Getting the most out of site navigation with a Mega Menu

November 21st, 2011

mega menu blog image

A great way to get the most out of your website

Many people have lots of levels on their website and find it difficult to get traffic to those lower level pages without massive bounce rates. With a stylish mega menu you can provide all your sites levels on every page. This type of menu will cut the number of search click-through and help your traffic directly find what they’re looking for in the navigation. The best way to display the menu drop down is to use stylish “mouse over” functionality.

Drop down menu’s: “Almost consider it an extra site map for the front end of your website.” WiseTiger

Any down sides?

People worry this sort of menu can damage there SEO but as long as you provide all your links as readable text with alt tags then there is no need to worry, in most cases it does very well in search engine optimisation.

Other concerns:

  1. The mega menu can cover a large area of content if you were to accidentally hover over the menu.
    * A way to improve upon this is to make sure the height is not too great to accommodate smaller screens. This can be done by using the width as much as possible and making sure the font size is not too big.
  2. Skipping important information by jumping to a subpage i.e. click straight to “Request a call” – skipping “Contact us” page which contains a phone number they could of used.
    * In most cases this can easily be avoided by making sure your sub pages contain all key information relating to the parent page.

Top Tips:

  • Don’t have too many links. Not all sub pages need to be in the navigation.
  • Target main keywords for your menu titles.
  • Don’t have too many levels on your menu, one or two is plenty. Three maximum.
  • Good to colour code or style the menu to the rest of the site – could also use different colours for different sections.
  • Customise your mega menu with different layouts for different sections as well as adding imagery as well as text.

Example:

Here’s a recent example of a website we’ve produced for Amazing Retreats which is has a excellent example of a Mega Menu.
www.amazingretreats.com >>
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Posted in content services, search marketing, web development by admin | No Comments »

Business Brand Colour Trends for 2012

November 2nd, 2011

As we approach the end of the year it’s time to predict some colour trends for the next twelve months.

This time last year I predicted that business colour trends for 2011 would be muted and subtle. Business confidence was ok, but many companies remained conservative and opted for safe colours rather than vibrant hues. There were exceptions, but for most businesses colour schemes were pretty ordinary.

Blue is the new Blue!

No surprises here; blue is the UK’s favourite corporate colour. If you want to know more about business brand colour theory, read this fascinating research document by Leeds University which monitored the use of colour amongst the top FTSE brands. They found that “blue is the most popular corporate logo colour, with 49% of FTSE 100 companies using blue for their logos”. And it’s the same story right the way down the pecking order, with more businesses choosing blue than any other colour. Expect blue to remain popular during the next year…

Green shoots?

The most interesting development we’ve noticed in corporate colour schemes is the emergence of green. Green hasn’t traditionally been a popular colour choice for business, but as we go into 2012 I predict we’ll see a lot more of it. In days gone by, green was associated with hippies, herbal tea and ‘green politics’ – not the colour of ‘serious’ business.

But green has grown up. And what a great choice of colour to reflect business confidence as we emerge from the recession. Are you seeing the green shoots of recovery? Then why not use green in your logo! It’s positive branding and it makes good business sense.

And let’s not forget that green is the colour of environmental consciousness. Being ethically and environmentally aware has become an important driver for brand reputation, so it makes good business sense to be seen to be green. And what better way of doing this than adding green to your logo or colour palette?

Here’s a great example…

The British Gas logo is an example of green appearing as part of a brand refresh. In this latest iteration of the British Gas logo the red of the flame has been removed from the identity. Keen eyes will notice new typography and a new strapline, but for me the most important change is the appearance of green.

When I was a small boy, my mother told me “have your greens, they’re good for you”. Let’s see if she was right!

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Posted in brand design, uncategorised by Simon | No Comments »

Is social media right for business?

September 16th, 2011

Some highlights from the latest Nielsen Social Media Report – relevant reading for anyone involved in online marketing

I’m often asked by clients about the value and relevance of Social Media in their day-to-day business activities. We’ve got some very neat ways of measuring the success of your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn posts, but here are some recent headlines from Nielsen that make for some interesting reading. (The figures were collated in the US but they are relevant to the UK market as well).

  • In America, social networks and blogs account for about 25% of viewer’s time online
  • Roughly 4 out of 5 internet users visit social networks and blogs
  • Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other US website
  • 40% of social media users access social media content from their smartphones
  • Social networking apps are the third most used apps by smartphone users
  • Internet users over 55 are driving the growth of social media on smartphones
  • Video streaming from social networking sites is on the increase
  • Active social networkers are more likely to buy online than people who don’t use social networks
  • 53% of adult social networkers follow a brand

So social media continues to grow, but most importantly it’s connecting with the majority of web users with just about everything they do online.
You can view the full Nielsen Report here.

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Posted in uncategorised by Simon | No Comments »

Time to stop using Arial and Times New Roman on your website

September 14th, 2011

Irritated by Arial? Tired of Times New Roman? Then read on… web fonts just got prettier.

