I have to admit that I am struggling a little. With the proliferation of web applications and social networking, I am drowning in a sea of data.

I use web applications to try to streamline and centralise our business processes and information. This was working initially when we used a couple of apps, but now we use over 8 different applications and keeping up with them all is proving very difficult and arduous.

From a  social networking perspective, I use it as a way to keep up to date with friends, partners and market Strawberrysoup. The problem is, there is just too much information from too many sources; and not enough time.

The recent Bing search engine adverts have hit the nail on the head with ‘information overload’. My head is spinning and even if I was to keep up with just the social tools, there would be no time for me to actually get any work done.

At Strawberrysoup, I use the following applications and social tools on a daily basis:

Web applications:

• Basecamp – managing our projects and team
• Highrise – storing customer data and prospects
• Harvest – time tracking for each project
• Xero – our accounts
• Mint – realtime website statistics
• Google Analytics – more powerful website statistics
• WordPress – updating our blog
• Lighthouse – keeping track of website bugs

Every day there are updates that need to be added, edit or syncronised. It is unrealistic to think that I could find one application that does all of the above quickly and simply, but what is the other option?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that web applications are online. The fact that no matter where I am in the world, I can login and keep up-to-date with my business and my team is fantastic. The problem seems to be that it is easy to be seduced by a beautiful user interface and think that an application is more useful than it really is. There must be a simpler way to manage your business data online – perhaps its just reduce the number of applications that we use and focus on the most important ones?

Social tools:

• Twitter – the king of micro blogging
• Flickr – networking with fellow photographers/friends
• Facebook – networking with friends
• LinkedIn – networking with collegues
• WordPress – commenting on blogs and keeping up to date with our industry
• Tumblr – another blog
• Delicious – our shared bookmarks
• Vimeo – uploading and sharing our videos
• Ember – sharing images and designs
• RSS – maybe not social, but keeping up with the industry
• Podcasting via Apple iTunes – uploading and sharing our MP3’s/podcasts

Again, the social tools above are just a small example of the ones we use regularly for Strawberrysoup. And this list is growing at an exponential rate.

The fact that many of the social tools above can link into each other with Twitter updates being shown on Facebook, Tumblr or Linked In, means that I am likely to see the same information multiple times but on different platforms, thus giving me even more data to digest.

Mashable published an interesting article about how to deal with social networking overload. This article mentions creating boundaries for each application and trying to communicate your plan so that different networks of people don’t overlap. That is all well and good, but I think that there is a certain level of social success that we strive to achieve.

We *love* being part of the web community, and the fact that we are traditionally early adopters and prolific users of such technologies. This can however create the feeling that we need to ‘keep up with the joneses’ and be successful at it. With Twitter, the more followers you have, the more successful you are perceived to be – but is this really the case?

We are also switched on 247 to our networks. As well as accessing the information in the office, we can now keep up on the train, in bed or even on the toilet. There is no getting away from it.

What is the solution? Who knows. I think that the more I use web applications and social technologies, the more I think of the importance of selecting carefully the tools that I use. I don’t think that we should worry about being registered and active on every possible network or use every possible web application to run our business, be selective and use them well.

I am really interested to know if anyone else feels this way about information overload and if they fancy sharing their tips/advice, feel free!

Being a graphic and web design agency, we love design. Dennis and McGregor is a new business that we decided to start, selling “design-led products for living” online.

The concept behind the website was simple – we wanted a well designed and usable eCommerce website to sell design-led products. We also wanted a platform that we could use to showcase our eCommerce platform – to show potential customers what it can do.

We had many discussions within the team about the functionality that the website should offer both us and our end users. We use various other web-based applications, and the main requirement was to link to these as well as add value through new functionality.

As a result, the new Dennis and McGregor website links automatically to eBay, Amazon, XERO and 37Signal’s Highrise – which helps maintain the accounts and fulfilment process. From an end user perspective, we wanted to give users a range of value add services, including wish-lists, reviews and the ability to follow our blog/news – which we aim to keep up to date weekly.

We are really proud of this new website. Not only from a design perspective, but from comments that we have had from customers to date. They find the website simple to navigate, easy to purchase and enjoy the fact that we love the products as much as they do!

If your business focuses around selling products to consumers, you will no doubt be looking forward to the festive period. Even during these tough economic times, consumers love nothing more than braving the cold and splashing their cash on their loved ones.

