Posted by Charlotte Lamb, Designer

Today is supposed to be the busiest online shopping day of the year. If you want to sell online it isn’t difficult to set up an e-commerce website (call us for tips on e-commerce websites on 01962 737989) and enable your customers to buy easily using just a credit card, you could make sales even when your office is closed!

To help your customers buy from your e-commerce site with confidence there are some things you can set up that will help the buying process.

Put your office telephone number and address on the website prominently. Displaying a real-world address and telephone number reassures customers that if a problem should occur they can still contact you. Customers can also call up to order by phone if they aren’t comfortable using their plastic online.

Have a secure way for your customers to pay you online. All customers need to be convinced their credit card details are not going to fall ino the wrong hands. A dedicated secure payment server with software or a PayPal account means customers can pay you easily and safely. Have a section on your website that explains your payment system.

Let customers know promptly if you can’t fulfil orders immediately. Tell customers quickly about delays, keep your customers informed of when their order will be dispatched.

Make sure your web pages are easy to navigate and images of your products are clear. Help customers find what they want to buy with ease. Show customers exactly what you are offering, detail sizes, colours, functions and prices to help reduce returns.

We help plenty of customers sell their goods online successfully, if you would like to join them contact us on 01962 737989 and ask for David or Charlotte.

More and more video is being used on websites to promote and endorse products and services, the technology is relatively cheap and easey to use, but why do so many people get it wrong.

Martin Shepherdly of video production company Web Epics has kindly agreed to share his 4 steps to creating an effective video for your website.

Getting the Message Right

The most important part of the process comes down to defining factors such as:

What exactly is the key message?
A video is like a building.. if you don’t give it firm foundations it won’t stand up!

What format will work best?
Depends on where and how the video will mostly be viewed.

What is the creative approach?
What ‘look and feel’ are you trying to achieve? What emotions are you trying to envoke? Understanding this helps to decide what shooting style should be adopted, whether to use any special visual effects, music and/or sound effects.

This normally is a joint process with the Producer/Director interrogating the client’s needs, thoughts and ideas. Once these parameters are defined an outline shooting script or in some cases a storyboard is developed that forms the basis of the production. It is unlikely to be ‘right first time’ and over the course of the production this will inevitably be fine-tuned and developed.

Capturing the Content

It is easy to sport the difference between amateur and professional video.

As well as mastering the technicalities of the camera itself, skills such as composition, lighting, camera moves, understanding depth of field and how to use focus to emphasise specific parts of the picture all make an enormous difference. Mastery of sound is - surprisingly perhaps - even more important than the image.

Video shoots can be lengthy and sometimes stressful, as interruptions may come in many forms; the weather, external noises (such as planes circling overhead - strange how they seem so attracted to video cameras) or even intrigued members of the public wittily waving at the camera!

Putting It All Together

Following the shoot, all the raw footage is loaded into the edit suite. It is then a case of literally building the programme shot by shot, until the story is complete.

Next, under the guidance of the Director, the Editor will work through this first cut, adding further images, mixes and other effects, layering music, possibly an audio commentary, adding captions, animations and titles and tweaking the audio to create something close to the finished product.

At this stage the client is able to see the work in progress - of course this can easily be achieved over the web. Any necessary amendments required for the final edit are then discussed with the Director and the agreed changes carried out.

The Editor then carries out a final ’sound dub’ (smoothing out sound levels and getting rid of any intrusive noises) and ‘grading’ (adjusting the colours or brightness), ready for a final client sign off.

Publishing To The World

If you are planning to use your video online, the approved programme will now need to be encoded to Flash video (or alternative format if you prefer) before uploading to the streaming server.

Depending on where the video is being hosted and your own technical abilities, this will either generate a piece of HTML code for you to paste on to your web page, or a URL for you or your web person to integrate into a player.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, Designer

There are good reasons why most websites follow an unofficial set of design rules that guide placement and layout of the content. Research into the way that people use websites has revealed that users tend to scan firstly along the top of the web page from left to right and then down the left hand side of the screen from top to bottom. These places correspond with the usual menu and headline locations and these would appear to be the places people look to guage content and navigation links. The amount of time spent looking for the thing they want by visitors to your site is tiny, measured in seconds, so make it as easy as possible for them to find what they want. Avoid cryptic link titles so that visitors stay with your site rather than moving on to your competition.

The headline is the next place the visitor looks at, it is the most effective way to grab their attention. Writing concise headlines can help visitors find the information they want quickly and keep them on your site.

Don’t use too many colours and shapes on the page - it’s visually distracting to page visitors.

Leave white space around your content so visitors don’t have to struggle to find what they want in a clutter of things. (Compare this to the paper-covered desk where locating the right piece of paper becomes time-consuming.)

If you add pictures, choose ones that enhance what you are saying, or illustrate your product nicely and effectively show your visitor the thing they are searching for. Beautiful pictures are attractive but may not hold visitors on your website unless you happen to be selling the images as art.

If you would like to see the report about this from the BBC Working Lunch programme the film is here.

I to Eye have 15 years of experience with the web, we know what makes an effective website. Call us on 01962 737989.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, Designer

It’s good to say thanks to the people who make your business a success, and now it’s the perfect time to get your christmas cards ready. (OK, I know it’s early November, but if you need them printed you need to think about it now!)

