What is the EU Cookie Law? I hear you ask, well its a law to protect the privacy of anyone who browses a website based in the EU.

Cookies are small text files that are placed in your internet browser to track anything from website statistics to user journeys, login information and private confidential information.

The EU Cookie Law pretty much affects every website within the EU, if you are using some kind of analytics to track usage statistics, it is more than likely that you will be storing cookies on your website. By law, you must display a notice on your website allowing the website visitor to accept or decline “non essential” cookies on your website.

If a website owner is in breech of the law, they will be warned and if they choose not to comply will be fined £500,000.

What is essential and non essential?

Essential cookies will be for essential functionality of a website, for example if you own an eCommerce website and it needs to use cookies to work, they are essential. If its just to gain access to analytics and track your visitors, even though this is essential for you, its not essential for a website visitor.

So how do you stop it?

Well we’ve written a plug-in to deal with it, it comes in two flavours – an open source version for any web developer to go off and install or a paid for (it’s only £5 to cover ongoing support) highly configurable and easy to use WordPress plugin.

CookieCuttr jQuery Plugin

CookieCuttr for WordPress Plugin

Depending on your website, you may need to provide a cookie table in your privacy policy, like we will be doing shortly.

Post written by Chris Wharton – CookieCuttr Creator

You need to get the most from your marketing budget for sure, but by cutting corners and paying for a cheap and nasty website you’re not going to be representing your business in the best way or delivering the best leads.

So, where do you start? Who do you trust? And how on earth do these web designers work?

1. Look at their website – may sound simple but does it look good? Is it easy to find your way around?

2. Look at online portfolios – is there something there which matches your vision?

3. Talk to your shortlist – will they follow your direction as well as offer their own expert opinion? What questions did they ask you? Do they understand marketing as well as design? What is their design process?

4. Don’t go for the cheapest option – it’s not just about having a website, it’s about having a website which works.

5. Pick a winner – once you’ve done your research you can feel confident that you’ve chosen the best man for the job!

At the end of the day, a certain amount of trust needs to be placed firmly within your gut. But don’t be shy to ask for proposals, quotes, more evidence of their experience and even references from their clients.

Your website is super important and you want to get it right. Any web designer worth their salt will expect and respect this.

Have a chat with our guys if you have any questions. You won’t get a hard sell! Just some simple honest advice.

When was the last time you looked at your website? Probably every day. But when was the last time you really looked at it? Think about how a new visitor to your website would feel about it. What would be the first three words that would come to mind? More importantly, what would you want those first three words to be?

Funky, fresh, cutting edge.
Professional, reliable, knowledgeable.
Approachable, caring, welcoming.

Just like that blind date, you want the person to be interested, attracted, really like what you have to say and fall in love with you!

Giving your website a makeover is really simple, and it doesn’t have to cost the earth. Once you make the decision to boost your sales with a brand new website, you could be attracting new customers within a matter of weeks … if you choose the right web design company to help you!

It’s easy to get used to the way your website looks. It works. We get traffic. There’s nothing really wrong with it. But there are other companies who do just what you do, who have thought about what their website says about them – and they could just be tempting your customers away!

Top 5 questions to ask yourself:

1. Does your website appeal to your target audience?
2. Is your website easy to navigate?
3. Is it clear exactly what you are offering?
4. Are the words used on your website engaging, clear and effective?
5. What is your bounce rate – how long do people stay on your website?

Once you’ve answered these questions, take some time to work out what you would like your website to say about you. Then bring all your ideas along to us!

What is a Call To Action?

In essence, a call to action is anything that urges visitors to take immediate action. A quick look at almost any website online will show you call to action buttons such as ‘click here’ or ‘act now’. Every element is important and you will need to test your methods to see if they are successful. If you already have an existing call to action on your site, there are a few questions you need to ask. For example:

Are you using a link or a button?
How large is the button?
How big is the text?
Where is the call to action placed on your website?
What colors are used?

What Makes a Good Call To Action?

Everything that’s just been mentioned above is important when it comes to creating a call to action. If you’re using a button, it must be large enough to stand out amidst all your other text.

Believe it or not, colours are also vital because they can help evoke certain emotions amongst visitors. You’ll find that many successful call to action buttons are red because this creates a sense of urgency (more on that below).