Over the past few years, eCommerce has jumped in leaps and bounds and now more and more of us are shopping online in the comfort of our own homes. But how can we ensure we are making the most out of our online business?

This article aims to describe the tools and techniques that you can use on the run up to Christmas to bolster your sales and take advantage of increased spending.

Create a Blog

A blog is a great (and free) way of describing, reviewing and publicising the products that you stock. Use each post as a showcase for your favourite products. By creating a blog and consistently adding new content, this content will be distributed around the blogging networks.

You can download WordPress for free and install it within 5 minutes if you know what you are doing. There are also thousands of different themes available to choose from to make sure your blog suits your branding and looks unique.

If you don’t know how to install a blog, you can always use WordPress.org and signup for free. They will host your blog, but they are designed for non-commercial use, so be careful as they could get removed without warning if they become overly commercial.

As your blog gains momentum in the number of posts and subscribers that it has, you will find that you start gaining some great search engine rankings for individual products. An product/lifestyle blog that has been created for this purpose can be found on Dennis & McGregor. Within each blog post, you can create a simple button to direct users to your product page if you wish.

Signup to Google Base

Google loves creating free services and their Base service is no exception. All you need to do is get your web developer to create an XML file (a simple text based file) containing your product information such as title, condition and price. The XML file can be uploaded to Google Base or automatically retrieved every day by Google from your website.

Once you have this file up and running, register with Google Base and within a couple of hours your products will be displayed on Googles “shopping” tab for everyone to see!

This tool is a great way of increasing traffic/sales on your website for specific products and comes with a suite of reports to use.

Setup an eBay store

eBay is a great way of selling your new products online. As well as the well-known auction style listings, you can setup your very own eBay store for £15 per month plus listing/sale fees.

The process is really simple and a product can be added by either using the list functionality on the website, or by using software created by external vendors such as iSale (for Mac) or Blackthorne (for Windows). eBay will give you a wide range of product options to select, the ability to host your images, add a description and choose a price.

Payment can be made in various forms too including cheque, cash on delivery or BACS. The most popular option is PayPal – a free to signup service that charges you a percentage fee each time you receive money.

Another benefit of using eBay to promote and sell your products is that eBay gets some great search engine rankings. You will regularly see your eBay listings popping up in the search engine results when searching for your products in Google, Yahoo or BING.

Register with Etsy

Etsy is a fantastic way of selling products that you make. This obviously won’t be relevant to every retail business, but if you make your own posters, jewellery, clothing or home products, Etsy will be perfect.

Etsy basically works by you uploading your handmade products to the website, choosing a relevant category and adding your product information. End users can then search, browse and view your products online.

It costs just 20 cents to list an item on Etsy for 4 months plus a 3.5% transaction fee when a sale is made, so its a great way to increase your online sales.

Use Google Adwords

This is a great tool to use in short bursts over Christmas. As well as your natural search engine rankings that you have obtained through your website, blog and eBay store, Google Adwords can be used to promote even more.

Adwords is ultimately a method of displaying adverts at the top and right of the Google search results. Users then see these adverts, click on them and are directed straight to a product, category or information about your business.

The service is fully customisable and can work on any scale of budget as the adverts stop showing when your daily budget runs out. As a guideline, your daily budget can start at £5.00 per day to receive a good level of traffic, but this really depends on your market.

To find out more about Google Adwords, there are some great articles and tutorials available online such as Adwords Learning Centre.

Advertise on BuySellAds

BuySellAds is a reasonably new service which lets you display visual adverts on well known websites and blogs. The beauty of the service is that if you know that your potential customers frequent a particular blog or website regularly, you can advert on it!

Budgets are determined by the number of impressions that each website gets, with the higher visitor counts costing more money. You can easily advertise your products or services on websites/blogs that receive thousands of impressions (visits) for relatively little money.

The whole service is fully trackable and you have access to reporting showing you how many people saw your adverts, clicked through to your website and what the effective cost per click was.

From a billing perspective, the traditional model for BuySellAds has been to pay monthly, although they have just launched a pay-per-click model now too.

Summary

As you have read, there are many opportunities to increase your online sales over Christmas. The key to success is preparation as some of the options available take a few months to gain momentum (such as blogging to gain search engine rankings).

