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Granted a great pitch is more than a good PowerPoint presentation, but in my experience the majority of presentations I have seen could do with, with the best intentions, spicing up a little. The ubiquity of PowerPoint also means it ends up being the default visual tool for all kinds of product showcasing - meetings, trade shows, events and even sometimes for in store promotions. I am often disappointed that more was not made of these vital opportunities when you have, or at least should have, the undivided attention of important decision makers.

A recent piece of work we undertook was for a trade show for a large software provider. There was a scary amount of PowerPoint slides, all with relevant material but for certain there was far too much content. Our task was to distill this information into a compelling story and keep the tempo message and visuals relevant to the situation. It had to be relevant and engaging at any point during the complete loop so the audience would understand the company’s services and offerings without even talking to trade show staff, or even better prompting them to take the conversation further.

For this we used flash which you might assume would be an expensive solution for what is a ‘bread and butter’ selling tool. Not so. While we thoroughly advocate spending time and budget getting your visual materials looking top notch, this total project was turned around in a day (and a night!) ready in time for the show. They key to this is that it looked like it took a lot longer.

PowerPoint is widely underused in terms of potential, but is also widely understood and very flexible. So using flash, video and 3D within your PowerPoint especially to top and tail the presentation gets people attention and ends the ’show’ with a flourish

Often deciding on developing a site just to satisfy your customers that you have an online presence or because the competition has a site is rarely a good enough reason alone. By accepting that the momentum of online channels is only going to increase, an ambitious company should see embarking on an online strategy as a long term process. We have often seen nice little sites designed, built, launched and gather dust in a nice little corner of the web, when there is so much more potential to capitalise on.

Creating a great site is not just up to your web agency. Maintaining and adding relevant content and changes in your site to accommodate changing market conditions, seasonal promotions and new demographics and geography is all possible internally if you have the right tools to start with. The flexibility and adaptability of your site is a great advantage and can grow as you do.

Small budgets often seem to attract similar size briefs. We often prefer to see big ideas, and work to prioritise functionality to give you the very best chance of success from the outset. As you business grows hand in hand with your site, you can then work with your agency to take it to the next stage.

So in simpler terms, your web project should not be a tick on a to-do list, rather something to grow and evolve with your business, growing organically from a great ROI. Your ideas for your site should not be limited by your budget. If you have big plans, treat it as an installment of a bigger and lucrative investment.

Tim Mckeown

The reality in times like these is sentiment, and from my limited pub chat research its about how we all feel about our financial prospects. I have not felt the pinch yet in any dramatic way but I feel like staying in and battening down the hatches. I have started collecting vouchers and coupons, pinning them to the fridge for the next shopping day and and have lost my boyish interest in cars that drink fuel like happy hour in Benidorm. I shop every week online, mindful that I am saving fuel and time so I can spend a bit longer in the office. I bulk buy more and rarely make spontaneous purchases. I welcome offers sent to me, saving them in special folders in Outlook and think the new Aldi advertising campaign is genius in timing and creative. Such a shame however that the website is not as inspiring, they could do so much more online to capitalise on such a brilliant campaign.

I don’t know how many of you share these thoughts and experiences but the reality is indicated by the UK Government’s Office of Statistics. Last year online eCommerce in the UK was worth more than £160 billion and B2C online retail now accounts for a staggering £4.5 billion per month, up more than 30% over the year. If the UK goes into recession (i.e. a dip of 3%) then ecommerce will only grow at an estimated 27%, which is a staggeringly good prognosis.

The decline in overall retail sales should be balanced against the increasing share of total volume attributed to online sales. This actually shows and opportunity for businesses to either switch to, or integrate online retailing and for existing e-businesses to increase efficiency, loyalty and margins.

Marketers need to look closely at their strategies for promotion and the usability of their sites. For example a simple change to the look and feel of a checkout can have a major effect on conversion rates and following up on abandoned carts with emails designed to bring the customer back to a purchase should be utilised to their full potential.

Proactive behaviour in optimising online retail efficiency will mean that companies will be able to weather the storm and be better positioned for an upturn in the economy.

