Caged Fish web design Market Harborough

Here’s a question for you… where is your website hosted, is it in the UK, USA, Germany, does it make any difference?? well hell yeah!! If you have  a .com domain, hosted outside the UK, someone does a Google UK only search guess what?? You won’t be found, not good for a UK based company. Also have you any clue how fast your pages are to load? We had a client recently taking over 12 seconds to load their first page, we did a test on our hosting package and guess what? 0.04 seconds for the same page. If you would like to check the speed of your site CLICK HERE Good Luck!!!!

A new survey on business blogging conducted in August by research firm Loudhouse - the results of which were presented at an event in London yesterday - shows that blogs are rapidly becoming a credible tool for UK companies in generating business opportunities.

The research questioned managers with direct sales and/or purchasing responsibility at 300 companies with over 250 employees to discover how they and their companies use blogs to interact with existing and potential customers, and how they engage with the blogosphere to inform their own business decision making.

The survey report clearly shows positive thinking in the UK about the value business blogs may present.

Key findings:

Is blogging popular in the workplace?

• 50% of companies undertake some form of blogging, either having a blog, or encouraging employees to comment on blogs

• 64% of company blogs have been launched in the past 6 months

• 66% of managers in the survey have visited blogs in the past 12 months, 29% of those having commented on issues raised on blog sites
Is blogging a business tool?

• 31% of businesses state that their blog has generated ‘significant’ business opportunities

• A further 55% of businesses believe that their blog has generated ‘moderate’ business opportunities

• 80% of blog users visit blogs within work hours. Most blog users visit blogs at lunchtime (31%), or first thing in the morning (29%)

• 33% of blog visitors will access a blog on a daily basis. 29% visit on a weekly basis

Is there potential for blogging growth?

• 63% of managers want to understand more about how blogs can benefit their businesses

• 66% of businesses believe that blogs are becoming more influential as an information source

• 54% of respondents believe that new skills sets and approaches are needed by their organizations in order to make use of blogs

• 46% of respondents state that blogs can drive business opportunities in future
One particular result that I did find highly significant is that 64% of blogs started by companies have been launched only within the past six months, as noted above.

Bizwiki is a new British business listing site that anyone can edit. If your company is in the UK and listed in another business directory, it’s likely that some details will have been picked up by Bizwiki and used to create an entry without your knowledge. If you ‘claim’ your business listing, you can become the registered editor for your company’s Bizwiki record, which means that you can monitor and, if necessary, remove any incorrect changes made by others.http://www.bizwiki.co.uk/faq.htm

Keep your website fresh and up-to-date:
Always update the information on your website, it portrays a positive image of your company and visitors will know you’re serious about business.
Send email newsletters:
Allow visitors to opt in for newsletter updates on your website. Try sending out a newsletter every month or quarter, it’s an easy way to remind visitors of your company and what you’re up to.
Offers and Competitions:
Running special offers and competitions will always catch your visitor’s attention. It will get them excited and keep them coming back for more!

Well thanks to Microsoft it does…..

Up to now internet and email marketeeers have been able to distribute content to email users similar to web pages. This is due to outlook and outlook express using internet explorer as part of its engine.

Well great news.. Office 2007 arrives, well great for some.. Microsoft in their wisdom have dumped the IE engine in favour of Microsoft Word. This causes a problem as Word has limited HTML support.

This means, limited formatting, no backgrounds, active content.. Shall I go on.

A post at the SITEPOINT blog states

Not only that, but this new rendering engine isn’t any better than that which Outlook previously used-indeed, it’s far worse. With this release, Outlook drops from being one of the best clients for HTML email support to the level of Lotus Notes and Eudora, which, in the words of Campaign Monitor’s David Grenier, “are serial killers making our email design lives hell.”

Thanks Bill…….

It doesn’t happen very often, but I’ve found a fantastic free offer. The domain registrar 123-reg (owned by Pipex) are offering free online storage accounts. They say there are no storage limits, you can store, files, pictures, video etc. etc. I’ve signed up and it works pretty well. can be found at http://drive.123-reg.co.uk

You can also share with friends and allow file sharing (legaly of course)