Related Links

• WordPress – http://www.wordpress.org or http://www.wordpress.com
• Google Base – http://www.google.com/base
• eBay Stores – http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk
• Etsy – http://www.etsy.com
• Google Adwords – http://adwords.google.co.uk
• BuySellAds – http://www.buysellads.com

Do you have a thorough web design process? We have found that in order to be successful in the world of web design, a well thought out project process is essential. Not only does it help to clarify when certain team members are needed on a project, but it helps to demonstrate to clients that we are organised and interested in quality management.

We try to make project management as easy as possible by using Basecamp by 37Signals. This tool is great when teams are located around the UK or abroad. It gives each stakeholder access to the project, whereby they can review, contribute and upload their comments for all stakeholders to view and respond.

We follow a core project process to ensure all of the websites that we design and develop are the best possible quality. You can download a PDF view of our web design process here.

Our methodology is as follows:

Requirements Gathering

1. Contract awarded & terms of business signed and returned
2. Initial meeting to discuss project, requirements and aims
3. User profiling (if required)

To gain a full understanding of the project before any documentation and design is started, a number of detailed requirements gathering meetings are arranged with key stakeholders. From Strawberrysoup’s perspective, this consists of the project manager, the project lead developer, and the lead designer.

Having the most experienced members of the team involved during requirements gathering, gives us the chance to discuss and advise our client on any new functionality and technology that would potentially make the overall solution more effective and future-proofed.

If required, user profiling takes place during the requirements gathering phase. This is aimed at identifying key target audiences and their core reasons for visiting the website.

Specification

1. Project schedule created and team members allocated
2. User profiles agreed (if required)
3. Site mapping created and signed off
4. Functional requirements written and signed off

Once both the customer and Strawberrysoup are happy with the requirements discussed above, these are then transferred into two core documents – the sitemap and functional requirements. The sitemap is used to display the site hierarchy, layout and page linkages. The functional requirements document outlines everything that the website is going to functionally do – from user signup forms to full CMS controls. These two documents are used throughout the entire project to ensure the project remains focused and on track.

A project schedule is agreed and generated from the deadline launch date backwards to ensure all aspects of the project can be achieved within the given timeframes. Milestone deadlines are put in placed and each stakeholder informed where appropriate by the project manager to ensure all materials are supplied at the right time.

Design

1. Homepage designed
2. Lower level pages designed
3. Overall website design signed off

The next phase focuses on the website design. An initial design meeting is held to review the functional requirements, sitemap and user profiles if appropriate. This meeting gives our clients the opportunity to highlight any design preferences if appropriate. It also gives us the chance to question the customer on a number of design related questions and give them our design questionnaire to complete if necessary.

The design is developed and tweaked over time until it is agreed and signed off. Once the initial concept is agreed, we then design a number of lower level pages to ensure that the design of the entire site remains consistent as users navigate their way around.

Development

1. Development team meeting to discuss overall project
2. Staging environment setup
3. Website development
4. Upload to staging environment for client review

The next phase is when the actual development of the website begins. This is the largest part of the project in terms of time and normally consumes over 60% of the project timeframe. Regular liason between Strawberrysoup and our clients is required to ensure they are kept up to date with progress. The client may be given access to the staging environment to test elements if appropriate.

Any concerns regarding the build of the website can be discussed with either the project manager or lead developer to ensure the customer has more than one route to the development team.

Testing

1. Functionality and stress testing
2. Browser interoperability
3. Usability testing

After the development is completed, the website is tested fully. Depending on the project budget, this may include testing by the core project team and client, or the site may be released for beta testing by a wider audience. Testing is one of the most important phases of our web design process. It is typical for testing to last weeks or months, depending on the size of the project.

All bugs and amendments are identified during this phase and prioritised for fixing.

Launch & Review

1. Prelaunch meeting
2. Testing and review
3. Launch
4. Support and maintenance

Once the website is tested fully, a prelaunch meeting is held with the client to discuss the launch plan. Final sign-off is then provided and the website is launched. Strawberrysoup remain available for any amendments that are required post launch through our support agreements or adhoc tweaks.

This is a fantastic example of taking user experience to the next level. Adaptive Path have worked with Mission Bicycles to design and create this truly fantastic San Fransisco based store.

The attention to detail throughout the sales process and the results thereafter show how paying attention to user experience can pay dividends in the long term. They have a fantastic website too.

Mission Bicycle Retail Experience from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

With the world economy suffering on a global scale and current predictions for the near future less than rosy, how can UK businesses survive the recession/credit crunch and come out of the other side in a better position than when they started?