Tim Mckeown

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However, it is still a common practice to make sure one’s pages do validate W3C standards, and in the future, in an effort to judge site authority and quality, Google may just include W3C validity in their algorithm; you never know. Check your site here http://validator.w3.org/

Besides, believe it or not, there is much more to the web than only Google. And Yahoo, Ask.com & MSN’s Live Search are also major traffic generators in the Global search market.

Additionally, if you’re going to be running a social media campaign, planning on running a story on Digg, and the majority of Digg users use a browser such as Safari or Firefox which your site may not load correctly in or results in botched CSS formatting, your story is going to get no attention and you’ll be missing out on the potential of hundreds of organic editorial links.

So, when looking at the whole picture; presentation is reality is reputation… and having a smooth and valid site is critical to your company’s reputation.

Testing your web pages in browsers is an absolutely necessary process for building any web page. It allows you to see what others can see, and often you will notice mistakes in your HTML code because of the symptoms they cause in browsers. But what about when your testing browser(s) display the pages exactly as you intended.

Are your pages error-free? Not necessarily.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sets the standards for coding HTML and CSS for web pages. They also provide tools to validate your code for free. So do some third-parties. The question you might be asking is, “if my page looks fine in Internet Exporer, Safari, Firefox, etc. why do I need to worry about validation?” If all you’re looking is for proper display, you might not have to. However, if you’re concerned at all with search engine optimization (SEO), and you probably should be, validating your source code is a necessity.

One reason for this is the difference between search engine spiders and browsers. Spiders “crawl” the web indexing web pages and their content. They are basically toned-down web browsers that aren’t concerned with displaying for a user but with recognizing content. In other words, search engine spiders are looking at the same code your web browser is and parsing it in a very similar way. This difference in functionality, however, is vast.

There is a very real pressure on web browser developers to ensure that their browsers display pages correctly to the user. This often includes forgiving errors in the source code. Improperly nested elements, unclosed tags, unrecognized parameters - these are all errors in HTML code that might not affect your web page’s display in your favorite browser. When it comes to search engine spiders, however, it can be an entirely different story.

That is not to say that small errors in your HTML code will spell death for your search engine rankings. Certainly they won’t normally make your page invisible to spiders.

They can, however, disrupt the vastly important process of a spider parsing your page for all relevant content or make some of that content invisible. And since so much of SEO is paying close attention to every little detail of your site and its content, why leave the possibility open of causing problems for search engines when they try to index your pages?

Validation might mean some big headaches when you set out to fix every last error on your pages, but the benefits of valid code are clear - and running your pages through a validation service like that of the W3C can do a lot in the way of educating you about the mistakes you may be making.

So, in a nutshell, here are some basic tips:

Use W3C to make sure your site is viewable in major browsers, especially Firefox & Safari
Test your site on mobile browsers
Check for all errors in HTML coding and fix them when possible
Pay attention to your programming errors and be aware of them when programming your next site
If you pay for a designer, put something in the contract that the site must pass W3C validation.

The majority of large Internet service providers now use rigerous spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets into their customers inboxes. Spam filters generally “rank” each email by a number of different criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level (such as 10 spam points), then it is flagged as spam and deleted.

To make sure your emails don’t get flagged as spam — and deleted before they even get to your subscribers — avoid using words such as ‘Free’, ‘$$$’, ‘Save’, ‘Discount’, etc in both the subject line and the content of your email.

2. Maximizing Click-Thru Rates

Both web pages and emails can contain alot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.

Numerous research papers tell us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link — such as this — as opposed to a banner or button. So, if you’re going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions/sales for you.

3. The Power of Personalization

If you were standing in a crowded mall, which of these would get your attention: “HEY, YOU!” or “HEY JOHN” (assuming your name is John). The power of personalization can and should be used in your emails. In-fact, by simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the boring “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%. Why? Put simply, it’s because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

4. One-Click Unsubscription

If you want to grow your mailing list, then there’s 2 things that you absolutely must have: a double opt-in process, and a quick way to unsubscribe. In some countries, it’s actually mandatory by law that every email has an unsubscribe link in it. The unsubscribe link should take the recipient directly to a page where they are then removed — courteously — from your mailing list.

5. Signup Confirmation

Don’t get accused of spamming — always, and I mean always use a double opt-in confirmation process. Double opt-in means that after your visitor initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you should then send them a “confirmation” email. This email should contain a special link back to your email marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.