A big mistake made by websites is to place their call to action button or link at the bottom of the page. Research has shown that placing it near the top of the page (above the fold) leads to the highest conversion rate. There should also be enough space around the call to action button or link to ensure that it gains prominence on the page.

Another frequently occurring error is the use of misleading language in a call to action. The modern consumer will not accept being lied to. Ensure that the text used is straight to the point and honest. Again, you should test various versions of text to see which one gives you the best results.

Urgency

You need to give visitors a reason to click on your call to action. Tell them that there is a limited supply. Offering a specific figure is best: ‘Only 8 copies left’ etc. Alternatively, you could offer discounts for the first 10 people who purchase goods/services from your site. Naturally, you should use this tactic sparingly. A visitor who sees ‘Only 8 copies left’ a few weeks after his last visit will obviously know that you’re lying (or not selling very well!).

A website that lacks a call to action is a site that is incomplete. To make more leads and sales and give your company’s profit’s a boost, start planning a call to action campaign today.

Website Goals

You need to decide from the outset what you want your new website to achieve. There is no point in aimlessly creating a site and hoping for it to ‘succeed’ when you don’t even know what will constitute ‘success’. Do you want it to be an informative site where customers can contact you 24 hours a day? Do you want it to be a small brochure site that gives basic information? Or do you want it to be a pure ecommerce site that is solely designed to directly sell your company’s products? If you are intent on making sales directly from the site, you’ll need to find your target audience. Professional help will probably be needed in this instance. Identifying your target audience will save a fortune on marketing.

Website Site Map

Most people think of XML sitemaps which have links to every page of a website when asked about site maps. In actual fact, you should consider creating a visual site map with good old fashioned pen and paper. The beauty of a manual sitemap of this nature is that you can be as complex or as simple as you like. A quick way to create this sitemap is by drawing a box at the top marked ‘home page’ and start from there.

Add more boxes beneath the home page marked ‘FAQ’, ‘contact‘, ‘search’ and ‘about us’. Draw lines directly from these boxes to the home page to indicate that there should be direct links from these pages to your home page. Add any additional web pages beneath the second line and connect these. It is essential that visitors should never have to go beyond three pages to find any content on your site. Otherwise, they will get frustrated and leave.

Website Testing

Once you have the site planned and ready, you need to test it for usability. You will save 10 times more than what you spend on usability testing in the long run. Failure to do this testing could see you discover that the site’s structure doesn’t make sense once it is live. By then, it will be too late as your visitors will see the chaos and immediately leave your site. Be sure to ask friends for their help with the testing. Simply ask them if they can see any usability issues. The majority of the time, a handful of people is all you need in order to find errors in your site planning.

Once your new website is properly planned and live, you should see a marked improvement in sales as long as the site is properly optimized.

The website build, structure and page content play an important role when being listed on search engine result pages for a particular key phrase. Make sure your web developer has a good understanding of search engine optimisation (SEO); it is their job to know how a website should be structured for good search engine optimisation.

If you decide to write your own content (writing search engine friendly content is definitely a skill and may be worth enquiring about a copywriting service by an SEO expert) make sure you do all you can to optimise it by taking note and practising the below.

Select the right key phrases
Start by thinking about who your target audience are and what search phrases they might use in order to find you.

Depending on your business, your key phrases should be fairly obvious – usually your service or product and sometimes the area you are in (not applicable if you are based purely online). Certain phrases will be more competitive than others i.e. used by many other websites; these are usually more general phrases. The more specific your key phrase is, the less competition there will be from other sites using the same phrase. Google Adwords has a useful Keywords Tool which allows you to check the level of competition for your chosen phrase, number of monthly searches, and also gives you many other similar key phrase ideas to compare.

Use the right amount of key phrases
Each page of your site should have different key phrases, as each page will be centred around a slightly different topic e.g. ‘About Us’ page key phrases may be based more on the experience and background of the company and it’s location, whereas a ‘Services’ page will be focussed more on specific services/products offered. Select one to three key phrases per page, adding more will confuse Google and it will not know what you specialise in and what it should rank you for in its result pages. Your home page is the most important page, select the most appropriate phrase and include it in the content. You may choose to create additional pages to optimise certain phrases.