Differentiation

You have no doubt heard about Innocent Drinks. Their marketing, PR and success have prompted many people to decide to start their own business. The number of potential clients that we meet explaining that they want to be ‘the next Innocent’ or that their branding should be ‘just like Innocent’ is staggering.

Innocent have succeeded due to the fact that they did things differently and it worked brilliantly. Their marketing department has done a fantastic job of creating a dedicated tribe of followers. Sooner or later there is going to be a new Innocent that everyone wants to be like – and now is the perfect time to start.

Differentiation can take many forms. Perhaps its the branding, product or service you offer, the way you deliver it, how you interact with your clients or your pricing strategy. It is very important to bear in mind that your differentiation must be commercially viable and strike a cord in your customers minds. Get people thinking “why didn’t we do things like that before?” or “what a great way of doing things”.

Rebranding

If your business’ image is beginning to look tired and out of date, a rebrand may be the perfect answer to create interest and motivate your team.

By creating a new logo, product name, packaging or even business name, your business can be perceived in a whole new way.

A professional graphic design agency should be used to ensure the best results are obtained. They can also be used to generate new ideas and help to formulate a brand manual advising how to use your logo and design with your product or service.

Marketing & PR

It may not seem like the best time to be spending money on marketing or PR, but focused campaigns will ensure that your target market know about your business when the recession ends.

Marketing doesn’t need massive budgets and online marketing is a cost effective and tangible way of building a brand due to the fact that you can measure your campaign success.

Using popular social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook or Linked In to interact with your market and increase your followers is simple. All it takes is a unique idea to grab attention  and the medium to distribute the message and the rest will follow. Measuring success is also simple through the use of web stats, follower numbers or your number of fans.

Pricing

Depending on your market, reducing your prices during a recession may not be the way to go. Trying to increase sales by lowering prices will result in you ultimately lowering the value of your product or service. It may also lead to disgruntled clients who have previously paid higher prices for your products or service.

If you do decide to lower your prices, what will you do when the recession ends? You may find it difficult to justify a price increase or to add further value, thus alienating potential customers and your market.

I have read about some businesses who have actively increased their prices during this recession. Their theory behind this rise is to lower their number of clients that they have (and therefore the resource to manage them) but gain more revenue. This can be a risky strategy however again depends on your market and brand.

Existing Customers

It is always easier to sell to existing happy customers than it is to spend a lot of time and effort trying to gain new ones.
They will no doubt be feeling the squeeze just as much as you are, however they may be more susceptible to paying for a new product or service as they have a relationship with you and know your business already.

Existing customers are also a great resource to trial new ideas, products and services and we have found that they are more than happy to give you constructive feedback on pricing or a product for you. You could offer an incentive to provide feedback such as a future discount or redeemable voucher if needed.

Summary

It goes without saying that a recession is always a nervous time for business. An uncertain future can lead to poor decision-making. It is important to take a step back, review and act on ways to capitalise from this situation and the points discussed above are only a few of the ways that you can help your business.

We all know that technology is a rapidly advancing industry and web design is no exception. It is no longer acceptable to follow the rest of the pack. It is almost expected that web design agencies are innovative in terms of both the technologies that they use and how they use them, whilst focusing on underlying business principles such as time and money.

With the advent of the Internet and the .com boom, traditional graphic design agencies have chosen to offer web design services as an additional revenue stream. The problem is with the speed that the web design industry is advancing, these agencies are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up to date with the best practices, technologies and terminology to use. As a result, their key services can suffer and become diluted.

In order to concentrate on their core competences, graphic design agencies may find it necessary to look externally for a web design agency. The plus side to this is that the web design market is a saturated, however reliable web design agencies with both technical and business expertise are few and far between.

This blog post aims to help graphic design agencies by giving advice about how a relationship with a web design agency could work.

Transparency

We have worked with a wide range of graphic design and marketing agencies who have asked to pretend to work for them. This is fine during that initial phases of the project, however down the line it becomes increasingly difficult to manage. Clients calling the web designers directly will be surprised when the phone is answered under a different company name, or when they receive an email accidentally sent from the wrong email account – it’s always best to remain honest.

Some clients actually look at the relationship favourably as you have partnered with a dedicated web design team. Providing you manage the project successfully and have a good relationship with your client, there is no reason why they would go direct to the web design agency in the future.

