Better connection up here than in my hotel. Hmm..

I’ve just got back from a week away in beautiful Snowdonia (no, that’s not my 4×4) and found myself reminded yet again that the best things in life are free – fresh air, mountain scenery, wi-fi.

And like all the best things, you don’t always appreciate them till they are gone. Getting away from it all is great, as long as “all” doesn’t include the ability to communicate.

Yet again, I was struck by the fact that so many leisure businesses fail to understand that free access to good quality wi-fi is as fundamental to their customers’ needs as toilet facilities.

Spending a penny

You don’t ask me to type in a 14 digit codeword, set up an account and pay a premium rate before I can take a wizz, so don’t ask me to do it to access wi-fi. That’s if you have wi-fi in the first place.

So much of what we do on holiday – from deciding where to go to booking a ticket to keeping up with gossip at home – is done online that to have no, or restricted, access to the internet has a huge impact on the quality of your stay.

The place we stayed was fine – but I’ll never go there again. Don’t give me a trouser press but no free internet access and a terrible connection speed.

When I find I have faster access to the internet on my smartphone at the top of Wales’s highest mountain than I do in my hotel, it’s time to find a new hotel.

Time and again I come across restaurants that either have no wi-fi access, or lock it down with a price to log in. It seems almost unbelievable that there are still hotels that don’t have free access to wi-fi.

If you are in the business of accommodating people – whether that’s in your rooms, your tables or your conference facilities – wi-fi should just be there. Like running water, lightbulbs, chairs, toilet paper..

Internet access is a fundamental, basic requirement not a premium add-on. If you don’t get that, don’t be surprised if you don’t get customers.

We’re delighted to have just been officially unveiled as one of the magnificent seven Bristol agencies working on the new Bristol City Council web project.

We’re even more delighted that this has come about because BCC actually did something many councils talk about but rarely do in such a meaningful way – consulting with industry.

Conversation starter

Last year, BCC announced that it was going to take opinion from Bristol’s digital community on the re-development of the council’s website.

Naturally, we were interested and attended a round-table discussion on the project, after which I wrote a blog piece picking up on the fact that I felt the engagement was missing a trick.

I was delighted – and the cynic in me a little surprised – when I received a reply from the council’s communications and marketing director Peter Holt opening up a dialogue about the subject we’d raised.

Benchmark

The discussions that followed led to our engaging with the procurement process for approved suppliers to work on the project – at the end of which we’re extremely pleased to have been selected.

It’s been a refreshing process to go through – and a rare one in procurement – where a public sector body has gone to industry happy to say it doesn’t have all the answers and asking them to contribute ideas to a project rather than presenting them with tender documentation for a fait accompli.

Having gone through the process with BCC, I’m convinced this approach has led to a much more carefully thought out and strategised web project than would have been the case if consultation had not occurred on the same level.

It’s a very exciting project to be involved in, and hopefully one that will set the benchmark for similar projects across the UK.

We’ve just completed and launched our latest web project, for one of the UK’s largest auction companies Arthur Johnson & Sons.

It was an interesting and complex development, requiring some innovative approaches to integrating with existing auction platforms as well as complex planning to ensure the site worked seamlessly with the bidding processes of one of busiest auction room complexes in the country.

As part of the process, we created an online application which allowed Arthur Johnson to simply integrate their site with the bidding platform they have been using to manage their online catalogue.

Our solution greatly simplified the processes involved allowing user-friendly management of their online auction presence.

Record Sales

Our work with Arthur Johnson has already attracted interest from one of the UK’s largest auction software companies.

The site was also planned to improve the user experience of the thousands of auction goers who visit it each week – with intuitive information architecture, improved search facility, personalised auction alerts and clear user interface.

Within a week of the launch of the new site, Arthur Johnson & Sons saw record online sales and passed the 50% mark for bids coming from their online users for the first time.

With a glut of “experts” offering their services on social media, we’ve made sure to differentiate our training by focussing on marketing engagement strategies, not just doing the technology.

We don’t just want to excite you about the opportunities new technologies can present, but we help you to plan and use the tools that will make a real difference to how you engage with your clients/customers/communities and ultimately help you to achieve your marketing goals.

Our training is based on evidenced research, benchmark studies and client feedback.

How we work:

• We keep our workshops small to allow for personalised and practical training
• We bring sector/industry knowledge and understanding to contextualise the training
• We use an e-adoption ladder to help you set goals and evaluate your progress
• We believe in a shared learning experience and make this integral to our training

While each workshop is tailored, this is a general framework we use for our workshop:

1.  Showing examples of social media in action that is relevant to you

Outcome: This gives delegates an understanding of how and why social media works and the relevance to them.

2. Planning your social media, to cover:

• Goals

• Target Audience

• User processes

• Social media tools/platforms

• Measures

• Resource allocation

The outcome is for delegates to create their own draft social media plan/strategy.

3. Social media tools/Platforms

We look at the different social media tools including Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc

To help delegates decide on which tools would work for their social media marketing strategy.

4.  Introduction to the Social Media tools

This involves practical training on using the tools.

5.  Resource allocation

How to evaluate the time value investment for implementing social media marketing.

We provide half day or full day workshops as well as 3 hour taster sessions.

Please get in touch with us if you require further information or wish to book a place/workshop.

Our shiny new advertising board is now on display at HorseWorld in Bristol – set off nicely by the recent snowfall!

We’ve worked with the charity for a number of years now and wanted to advertise our work with them to visitors to their attraction – as well as supporting a client we’ve enjoyed working with.

We think it looks rather fetching in the snow – and well worth seeing if you’re looking for something to do in the Christmas holidays (of course you can also see the animals, run around in the play barn and straw den, enjoy the aerial runway, take part in workshops, visit the museum and the other fun things at the visitor centre while you’re there!)

What do you do if you are invited to respond to a tender and the company who put it together has got it all wrong?

It’s a tricky question – but one that comes up time and again when it comes to web development.

We recently received a tender brief for redeveloping a website for a South West organisation that immediately raised alarm bells. While the marketing team involved obviously had a clear idea of the issues they needed to address, the proposed solutions set out in the brief were going to cause them as many problems as they solved.

They specifically requested that the tender should reflect a proposed development structure – unfortunately, one where we could see that much of the development work would be duplicated, and key design information architecture work would be carried out after the CMS to support them was built, with potentially serious consequences for usability.

In this kind of situation, we are always faced with the dilemma of whether to simply respond to what the company is asking for in the way they requested, or to let them know our concerns and respond with a proposal to work the way we know is best.

In this case, we decided the best course of action would be to talk to the people who put the tender together and express our concerns that they risked compromising their project – and spending more than they needed to – if the project went ahead as they suggested.

Thankfully, the people we spoke to understood our point straight away and were happy to hear constructive suggestions about their project.

The problem for businesses putting together web tenders is that web development is a mix of different disciplines – it’s part marketing and part web design, you need expertise in both to make it work.

Marketing teams will understand their marketing aims and what the want the site to achieve for them, but often have limited knowledge of the actual technical processes of building a site.

Similarly, pure web design companies will know how the technology works but not how it can best support a businesses marketing aims.

We always recommend that when putting together a web tender, companies should take advice not only from the people in their organisation responsible for marketing but also from people who understand the nuts and bolts of web development. Ideally, both should work together – not just on the tender, but on the whole web marketing strategy.

Not every organisation will get the people they invited to tender picking up on issues with their brief – often, understandably, web companies just aim to meet the brief they have been given.