Structure your content
Break up your content into easily readable and identifiable chunks. Rather than having one long paragraph that is impossible to navigate, split it up into smaller sections separated by relevant headers. Your web designer/developer should know how to treat the headers and give them the relevant HTML tags to make Google understand they are important. Both your headers and paragraph content should contain your key phrases. When reading your text, it may sound slightly repetitive but it should still be clear for both website users and Google to see what your main services/key phrases are.

Inclusion and use of key phrases is an important element of creating search engine friendly content. However to keep your visitors coming back your content needs to be interesting, relevant, well written and compelling. The more you change your content, the more often Google bots will come and crawl your website, ranking it in its result pages.

This article scratches the service on on-site optimisation. Talk to your web developer or project manager about meta data and page titles, they are crucial for SEO success. We will be writing further articles shortly about this and off-site optimisation.

Your business identity should be able to be communicated wordlessly through your corporate identity – it should be designed in order to deliver the company’s philosophy and objectives through its basic visual elements such as the logo, colour scheme, prints/patterns, stationery, promotional materials and website.

This is one of the most important steps in establishing a business, as this will be how your customers come to recognise your company in years to come.

Below are a few of the first steps which should get you on your way to building a strong and recognisable brand.

Logo Design
Once you are certain who your target market is and what direction you want your corporate identity to go in, the next step of the process is to get your logo professionally designed.

There are many elements that go into a great logo design, and although a lot comes down to personal taste, there are a few aspects that logo designers agree contribute towards good logo design. Overall an effective logo will be timeless, memorable, versatile, flexible and appropriate.

Keep your brand identity and target market in mind when considering colour, font and icon or pattern use. Also remember to think ahead – will the colours you have chosen work well on stationery and a website? Can the pattern/icon you have used become an integral part of your visual identity and be used across many promotional items?

To make sure your logo stands out from the crowd and creates a lasting impression, ensure it conveys your brand identity as well as being visually effective and powerful.

Business Cards & Stationery
Depending on your business type you may require different sorts of business stationery, but an essential for any start-up is a business card. As well as providing all your contact details, your business card also reflects your identity through the design.

Despite varying business types and personal tastes, the aim of the business card is the same – to leave an impression. Use of design techniques like 3d effects and visual contrast, can help your business card remain simple, appropriate but effective.

At this point patterns and shapes created using your logo can be introduced and continued through all elements of your stationery and into your promotional materials and website. Whatever colours and elements you choose to use, make sure they are kept consistent across all aspects of your stationery to keep your visual identity looking strong and co-ordinated.

Website
When taking the leap into website design, there will be a lot of important decisions that you need to make, one of the most important being which agency to use. In most cases, the company who have designed your logo and business stationery will usually offer a web design service. When looking for a professional web design agency you should look for the following attributes:

- Bespoke design – no templates used

- W3C compliant and SEO friendly coding

- Functionality can be built according to your business needs

- Hosting and maintenance

- Future support

Many people can initially be put off by the prices that go hand in hand with high quality, professional web design – there would be nothing more harmful to your brand than ending up with a website that looks unprofessional or just like someone else’s.

When starting the web design process, one of the most important steps that mustn’t be rushed or overlooked is the initial brief. This is a vital stage where you communicate to the designer what your business identity is, your goals and what you hope to achieve with the website. It is at this point where the designer who is creating your website needs to see your logo and business cards/stationery, as your newly formed corporate identity can easily be used throughout the website, replicating and continuing on from these items with the same colours, fonts and patterns to created a uniformed, professional and visually appealing design.

Initial promotion
Once your website is up and running, you can start to encourage visitors by using promotional tools such a social media, flyers, leaflets etc. Your new corporate identity can be used in all of these areas – from using your logo on Facebook and creating a background for your Twitter page, to getting leaflets and brochures designed as well as other marketing materials in the future. It can of course be extended to products and packaging, uniforms, signage and interior design.

When all elements are put together, they create a strong and effective visual projection of your company and its identity. Consistency is always key for achieving a professional and authentic aesthetic.

Consistent communication of your brand values through visual marketing will help your customer connect your business name to your identity.

Ensure that you take your time and think through every step, don’t rush the process – if you suddenly change your mind about your identity 6 months down the line, it may cause your business to look weak and un-stable, let alone cost a considerable amount.

The long term effect of having a strong corporate identity that spans across every aspect of your business is that your company will project an image of professionalism and authenticity, whilst simultaneously communicating its core values and identity in one instant.

