But that’s all changed now. Now Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari all support html5. So listen up, because the times they are a-changing. And this means that websites are going to start looking quite different in 2013.

A brief history lesson – the first generation of html

The first version of html (Hypertext Markup Language) was invented by British physicist and inventor Tim Berners Lee as a way for CERN researchers to use and share documents with each other.

The purpose of this language was all about interconnection. It’s job was to link one document to another to make viewing and reading large documents of text much easier.

How html has evolved

As the internet has evolved, become commercial and become a widely used tool for just about everything our needs have very much changed. Over 5 generations the evolution of html has helped us to create more complex websites which are more appealing and which meet more of our modern needs.

The development of html5

Html 5 has been a long time in the making (html 4 was released first in 1999). We all know that usage of the internet has changed drastically in the last 14 years. This is the period when the internet truly became universal, and when we all demanded more from it; to be entertained, to connect with each other more quickly and easily, to pull in more information, to have the ability to do more things easily ourselves.

Features of html 5

• The need for external plugins to create effects has been reduced
• Animations and visual effects can be integrated into a full web page design
• It is easy for web designers to pull in images, audio and video
• There is extensive multimedia support
• The tools and effects available in html 5 remove the previous limitations of html
• The language has been updated to be more common-sense driven

What this means for the future of the web

The roll-out of html5 gives unprecedented freedom to web designers. The limitations which websites and online content have always been based around are a thing of the past. A company website is now only limited by the creativity and imagination of those involved in its creation.

The risk of this is that it could tempt certain designers to take this freedom too far. Technically, a website no longer has to look or work like what we would think of a traditional website. All companies need to be aware that you need to make it easy for your audience to find the information they are looking for, and we are trained to look for information on a website in a certain way. However, now your web designer can emphasise and point to your content and information in even more interesting and engaging ways.

Learning html5

Learning basic html is really easy to do, and you’ll find that any knowledge of html or other software is an incredible asset in the current business world.

It’s something which you can easily teach yourself if you have the patience. For a list of great tutorials and resources check out this 1stwebdesigner article

Are you looking for advice from an experienced web design and web marketing agency? Contact us to book a consultation.

We’re based in Basingstoke, Hampshire with clients across the South, London and beyond.

The essence of your story is the essence of your brand

Every business, organisation and individual has a story. You might think that you don’t have much of a story, or that your story isn’t interesting but you couldn’t be more wrong.

The truth is that there is an angle and a unique focus to every brand story which helps your brand to pop.

8 steps to find and develop your brand story

1.  Reflect on your journey to this point, both as a founder and as a whole business
2.  Write down your history
3.  Write down who you connect with and why
4.  Write down any special and defining anecdotes of your company/founder journey
5.  Think about your values and company personality and how they are expressed
6.  Edit your history to include all of the above (concisely)
7.  (optional) edit again to a single sentence – the first line of your blurb/story tagline
8.  (optional) personify your brand, or create a fictional story that defines you

Why does storytelling help your website?

• It tells people who you are – which leads to increased trust that you are genuine
• It focuses your brand offering on why someone should pick you, leading to more conversions
• It helps your designer to express your personality creatively throughout your site (showing is more powerful than telling)
• It makes you 100% unique and therefore memorable in the mind of your reader

Examples of brands with great stories

The story of a brand doesn’t have to be complicated, obtuse, superfluous or filled with hyperbolic, literary language. For examples of how to do it best, see these brilliant top storytelling companies

• Ben and Jerrys – spreading peace, love and ice cream since ‘78
• Innocent Smoothies (they wear their hearts and their mistakes on their sleeves)
• Mailchimp (what they say is quite stripped back, but who they are is really shown through the photography)
• Green and blacks – an founding anecdote that explains their USP perfectly
• Nike – when nike breathed its first breath, it inhaled the spirit of two men

Now you’ve found your story know when not to use it

People aren’t at your company website to be entertained or told a yarn. They will be looking for a specific piece of information (probably whether or not they should order from you). So your homepage should first and foremost point to your call to action. If your story helps to sell your service and product by emphasising your USP and connecting with an emotional desire to persuade your target market to buy then definitely use it.