A bespoke Christmas card can be designed to include your logo, message and your contact numbers so that you can thank your customers as well and remind them of your continued existence. Get the cards out early and they might stay on the desk of your customer for weeks, maybe even until January. Most marketing materials don’t last quite as long as that. (Except perhaps calendars - maybe you need to consider having those printed at this time of the year too!)

We prefer digital printing, it’s perfect for short runs of cards that look great and won’t leave you with hundreds of cards left over for next year to clog up your desk drawers. We have designed loads of christmas cards over the last few years, call us if you would like one for Christmas 2008.

Call I to Eye on 01962 737989 and get started on your Christmas cards to thank your customers.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, Designer at I to Eye

We have been going on (and on) about blogging for a while but I think blogging may have hit the mainstream after I watched a piece about it on the BBC Working Lunch programme today.

With a real live-blogger in their studio the entire programme was posted bit-by-bit onto the internet and their presenters have also been given a blog to write: visit here.

Their point was that blogs are great if you are an expert because you can build up a comprehensive collection of your knowledge online, share it with others and get feedback or share ideas with your readers. I bet that in your line of business you have picked up ideas, expertise and ways of working that you could share with others, they might be outside your company or they could be your employees, or they could be customers who want to know that you are an expert before they buy. Your business could benefit from a blog written by an expert, written by you.

Just don’t claim you thought of bogging ages ago, it’s gone mainstream now!

We can set up, maintain and manage your blog. All you have to do is write the articles, it couldn’t be easier. Call I to Eye on 01962 737989 and talk to David about having your own blog.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb

Alton 4 Business website
The design for this networking group website developed from the vibrant graphics they already had for their paperwork and uses all the same design details they were already using to help create a sense of cohesion between all their publicity and marketing materials. It helps people who might be new to your organisation if all your materials bear a resemblance to each other. This reinforces who you are and helps them to recognise your materials quickly when you produce something new or place an advert where it will be seen against others.

Alton 4 Business website

This site is updated by several members of the group so it has a flexible space on the page for the members to write reports about their meetings.

Visit their site by clicking here.

Simply explained, Meta Tags are part of the HTML code of a web page that imparts information about the siad web page to web browsers such as, Explorer and Firefox, as well as to search engines.

If you are building a website or own a website the three really important Meta Tags that will help get your website found are, the Meta Page Title, Keywords and the Meta Description.

The Meta Page Title appears in the bar at the top of a browser window, in the case of Microsoft Explorer it is the text that appears immediately before the wording in the blue bar which says Microsoft Explorer. Most search engines place a lot of importance on this title when ranking web pages, so you should ensure that you have a unique title for each of your web pages and they that it contains your top search phrase for that page.

The Meta Description, is as it sounds, a description of what that particular web page is about. It is also the text that many search engines use to describe your web page in their search results. Again this is an important Tag that can help get your website found. Like the Title Tag most search engines do read these descriptions and put a lot of importance on them.

Meta Descriptions should also be written with real people in mind, as a well written Meta Description can attract people to click on your site when faced with dozens of listings on a results page, even if you are listed towards the bottom of a page.

The Keyword Tag started life as the place to put all the phrases that you wanted your website to be found by, however many website owners found that they could out smart the search engines using them, most search engines no longer pay much attention to them. However some do use them and most will check to see if they have been included, so it is important to use them.

Most web users type in phrases into search engines rather than single words, so you are best advised to use key phrases rather than single words. If you are in a very competitive area you many also want to consider using common mis-spellings as away of avoiding the competition but still attract a reasonable amount of traffic to your site.

Having said all of the above, unless you write web pages about the things you want to get found for the above advice is of limited help.

One of the processes Google uses to position your website on its results pages is to count the number of incoming links from other websites into yours.

Rightly or wrongly Google assumes that if other website owners have taken the trouble to place a link from their website to yours, your website must be of interest. The more incoming links, the greater the interest, thus the more important your site becomes.

To maximise this effect, it is a good idea if you can encourage linking site owners to use your keywords or search phrases in the anchor text (the words you click on to activate the link) on their sites.

For example rather than using ‘Click Here’ in a link to the I to Eye website, it would be better for us if the anchor text was ‘website design’ or ‘powerpoint presentation designers’ and the links went to a specific page rather than just the home page.

Recipical links, that is when a site owner links to your site for a return link to their’s, don’t help your search engine ranking. Google assumes, that rather than based on the interest of the sites’ content, both site owners have enter an agreement to add the links.

However if they help generate additional traffic then they should be encouraged.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb

Whenever you send your customers an email, a letter or even an invoice there is a chance to tell them more about what your company can do for them. Use all the communications that you send to inform your customers and give them opportunities to come back to you to do business again.

Your business card has two sides so why not use the other side (you know, the one that is usually blank) to tell your customers an interesting fact or give them details about what you actually do. It will help them to remember you better if you only have a few minutes to talk to them at a networking event too.

Stick information about yourself or your services in a panel on your letters and your invoices, you can tell them about a complimentry service to the one they were originally interested in. Always give them a way to contact you direct if they want to know more.

The home page of your website can also act as a virtual ’shop window’ for you to show off your services, provide information and place testimonials from satisfied customers. You can rotate your products and services on this page so that visitors to the site will see something new each time.

Creating opportunities to sell more to your customers only takes a bit of thought and it might win you extra business you might not otherwise get.

If you would like help in designing your stationery and making your communications more effective I to Eye can help, contact us on 01962 737989 and speak to David Woodroofe.