But before jumping straight into building your corporate identity, think carefully about the points below, as they will be the starting point for all aspects of your business activity for years to come. A successful business and consistent identity has to be built on strong foundations.

Business Name & Slogan

If you are a start-up, you have more than likely already thought up a name for your new business. But before you get too carried away, think carefully about your business name and the long term consequences it could have. Your business name needs to be easily remembered, however it doesn’t need to spell out exactly what you do. This is where the slogan comes in handy; if your company name is a little vague, the slogan will help tell potential customers what you do. However, a slogan isn’t essential – you can use your promotional activities to effectively communicate your area of expertise.

Your business name should use simple words that aren’t too hard to spell or remember, e.g. we have encountered some start-up businesses who have named themselves after a word spelt backwards. An idea like this may seem individual and clever at the time, but in the end it will mean nothing to a reader and will probably be very hard to remember how to spell, let alone pronounce. When thinking up a business name, think ahead to your logo and branding; even if your business name is something vague and unconnected to your industry, it could however be very easy to create a brand around with your icon and colours e.g. Apple, Twitter, Firefox, Blackberry, Snowflake Creative.
Consider the length of your business name, if there are quite a few words, or a collection of names, it could be shortened to an acronym allowing it to roll off the tongue a little easier. Famous examples include HSBC (Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation), and H&M (Hennes & Mauritz).

Business Concept

Your business concept will be the driving idea behind your new start-up, and the element that you hope will make you stand out from others in your intended market – your USP (Unique Selling Point). Without a USP why would a customer choose you over another, more established company they are already familiar with? Your business should have a competitive edge that ensures that customers choose you and stay loyal in the future. Your corporate identity should grab people’s attention and reflect your business’s philosophy and hint at your USP e.g. if your USP is that you only use natural and organic ingredients – this can easily be shown in your logo through use of colour, icon design and font choice. Therefore it is important to be certain what your core values and USP is before moving onto your corporate identity.

Target Market

Think carefully about who your target customers/clients are; your corporate identity will go a long way in helping your company appeal to the right people. This may seem obvious, but some people make simple mistakes in their choice of colour and font, by not doing the research to understand what appeals to their target market. What end of the market are you aiming at? If you are aiming at the high end of the market with your pricing and business plan, this will definitely need to be reflected in your logo and other promotional materials. High-end brands often use very simple and un-fussy typefaces with uncomplicated design elements in their logos and visual communication. Be sure to check out what your competitors are doing – if they are successful they must be doing something right.

So much of your corporate identity will come down to brand perception – how you want people to judge your company based on your visual identity and business activity. If you are aiming at other businesses, and want to be perceived as professional and corporate, you may choose to use simple fonts and toned-down colours. Whereas if your business is aimed at children, your corporate identity can be a lot more adventurous with bright colours, interesting fonts and use of icons and patterns – as this is what will appeal to children.
Before making any decisions, do your research. Both before and after starting the design process – ask around and get opinions on colours, font type, level of design/simplicity etc. and find out what is most popular with your target market.

All of these basic elements of your business and brand need to be decided on at the very beginning, before you start thinking about your corporate identity. These core values will form the fundamental ideas behind everything the business does, everything it owns and produces. The consistency of these ideas are what will drive the company and show what stands for.
The corporate identity is what will reflect these values, but unless these values are realistic and can be acted upon, your business may not succeed. Therefore it is vital to strengthen the initial concepts before moving on any further with your start-up venture.

The successful collaboration between a company and a web design agency lies in a few vital points.

Picking the right web design agency
The first step in order to start what will potentially be a very important business relationship is choosing the web design agency to work with. When starting a business and taking the leap into getting a website, budgets can often be tight. However unfortunately a lot of companies choose to waste their money by getting a template website. There are many disadvantages of website templates.

Many web design agencies and online companies claim to create fantastic websites but actually use website templates or outsource the work to very cheap overseas companies who normally produce very out of date and poor code. The company you choose should offer bespoke website design which complies to the latest W3C standards. There are many questions to ask your web designer before you can be assured that they can help create the best and most professional website for your company.

Initial Brief
The initial brief that you give your web designer is of the utmost importance. It needs to be specific enough for your designer to completely understand what you are looking for and the needs of your business in order to give you a bespoke and accurate quote.