But it might not be appropriate to overtly emphasise everywhere. For some companies your story should definitely stay on the About Us page (remember this is a high traffic page – one people look to when they want to know more about you so they can trust you enough to make a purchase).

However, rest assured that a strong story will seep through every aspect of your brand – making it stronger and far more appealing.

Are you looking for advice from an experienced web design and web marketing agency? Contact us to book a consultation.

We’re based in Basingstoke, Hampshire with clients across the South, London and beyond.

The great thing about viral marketing is that it is easy to do yourself if you have the creativity, the enthusiasm, the ambition and a good strategy in place.

What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is essentially ‘word of mouth’. It is the organic spreading of an idea or message that is generated by your company in order to benefit you/increase leads or sales.

Engaging (strategic) content + incentive to share =  viral marketing

How can viral marketing help your small business?

It can drive traffic to your website, spread awareness of your brand, and/or spread a particular message or important idea that will help you to sell your product/services. But just be careful that your creative efforts do actually help your business and aren’t just a funny gimmick that no one will associate with your company services, or convince them to buy.

So here’s the Snowflake Creative guide to a small business viral marketing campaign which brings new conversions to your business.

7 simple steps for a successful small business viral marketing campaign

1) Start with a simple idea, one that is core to your marketing success

2) Play around with different fun ways to convey/express that idea (video, game, competition, speech) – but don’t be afraid of doing something smaller scale or niche. The more targeted you are with your message and aims the more successful you will be in terms of leads and conversions.

3) Think about which platform(s)/channels will be best placed to spread your message – pick ones which are already in front of your target audience (and multiple is usually best – think YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email)

4) Consider including an incentive to share, or some other call to action depending on your aims

5) Prepare yourself for how your campaign could backfire. How will you respond to negative messages or complaints should they arise?

6) Prepare yourself for your campaign doing very well – is your website robust enough? Do you have the manpower to scale up your services quickly if possible?

7) Wait until the appropriate moment to launch your campaign.This equally means jumping on a topic when it is already being talked about, and waiting until your company is ready to capture the leads you may generate. If you aren’t ready then build yourself up – don’t waste a great idea or great content by not being prepared.

The top sharing and content tools of the viral marketing trade and how to use them

• Social media – think caption competitions, giveaways and high quality blogs and videos.
• Video – think simple but effective. Funny or super informative are the two ways to go. But personality and performance are a must. (will it blend, old spice, ted)
• Email – it’s already in front of people which means it spreads easily. Use your signature. It’s how Hotmail started!
• Physical products – encourage sharing on your packaging for old-school word of mouth. Much slower, but still effective.
• Games & competitions – remember to keep it related to your business (it’s useless if it doesn’t bring leads). Likely to bring high numbers of traffic and followers but make sure you do something with them at the end!

Are you looking for advice from an experienced web design and web marketing agency? Contact us to book a consultation.

We’re based in Basingstoke, Hampshire with clients across the South, London and beyond.

How does that sound? Like a good plan, or are your alarm bells ringing like ours are?

The truth of the matter is that gathering inspiration from these kinds of websites can be detrimental to creating a successful business website. 

The origin of inspiring and award winning web designs (aka the butterfly)

Inspiring, or award winning designs are not born by accident. They are carefully formulated by designers in order to WOW, EXCITE and INSPIRE you. They can be very quirky, and very unusual as their main purpose is to showcase the skills of the designer or team behind it.

We do this because we’re show-offs, because we like to make other designers jealous, and because if we didn’t have a beautiful website that impressed you then why on earth would you want us to design you one?

Any other business website, on the other hand, doesn’t need to have this level of artistry, and this is where the danger starts…

A business website exists to sell the products/ services of the company

Unless you’re an incredibly rare exception, the only purpose of your website is to create leads and generate sales for your business. End of.

Your design helps you to achieve this in two ways:

• By establishing who you are
• By emphasising your important points/ information (which helps you to persuade)

However, if you’re taking a lot of inspiration from a creative design websites, or design trends then you might actually end up undermining those two vital elements that will help you to sell.