6. Tuesday / Wednesday = Increased Response

Studies conducted by online research analysts have shown that the best days to perform a mail-out to your list are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.

On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend. On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. We’ve actually experimented with this, and received the best results by sending out emails at around 2-3pm (American Pacific Time) on a Wednesday.

7. Repeat Email Communication

An autoresponder is an email that is scheduled to be sent at a certain time interval after someone subscribes to your mailing list. Autoresponders are a great way to automatically follow up with your subscribers or provide them with more information on your products/services.

For example, if you provide a free newsletter, you could setup 3 autoresponders for new subscribers: the first is sent 1 hour after they subscribe. It contains a thank you message and a link to get 10% off your newly released eBook.

The second is sent 24 hours after they subscribe, telling them about your community message boards, and the third is sent 72 hours after they subscribe, in which you can offer them a special deal on becomming a paid member of your site.

Autoresponders help your subscribers build trust in both your company and your brand, and this can help make it easier when trying to close sales in the future.

8. Consistency is the Key

If you’re running a newsletter or frequent email publication, make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. By keeping the look and feel consistent, you help to maintain and strengthen your brand and your image to your subscribers, which again will make it easier to close sales when you need to.

Create a template for your newsletter and whenever you need to create a new issue, use that template as the basis for each issue.

9. On Time, Every Time

When sending an email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

10. The Half-a-Second Subject Line

When your email arrives in your subscribers inbox, you generally have about half a second to catch their attention with the subject line of your email. After this, they will either delete your email or ignore it. In your subject line, try and specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using ‘OurSite Newsletter Issue #1′, use ‘OurSite Newsletter: 10 Tips for Financial Freedom’.

11. The Free Bonus Hook-In

Free is overused these days, especially on the Internet. However, if you’re looking to grow your subscriber list, then create or source a product of value to your visitors (such as an eBook or discount coupon) and offer it to them for free when they signup for to receive your newsletter.

To make sure they don’t simply type any email address into your subscription form, setup an autoresponder to send them the free bonus 1 hour after they subscribe.

12. The Preview Pane

Popular email clients such as MS Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Always have some interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email program. If it’s interesting enough, then your subscriber will open your email and continue on reading.

13. Link-Click Testing

When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Also try re-positioning images such as logos and buttons. After sending about 3 different emails, compare the click-thru stats and see which one worked best. Now, when you need to send marketing emails in the future, you know that you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract the most click-thrus, and ultimately the most sales.

14. Email-Based Learning

Add value to your website, build trust in your visitors, establish your credibility and collect more subscriptions to your mailing list by setting up an email-based learning course. To do this, simply create a series of autoresponders (for example, 5) containing unique content. Then, schedule the first one to be sent after 24 hours, the second after 48 hours, etc..

15. Always Sign on the Dotted Line

Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other products. Here’s a sample signature:

We will also be featuring on a CSS gallery near you, so we’ll keep you posted. Also we welcome comments on our site, so if there is something you think we should know, go right ahead.

ProjectBox allows project members to create project deadlines, checklists, tasks and files and notify all project members. This means that projects can progress with momentum and pace, with complete communication transparency. Files are kept up to date with checking in and out common or minor issues can be resolved with tickets. To keep on top of budgets and to monitor ongoing projects, time billing is visible to both internal project members and clients.

It has a highly user friendly interface and the feedback has been extremely positive so far so hopefully we have got it right! Please let us know of any problems you encounter or any ideas for improvement, which will allow us to refine the tool to become even better.

Why MKN are good for business

Our experience of a broad range of industries including Leisure, Retail, Fianance, Service Industries and Manufacturing, means that we are able to quickly to grasp your business landscape and apply our online expertise to maximise results for you.

Working across a variety of industries and companies broadens our knowledge each time and we always add value though the benefit of our experience.  It also keeps us on our toes, and means that we need to be completely flexible and adaptable to succeed.

From widgets to supercars, all our clients have a compelling story to tell, and you will find that our team will genuinely share your energy in achieving your goals.  

We employ watertight project management skills, meaning you can choose your level of involvement. A can-do attitude permeates through our whole organisation and from the first contact until project delivery, campaign success and client satisfaction is on the top of our list.