- Give plenty of background information about your company; who you are, why you started, who your target market is, who your competitors are, and where the business is going.
- Be clear what the objectives and goals for the website are, whether it is a brand new site, or a re-design, what are you hoping to achieve?
- Ensure that you think thoroughly about each page; what content you require, and what functionality is needed. For example if you require a sliding image banner, this takes longer to code into the site and therefore may cost extra. If you are having an image gallery, do you want static images, or a functional gallery where the images become larger when clicked on?
- Think about who your target audience are; who you want to appeal to will make a major difference to the way the site will be designed.
- If you already have a logo, business stationery and other marketing materials, make sure you provide these to the designer as the website may be designed in-line with these to keep your business identity consistent.
- If there is anything you definitely do not want on your website, make sure this is clear from the very beginning.

The initial design brief is important as it usually serves as the guiding document for the whole process that the web designer will keep referring back to again and again.

Budgets
This can be a tricky subject as often small and start-up businesses are on a tight budget, and can be tempted by companies who offer very low priced web design services. In this industry, you really do get what you pay for. If someone is offering a website for a low price, they are probably cutting corners somewhere; if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

When starting your project, be open with your web design agency what budget you are hoping to work to, they can then offer the best possible solution, and most companies may offer a payment plan to split the cost and make payments more manageable. This also goes hand-in-hand with the project brief; you may be looking for a certain level of functionality which may not be necessary but could cost you a lot – the agency should be honest and advise where you can cut back on some aspects to save money without compromising the quality of the design.

After a quote has been given and agreed to, ensure that the cost and payment plans are confirmed by both parties before starting the design work. Any costs that may occur later on in the design process should be explained to you by the agency e.g. stock photography, or any additional functionality added.

If you are paying a monthly or yearly fee for hosting and/or maintenance, double check exactly what this includes. If you choose to host with another company, the same rule goes – you get what you pay for.

Deadlines
Very often companies have deadlines for when they need their website launched e.g. an event happening with their company or industry. If you have a deadline that needs to be met, make this clear at the very beginning and the agency can advise whether it’s realistic or not. Good design and build takes time, as well as allowing time for you to make revisions, so if your deadline is flexible let the designer know. A professional web design agency should be expected to be honest with you if something can’t be done within your budget or schedule and offer alternative solutions. A good way to manage a deadline for a website is to agree to a few milestones to help assess the progression of the project.

Communication
One of the most important aspects of a successful relationship with your web designer is communication. Beginning with your initial brief, the clarity of communication and feedback between yourself and designer can be the difference between seamless web design development or a long, confused and frustrating process. The first thing is to decide the easiest method for you to provide your feedback; some find it easiest to write their thoughts down in an email, whilst others prefer to discuss their feedback face to face and bounce ideas back and forth. Whatever you choose, your project manager or designer should be able to accommodate both. With regards to feedback, the one thing that designers ask of you in return, is to be constructive. Be completely honest, if you don’t like a design then say so, but be constructive by saying exactly what you do and don’t like about the design and possibly make suggestions where you can. Don’t be scared about offending the designer, your website has to reflect you and your company, and it has to be perfect. Most agencies are perfectly happy to keep tweaking the site until you are satisfied, so don’t compromise on the design if you aren’t happy with it but feel bad for taking up their time.

If you don’t understand anything technical that your web designer is talking about, don’t be embarrassed to ask them to explain, many people in the industry don’t notice when they are just speaking in Web Design Jargon.

Long Term Support
Many web design agencies offer a long term plan to host and support your website for a monthly or annual fee and consider their relationship with you as a long term commitment. If anything goes wrong with your website, you should be able to rely on them to help fix the issue. As your business grows, you may require new features and pages on your website which your web designer will be happy to help you with.

As well as general hosting and support, any decent web design agency will know the work does not stop once a site is launched. Designing and developing a website is the first step, the real trick can be in the marketing of the site to get high quality traffic and of course, leads and/or conversions. There is no point designing and building a website and just ‘hoping’ it will work. You need to plan with your web agency how you are going to get the traffic and sales. Your website is an investment and you need to make a return on that investment.

The most important tips for establishing a great working relationship with your web design agency are to be crystal clear on your budget and requirements. And of course, make sure that communication and expectations is always honest, clear and realistic.