How inspiring websites can actually be less than useful inspiration

Some very common sources of ‘wow-factor’ inspiration include creative design agency websites, magazine or social media websites and promotional ‘landing page’ style websites. All of these styles of websites tend to have more interesting and innovative design elements, but if you try to apply them too wholeheartedly to a business website you’ll risk the following:

Your user won’t know where they are

If your website has the look or feel of a creative design agency you’ll end up disorientating your visitor for the crucial first 3-7 seconds they are on your site. Can you sell to someone who is disorientated? No.

Sometimes industry-wide design conventions have to be adhered to (to a certain extent at least) for a reason.

Obscuring your point

That cool thing you saw on that website might look awesome, but is it clarifying your point or distracting the reader from it? You don’t want to risk losing ANY clarity. You need to create a clear path of logic that persuades your prospects to take action. You don’t want to distract them along the way.

Restricting your content

The tile layout for social media and news sites is getting particularly popular at the moment, but this layout often doesn’t work for a conventional business website. It works well for media sites because all the information they provide has a similar level of value. Most business websites, on the other hand, need to give their information in a specific order in order to be logical and have the strongest chance of persuading.

You design layout needs to complement and emphasise your content – not restrict it.

How to create a powerfully designed ‘wow-factor’ company website

• Be aware of what is industry appropriate for you
• Stay true to your style
• Know what points you need to emphasise
• Get your design done by an agency who wants to design a powerful selling tool for you, not a showcase for them.

Because you don’t want a trendy website. You want a website that perfectly expresses your style.

Let us explain…

When a design trend is born

Trends in design come about for one of three reasons:

• New technology becoming available in web design which means designers are experimenting with how to make the most of it in their designs.
• It’s something a mover and shaker of design has done/ a big brand which lots of people now want to emulate
• A desire for their design to be ‘cool’ or ‘up-with-the-latest’

Trends are not necessarily a bad thing, especially in moderation, but we can’t lie to ourselves here – unless you are the innovator of the trend, you will just be copying the latest cool design fad, or using the latest technology for the sake of using it. This is simply a recipe for design disaster in the long term, and it means your site will start looking dated very quickly.

What being stylish and expressing your style is all about

Your style is the expression in visuals of who you are. It isn’t about following fashion, it’s about being who you are. Now creating a stylish web design might involve using a design element which is currently a trend – but only because it suits your company down to the ground and helps you to get your message across.

No matter what kind of company you are, you should be proud of who you are and let your personality shine. If you look at our web design portfolio you’ll see that some have trendy elements, and some don’t – but all of them express the personality and emphasise the important information that needs to be conveyed.

And if you do it really well, cleverly and with creativity then you might just find yourself the innovator of a new trend (because trends are born when your style is expressed so perfectly that others want to try it too – and that is awesome!).

“Trends” of 2013 that aren’t actually trends

Unfortunately, the word ‘trend’ is often misappropriated and misused. There are a number of so-called ‘trends’ going around at the moment that really aren’t trends. They are standard rules of design that have always been around in one form or another (their importance in web design is just being particularly emphasised in the blogs at the moment).

• Responsive design (making sure your design is optimised for any screen size)
• Whitespace (using contrast to emphasise different areas – standard design practice)
• Content (putting your content first is the building block of all design)

Current trends – don’t do them for the sake of it!

Follow your own path. If you’re attracted to a trend, ask yourself why? Is it because it really helps you to communicate your personality or message? Wonderful – go for it! Is it because you think it’s cool and modern and you need a website like that? Maybe think again about what is best for you, your message and your content.

• Cartoons
• Lots of scrolling
• Dynamic elements
• Animation
• Minimalism
• Giant buttons
• Heavy typography

Go your own way (with style)

Stick to your style, your values and your expression. Your design should communicate for you – not the other way around!

There are plenty of things that you can do to make things clearer to search engines – using the right keywords is a good place to start, but it is important to remember that Google reads your website through your html. There are several things that your web developer can do to make sure your html is as legible as possible to Google (which all good web developers should do).

