Sep 11
Ben KingBusiness, Internet bit10, Business, Interweb, Web/Tech
Wow who’d have thought that having a great website developed was soo traumatic, especially when you own a company who does web design.
My trauma however is no reflection on the bit10 people doing my project, its more of a reflection on my inability to really know what I want!
We are now on our 3rd major design iteration and probably our 50th minor iteration, and its starting to look fantastic.
The main thing I have learnt from the experience so far is that we employ fantastic designers however they aren’t mindreaders. So unless you are the sort of person who can visualise exactly what you want and convey it in simple terms others can understand (neither of which I can do), then the design process has to be iterative.
Mental note to self ‘sell clients far more design iterations’. :)
Sep 07
Ben KingBusiness, Internet Cannonball, Interweb, Web/Tech
Marketing Week have published my letter to the editor regarding click fraud in response to their piece on the subject last week.
Unfortunately Marketing Week, don’t make content available to non subscribers online, so you will have to do with my copy below, or grab yourself a copy of the 7th September issue!
–
Dear Editor,
The rise in click fraud is a real cause for concern amongst UK businesses, (Search marketing feels pressure of click fraud, Marketing Week, 31 August 2006) and companies now need to reassess their pay-per-click advertising campaigns to make sure that they do not become the latest fraud victims.
Undoubtedly there are some companies that take great pleasure in clicking their competitors’ links when they first set up a Google AdWords campaign but this is not really a serious problem. The fun soon dies off, especially when companies realise that their competitors are probably doing the same to them.
The real threat actually comes from the automated click-fraud bots which are increasingly widespread, and with more and more PCs around the world now ‘owned’, the opportunities to commit click fraud are significant.
Companies need to protect themselves by limiting their daily spend on cost-per-click campaigns and by undertaking regular trend analysis which will quickly reveal if someone is trying to hurt them. Significant traffic from one region or IP range is relatively easy to deal with if the right controls are in place.
Unless companies start to put more rigorous processes in place to help them analyse and understand the clicks they receive, then the click-based advertising business could soon spiral out of control.
Ben King, Director, bit10, Coventry
Aug 10
Ben KingBusiness, Internet bit10, Business, Interweb, Web/Tech
We are redoing our website, because frankly its a bit rubbish, it consistently fails to convert traffic into leads, and it is a pretty poor reflection of bit10, a classic case of the cobblers shoes.
We know what is wrong with it and we have kicked off a project to get it right.
The great thing is that Ally and I get to be bit10 customers, and we are running the project as if it was a client project and we are going to do it textbook.
Steph is our messenger (project manager to the non informed), Stuart is our technical lead.
The first step, which is to complete high level project requirements is complete, and a budget allocated… you can read it here.
The next step is to kick off the ideas generation and actually decide exactly what we are doing… that happens this afternoon.
So far my experience as a bit10 customer has been a good one, however I am frustrated by the time it takes to ‘do the job properly’ – although I totally appreciate the necessity!
Aug 03
Ben KingBusiness, Internet Interweb, Web/Tech
Today I have only just discovered the joy that is Google Advertising Professionals, It allows us to manage all of clients adword campaigns from one ‘Client Centre’, which makes life significantly easier than maintaining separate logins and passwords, I can’t believe I didn’t discover it before! (Well actually Matt told me about it 
).
Jul 13
Ben KingBusiness Business, Interweb
This question (and others like it) is probably the most common question myself and others from bit10, get asked when talking to potential and new clients.
The answer is rarely the same however there are often common themes, and generally the problem is generally pretty easy to find.
So if you find yourself dissatisfied with the performance of your site, try asking answering these questions:
- Why do you think your website is not delivering?
Often we find customers have not actually set any expectations or targets for their site at the outset, and we often hear unqualified answers like ‘Well we only got 10 orders last week from the site.’.
It is imperative that up front you and your stakeholders are clear on the expected performance of the site. Make sure you set targets for visitors, hits, revenue and what ever else might be relevant to you business or service.
- How do you measure the effectiveness of your webite? All too often we find that customers are doing very little to measure the effectiveness of their site and/or any marketing activity they are doing alongside the site.All too often we find that customers are doing very little to measure the effectiveness of their site and/or any marketing activity they are doing alongside the site.
Ensure that you have the proper tools in place to accurately track what the visitors to your site actually do. Have a look at the likes of Google Analytics or even our very own Sitemetrics.
- What is the target audience for your website? People often give me a kind of ‘you what? are you stupid? Its obvious!’ type of look to this question. However the truth is that its often not obvious, organisations have many reasons for having a website beyond just sales, although they do not always realise it!A classic example is that we often come across customers who are getting loads of traffic to their website but no new business, upon applying some decent tracking software we discover that its all graduates looking for jobs!, and in the truth the site has little appeal to potential customers.
Ensure you are aware of all the key audiences for your site that you want to target and you cater for them accordingly.
- What agencies do you use to help you? Are they any good?! Working for (and owning!) an Internet solutions agency, bit10, I always find this question difficult to ask customers, and do it without being biased!Often we find ourselves in the position of only providing part of the solution, for example usability testing a site where we have not done the implementation, hence we end up assessing and providing feedback on other agencies work, so we get too see the extremes of what other agencies are delivering…There are a lot of great agencies out there, however there a lot of very poor ones who can let you down in many ways (for example focusing on design before/instead of information architecture).
Choose your partner agencies carefully, we have done a useful white paper that might help, you can find it here.
- What does your target audience think of your website, can they use it? We have an expression here at bit10, ‘if your users can’t use your website, its not usable’, seemingly obvious, however a subtle point missed by most website administrators.Neither can you, as the project sponsor, company owner, web developer actually can say for sure that your site is usable by your users.
The only way to ensure your website is usable by your target user is to do real usability testing. Get some expert help to test your site on a sample of your typical audience.
- How are you telling people about your website?
This is pretty straight forward, in the short term if you do not promote your site/business via the web and/or other channels you will get little or no traffic. In the longer term as your site gets indexed by the Google, Yahoo you will eventually get traffic, however this will take time and even then may not deliver the results you are looking for.
There are many ways to promote your site, from traditional offline promotion to Google Adwords. Whatever you decide to do ensure it is part of your overall web strategy.
This is really only the tip of the iceberg, but should help you begin to root out the problems behind an apparently unsuccessful site.
Jul 07
Ben KingInternet, Life Interweb
So having caught Dave Gormans rather excellent Googlewhack Adventure on Paramount Comedy one night late last week, I thought I would have a go at finding my own Googlewhacks.
My first Googlewhack ever is:
ocular sticklebrick – Links to the rather fun cutebrunts.com, ‘Phrases You Thought You’d Thought Of But We Got There First’, the full link is here. Somewhat unfortunately for me, my first Googlewhack links to page that has invented the phrase ‘ocular w**king’.
Now of course due to the nature of Google, it won’t be a Googlewhack long!
I then tried to find a bit10 related Googlewhack, I soon came up with:
bit10 larder – Links to fascinating Word Doc about Dunfermline and the Coast Planning, in which there is ‘Policy bit10′, you can read it here.
quickly followed by:
bit10 termites - Which links to a list of fictional worms, you can savour the experience here.
Not entirely sure that bit10 ones are fair game!
Hmmm… this could get addictive…
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