Google+ button
The Google+1 button is the equivalent to the Facebook ‘like’ button. Google is encouraging web publishers to start adding +1 buttons to their pages, not only to encourage social sharing but also to help search engine rankings. Google will study +1 clicks, and the results will not only be influenced by the +1’s from your friends, but will be universal. Therefore as Google+ will not only be a social tool but will impact search results, it may put pressure on publishers to add the +1 button their pages. But considering webmaster’s current reliance upon Google and its products, we doubt that anyone would need much encouragement to add the button to their site.
However, like Facebook, you need a Google Account to be able to use Google+ and the +1 button, and although most of us already have one through use of Youtube, Gmail, Analytics etc. many people may not and may not want to set up an account just to +1 something.
However now that Google+ has opened its doors to the general public, we will see how many people bother to create themselves a profile.

Circles
This feature is like the Facebook friend list, but is far easier to use thanks to its drag and drop feature. Google+ has incorporated the option to sort your friends into different real-life social groups and choose who to post certain things to. For example you could share with your friends something silly about the weekend, and be assured that this won’t be posted to your Mum in your Family circle, or post an announcement like an engagement only to friends and family. You can also control what personal details are shown to each circle, this way you can control and filter who sees what.
When you click on a +1 button, you can also select to share this with certain circles who you feel it is most relevant to, i.e. share a music event with friends, or a film with family.

Sparks
Google+ Sparks is a feature you can use to keep up to date with all of your interests. It is basically a search recommendation engine – when you search for something, the results will include both relevant posts on Google+ and web results. Your search can then be saved as a favourite so that anytime you want an update of what is happening with regards to that topic, it can bring up the freshest news. Your favourite searches and topics are listed on the left under your circles so they are easy to find.

Hangouts
This is a video chat service with features such as:

- Hold hangouts via Android smartphone
- Share your screen
- Draw together
- Create and edit documents together
- Hold topic-based hangouts
- Up to 10 people can join 1 Hangout
- Jointly watch a YouTube video

Hangouts is one of the most talked about new features for Google+, mostly due to its potential for various uses e.g. cooking classes, interviews etc. But of course it relies on the user having access to a web cam. Despite this we can see that this feature may be one of the most compelling reasons to encourage the use of Google+. Another selling point is that as opposed to Facetime which relies on a wi-fi connection, Hangouts work fine on 3g, allowing for more practical use whilst on the move.

Photos
Google+ comes with an advanced photo album feature including options which aren’t offered by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. When the photos tab is initially clicked on, you can instantly see all the photos recently uploaded by all your friends – you can also see how many comments have been made on each photo. The usual features like a slideshow and tagging are available, however there are further options such as being able to check out photo details such as the type of camera used to take the photo. All tags also have to be approved before going live – so no more unexpected embarrassing photos of you without your say so…!
Uploading photos and creating albums has been made easier with a simple drag and drop tool; with the custom sharing options you can choose to share the album with particular circles or to the general public.
One of our favourite features is the editing tool, which you can use to edit your photos once they have been uploaded. At the moment it is fairly simple but allows you to add effects like contrast, cross process, black and white etc. We are hoping that they will gradually add more editing options to this in the future.

The Elephant in the Room – Brand Accounts
We are sure you will have noticed by now, but so far there isn’t an option for businesses to create their own page like on Facebook and Twitter. However this is something Google has addressed – they have specifically asked businesses not to set up any pages for themselves yet, as they are currently working on a platform for businesses but it will take some time to build. Thanks to high demand, they have sped up the development process and are going to be beta testing in the next few weeks. Christian Oestlien at Google stated “The business experience we are creating should far exceed the consumer profile in terms of its usefulness to businesses. We just ask for your patience while we build it. In the meantime, we are discouraging businesses from using regular profiles to connect with Google+ users.” Features expected to be incorporated into the business accounts are AdWords and Analytics.

Overall, it looks like Google+ is set be a big rival to Facebook thanks to its more advanced features. However Facebook isn’t far behind – they made changes to their home page at the same time that Google+ went live to the public, and are planning more; it has been reported that Facebook will be launching a major redesign of user profiles at their f8 conference this week.
So now that Google+ is available to everyone, we will see if they can maintain the hype that has been built up recently. Will their additional features be enough to convince loyal Facebook users? Or will Facebook continue to snap at Google’s heels with their continuous updates? Will the highly anticipated business platform blow Facebook & Twitter out of the water?

Take a look for yourself at https://plus.google.com

Watch this space.