• Keep it neat
• Keep it structured
• Use html tags and schemas

What is a schema?

A schema is a set of types or associations – groupings of relevant information sorted by a hierarchy.

In programming there are a number of schemas which we can tell search engines we’re referencing using html tags and on-page markups (also known as microdata). This way, we can tell search engines what is being discussed on the page directly.

Schema.org vocabulary

Schema.org is a resource for webmasters to use, share and add to website code schemas. It has an extensive array of schema types which are useful for Businesses including:

• Places
• Local business
• Restaurant
• Review
• Author
• Offer
• Product
• Rating
• Event
• Person
• Job posting
• Creative works (including books, films, blogs, articles, maps, music, photographs etc)

Example

Your small business is an ice cream shop called Sweet Treats. Using the local business schema I can specify that the term ‘Sweet Treats’ refers to a local business, that that local business is a food establishment, and that that food establishment is an ice cream shop. I can also specify the postal address of the business, the shop’s rating based on reviews, specify the opening hours, what the logo is, and specify that a particular photograph is a picture of the front of the store.

Using these tags highlights the important pieces of information to search engines and makes their relevancy clear to them. This is an action which will help achieve search engine optimisation for your site, and means that more people will be able to find your content when they are looking for you.

Blogs can establish you as an expert in whichever field you write about; if for example your company makes oak furniture, your blog can provide information about design, furniture care and links to further information, this tells your customers you know what you’re doing.

However blogs are key because they provide free promotion. You can keep your readers abreast of new developments, products or events in your business or industry simply by blogging about them.

We’ve compiled a list of our top 10 tips for a brilliant business blog to help you get started:

Give your opinion

Your opinion is the reason people are reading your blog, so give it to them. Blogs also invite opinion, and this creates an active online community. The more people discuss your product, the more likely they are to buy it, so encourage conversation among your readers.

Be brief

Less really is more when it comes to blogging. Say what you need to say and get out of there, job done!

Bullet points

This makes the information easier to absorb and readers can pick out the information they want quickly.

Links

Readers like links to additional information and related topics so include a few in each post. Links also improve visibility on search engine results pages, making your site easier to find. If others discuss and link you on their site your visibility will increase, meaning more promotion with minimal effort!

Write what you know

By writing about your passions you’ll convey your personality and this interests your readers. Make sure you upload fresh content regularly as this allows your site to be ‘crawled’ more frequently by search engine ‘spiders’. This makes content searchable more quickly and improves your ‘expert authority’ image.

Short paragraphs

As well as bullet points make sure you write short paragraphs and use headings and subheadings so readers can access information quickly.

Use images/videos

Images catch the reader’s eye and videos can be used for many things such as short adverts, ‘how to’ guides, and demonstrating how your product works.

Proofread

Readers want a good standard of writing so make sure you spell check and verify your facts before publishing your posts. No one wants to be known for incorrect spelling or dodgy facts!

Use effective headlines

Grab your reader’s attention with thought provoking or catchy headlines. For example something like ‘The power of the press!’ might be a good headline if you’re going to discuss using local media to help advertise an event.

Maximise keywords

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is vital. If your company sells shoes in larger sizes keywords such as ‘large size shoes’ and ‘large shoes for women’ would help boost your search engine rankings.

Your blog should become an essential part of your marketing programme as it is free and keeps your customers up to date with what’s going on in your business. The bottom line is more readers mean more customers.  You don’t have to be a creative genius or video whiz kid to start a successful blog. Perhaps you’ve been thinking about including images or videos in your blog, but you just don’t know where to start? Talk to us! We’re here to help you make your business blog the best that it can be.

This is where ‘responsive web design’ comes in to play. Whilst it isn’t essential for every project or business it is certainly an option. To help you make an informed choice we’re giving you a run down of the pros and cons so you can make the best decision for your site.

What is responsive web design?

Put simply it is technology that automatically responds to the users preferences. For example, if the user were to switch from their desktop to their iPad the website would automatically respond to accommodate the resolution, image size and scripting abilities for the new device.

