuals build up over time.

Tags – Categorisation of content by users adding “tags” – short, usually one-word descriptions – to facilitate searching, without dependence on pre-made categories. Collections of tags created by many users within a single system may be referred to as “folksonomies”

Extensions – Software that makes the Web an application platform as well as a document server.

Signals – The use of syndication technology such as RSS to notify users of content changes.

Blogs and RSS - are often held up as exemplary manifestations of Web 2.0. A reader of a blog or a wiki is provided with tools to add a comment or even, in the case of the wiki, to edit the content.

Web 2.0 for better business ?

Read the next instalment to see why web 2.0 is better for business and why the traditional static website is or should now be history!

Do you have an old static website ? If yes, do you think you should be thinking of upgrading it ?

Filed Under: Website Design Tagged With: Mick Say, Web 2.0, Web Content, Web Desing

Which Computer Web Browser ?

June 1, 2010 By Mick Say Leave a Comment

Which Computer web browser should I use? Which web browser is best, and why ?

Which Web Browser ?

Most desk-top computers and laptops are delivered with Microsoft Internet Explorer pre-loaded. As a website designer I personally use four browsers on a daily basis.

These are, Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari. I do like Apple Safari, if you are an Apple computer user you should use Safari.

If like me you are a PC user your choice is whittled down to the remaining three browsers.

When I open the same website on three computer screens and inspect them for their aesthetic look and feel in each of the browsers, NOTICABLY Internet explorer from Microsoft does not display the fine detail as well as FireFox or Google Chrome.

For example the Microsoft Browser seems not to want to display things like round corners on websites, so that’s Microsoft out of the equation. Microsoft need to get that fixed.

So now we are down to Google Chrome and FireFox.

I have to say that both browsers are 100% excellent in how they represent what the web-designer intended the audience to see. so top marks to them both.

In terms of security both are level pegging and have my equal vote.

So who is the winner and why? Which is my favorite web browser?

FireFox Wins the Day

FireFox gets my ultimate vote because it is so flexible, it can be personalised better than the rest and it has so many more social media and webmaster tools and extensions available than the others.

So if you want to improve your web browsing experience my advice is to download and use the FireFox Web browser.

You can download FireFox for free here:

What is your opinion of web browsers ?

Filed Under: Website Design Tagged With: FireFox, Google, IE, Microsoft, Safari, Web Browsers