Pitching for Work

Don’t be afraid to pitch together. There is nothing worse than a prospective client being answered with a blank face during a Q/A session, so bring along your web design partner as your technical arm.

They should add value to the pitch and act as consultants when discussing the technical aspects of the new website. They should also ask questions to ensure their understanding of the requirements is 100% during the proposal process.

Markup & Business is Business

Your chosen web design partner must understand that whilst they are doing the leg-work in terms of the development of a website, as a business, you must also make your markup.

The percentage of the markup really depends on a range of factors, however we find it is always useful to be open and honest to your partner agency about how much you wish to make on average. We have found that markups can vary between 15% – 35% depending on the project type and scale.

Advice and Support

A professional web design agency will be more than willing to help you with any questions you have about design and how this links with the development. If you are unsure of how something will work online, don’t be afraid to just ask. In the initial stages of the relationship, it may be a steep learning curve to understand each others processes and management styles, but you will also no doubt learn something new on both sides of the fence.

Project Management

We have found in our past experience that the agency that receives the initial enquiry and is charging the markup will generally manage the project. This however does depend on your experience/background as you may feel more comfortable to give this responsibility to your partner agency.

You should bear in mind that if the project management is outsourced, your markup percentage will be reduced as more work is being done externally. This clearly has to be balanced by the stress of project management versus the difference in your markup.

Further Support and Information

If you are looking for a reliable and trustworthy web design partner for your design agency, why not get in touch with us? We have lots of experience with partner relationships and can help to answer any questions you have – just give us a call on 01243 373444 or email partners@strawberrysoup.co.uk

Twitter has gained much publicity over the past few months with celebrities and companies all jumping on the bandwagon. With this increased usage, it was inevitable that spam would find it’s way into this relatively new technology, but how can we ensure we do not get targeted as spam ourselves?

We use Twitter both privately and for Strawberrysoup to publicise what we are doing, sites we have launched and our thoughts for the day. This is all very innocent, but does help to potentially market our business to the wider audience of millions of Twitter users each day. We also manage Twitter accounts for multiple clients who do not have the time to update their Tweets themselves, so get us to do it on their behalf.

We only have 100 or so followers who are generally located near our offices (although we do have some US based follows) but are proud of the followers we have. We recently launched a new website for Irregular Choice which we are very proud of so we decided to publicise it online via our blog, portfolio and Twitter. The latter received some negative feedback from fellow Twitter users thinking we were spammers, so here are our top tips for effective ‘tweeting’ on Twitter:

1. Build relationships with users, don’t just send them random marketing spiel
2. Limit the number of your Tweets per hour – don’t overdo it
3. Don’t send the same Tweet to multiple Twitter users, even if they are your friends
4. Only send out 1 update on a certain subject (such as the launch of a new website!)
5. Public reply to people you are following
6. Remember that all Tweets (even your deleted ones) can still be seen online
7. DO NOT SPAM

If people are interested in what you have to say, they will find you (thanks @joshr). Otherwise do not try and push it too much into the faces of Twitter users – it will have the opposite effect and will annoy your current followers.

If you use Twitter and think that someone is spamming, you can automatically report them to Twitter by RT’ing their tweet and sending it to @spam – this will get picked up and investigated if necessary.

We had a great night on Tuesday when we visited Irregular Choice’s flagship store on Carnaby Street, London for “Irregular Choice’s Night of Irregular Soles”.

They put on a great bash with guest appearances from Polly Scattergood and Laura Dockrill which was complimented nicely with free flowing Magners cider and Krispy Creme dougnuts for all.

It was great to see so many dedicated customers who dressed to impress and catch up with the team again whilst we develop their brand new eCommerce website. We can’t wait to launch their awesome new website and give their thousands of followers a chance to buy Irregular Choice shoes again.

The Lighting Centre is a Guildford based business supplying unique and individual lighting products to the trade and general public in and around the south east of England. With over 25 years experience in the lighting industry, The Lighting Centre offer a range of product for the home and office including wall lights, outdoor lights, bathroom and bedroom lighting and much more.

With the fall of the economic climate and the strive to continue business growth, The Lighting Centre wanted to extend their product offerings outside of Guildford and the south of England through the design and build of an eCommerce website.

Using our StrawberrySystem bespoke eCommerce platform, we designed and built The Lighting Centre website to not only promote and sell their products, but also to streamline their sales process and increase the awareness of the company across the UK.

If you would like to find out more about The Lighting Centre, why not visit their new website?