If you want to see it in action below are a few examples of responsive web design at work (obviously you’ll need multiple devices to really get the full effect):

• digg.com
• informationarchitects.net
• css-tricks.com

So now you know what it is let’s give you the highs and lows!

Pros:

• The biggest pro of responsive web design is that it removes the need for multiple site versions to accommodate different devices.
• In turn this saves time as you don’t need to be constantly updating or developing different versions every time a new device is released on to the market.
• This also means that your website works for everyone, meaning you don’t lose visitors just because they use an iPhone rather than a Blackberry, or any other device that may not be compatible with your website.

Cons:

But it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows in the world of responsive web design. To give you a balanced view below is a list of cons so you can weigh up the case.

• The con that will affect all businesses and projects is the additional development time needed. Building a responsive website can be complex and you should consider whether you have the time, budget and capability to do it.
• Cross-browser compatibilities; HTML5 and CSS3 are fantastic when building a website, however there are still some compatibility issues with the languages meaning other ways to achieve the same results may need to be used.
• Varying objectives for different devices. Desktop objectives are often informative as well as functional and this differs from the mobile version as they are generally just functional. Therefore it is necessary to work on different versions for the separate devices.

So whilst it might be tempting to have one solution to rule them all so to speak, it may not be the best choice for your website. You need to consider whether your audience is using a mobile device to connect with you. If they aren’t then implementing responsive web design would be a waste of your time and resources. Think carefully about your website and your target user before making any changes to the way you run your site.

Google+

Make way for a ‘more beautiful Google’. Last week Google Plus unveiled their new look and users now experience a different feel when using the platform. Take a look at their official blog and see what you think of the more ‘functional and flexible’ version of Google.

Facebook buys Instagram

If photo sharing wasn’t already a core part of Facebook it certainly is now. Purchased for an estimated $1 billion the introduction of Instagram will now allow users to share photos based on their interests and share them with other social networks. Having been around since 2010, Instagram gives you a chance to edit the look of your photos and then share them on your social networks. And it certainly doesn’t rest on its laurels, keeping up customer demands it launched a new Android version last week broadening its already enormous user base.

Pinterest

Pinterest has introduced ‘board covers’ so you can know choose with photo displays on the cover of your Pinterest board. A fun tool for general users but marketers should seize this valuable opportunity to display their important messages and tag lines in this space. It also brings Pinterest one step closer to their goal to ‘connect everyone in the world through the “things” they find interesting’.

So there you have it, a short but sweet round up that should have you feeling like you’re down with the kids!

Peoples choice

Just as you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink, your consumers will only be interested in what they are interested in. Bombarding them with irrelevant content won’t work so you should consider user segmentation. This enables the user to only get the content that appeals to their needs, wants and desires. Another good tip is to make sure they are able to alter their selections at a later date, should their criteria change.

Quality not quantity

With something as visual and interactive as an iPad,app user experience is vital. Your fantastic content might appeal to them but it is the experience they have whilst they are using it that will keep them coming back. Invest in UX testing as you develop your app to make sure your consumers get the best out of your creation.

An iPad is for life, not just for Christmas

Focusing on the long term is vital when developing an iPad app. The technology is going to revolutionise industry for at least the next decade so investing in maintenance, content updates, testing and optimisation will ensure you stay in the game. Put together an editorial team of creative types to help you deliver the content your consumers want on a regular basis.

We’re all friends here

Believe it or not, non-competitive companies in your industry category can help enlarge the audience your app appeals to. Consider carefully the potential advertising platform your app presents for partner brands and cash in on the increased revenue.

Promote, promote, promote!

Your app isn’t going to promote itself, and nor are your consumers going to accidently find it so you need to give it a helping hand. Figure out the best way to get your app out there based on your target audience and get to it! The most obvious way to do this is links in paid advertising such as print, TV and display adds. If you feel like going a bit old school then look at in store signage and kiosks.

With just 22% of the top 50 retailers in the country using iPad apps there is clearly a gap in the market. The early bird catches the worm so take advantage whilst the iPad is still new on the market and reap the rewards of this innovative change to industry.