For as long as the internet has been around designers have been limited to just a small selection of fonts that can be used in the creative design of a website. And that’s because in the mid-1990s, Microsoft defined some ‘Core Fonts’ for the internet – which included a dazzling selection of about a dozen typefaces such as Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia and Comic Sans! These Core Fonts were shipped with operating systems from Microsoft and Apple, and in time became known as ‘web fonts’.

Over the years, nearly all websites have used the same, limited selection of typefaces. And there’s a good reason for this. From a technical aspect, a website needs to link to fonts stored locally on your PC to render text on a web page. And because the only fonts that can be guaranteed to be on a PC are the ‘Core Fonts’ the logic goes that a website has to be designed with these fonts in mind.

Until now.

Because recently all mainstream web browsers have been developed to link to fonts that are stored remotely on a web server rather than relying on the ones that you had shipped with your PC. Designers can now specify fonts from a huge selection of faces from Proxima Nova to Bad Dog; in fact there are literally 1,000s of fonts that can be used on your website, all without sacrificing any web standards – plus they’re fully compatible with your CMS, search engines and screen readers.

And the advantage? Well for certain, a unique font will make your website look quite different from the mainstream (unless of course you really like Arial!). And don’t forget, many brands have supporting typefaces – which means you can now specify the right font for your website rather than choosing one that ‘looks a bit like it’. Choosing a custom font also means that you can create difference and emphasis to make certain text stand out – so perfect for headlines, special offers and calls to action.

WiseTiger is currently rolling out some new websites using Typekit Fonts, and we’re very impressed. In development are sites for Aviation Software Company Damarel and The Fownes Hotel. And recently ‘live’ is a website for Auto Industry Insider — check the use of the fonts used for the headlines on this website which are all displayed in a font called ‘Museo’. Typekit can also be incorporated into existing websites, so chat with us if you think this could be of interest to you.

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Posted in uncategorised by Simon | No Comments »

Customer Testimonials

August 25th, 2011

Customer Testimonials

Building customer confidence

When customers visit your site for the first time they most likely won’t know what service you provide after purchase. Can they rely on you to delivery what you’re selling, can they trust you as a company. With a growing awareness of security issues, spamming, fraud and so on how do you let the customer know you’re legit? Many techniques can help build a customer’s confidence, one would be ensuring security is visible on your E-commerce site such as the Veri-Sign; another way is showing testimonials from past customers that had a positive experience.

Testimonials

Testimonials can be a quick and easy way of producing great fresh content for your site as well as showing to new customers what service you provide. Building up the confidence in your website is very important and can help improve conversion rates if approached correctly.

Steps for Requests:

  1. Wait for positive feedback from a customer – a closing email could be sent regarding the product or service highlighting the transaction is complete and that you hope they had a pleasant experience with the company.
    Avoid:     Requesting a testimonial when they haven’t responded with a positive comment yet.
  2. Once positive feedback has been received send an email template stating you have an on-site testimonials page and that you wish to feature the comment with their permission – good to ask if for their name and product/ service they used as reference.
    Avoid:     Asking them for too much personal information and making it mandatory.
  3. Wait for the customer’s response – if you have the go ahead you have a nice testimonial to feature on your website with links to relevant pages/ products.
    Avoid:     Sending multiple requests for a testimonial.
  4. After posting the testimonial on the site respond to the customer with a thank you and that it’s now Live on the website – at this point you can then drop a further request to another form of testimonial such as the reviewcentre.com or trustpilot.com.
    Avoid:     Requesting they go on more than one other site to post a comment.

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Posted in content services, web development by Tom Hood | No Comments »

Increasing Product Page Conversion Rates

August 11th, 2011

photoshop alternative blog image

Identifying key elements that help sell

Product pages are very important as they effectively are your shop window and must display that key information to sell that product. Price isn’t everything these days as customers like to know timescales, quality of the product and even things like the exact dimensions.

Breaking the screen barrier!

The trouble with online shopping is customers can’t physically see or touch the item you’re selling. This barrier can be broken with good functionality and interaction such as high resolution images featured in a dynamic image viewer with zoom or rotation. The reason why this helps is the more detail you show the more the customer can imagine the product in real life.

Special offers

Of course special offers and discounts will always help sell a product and with increasing customers doing price comparisons any genuine discounts can easily be spotted. Vouchers in directories can also help build up that important confidence in website discounts.

Reviews/ Rating

Reviews are becoming increasingly popular tool for customers to find and choose products. This is not surprising as you have personal experiences from other customers driving the decision to purchase. A product with reviews is more likely to be clicked on in a site search than one that doesn’t the same applies to good and bad reviews.

Lead times

Time-scales are very important when it comes to selling a product. For example if you had two products of a similar price and one has a faster delivery time you would most likely go for the faster delivery item even if it’s slightly more in price.

Information

Producing well written product descriptions can go along way; avoid spelling mistakes and tiny font sizes. Key information is vital; describe such things like what it’s made of, what benefit it produces and any other main features that can improve sales.

Dimensions/ Sizes

Depending on the product of course dimensions are very important whether it be a piece of clothing or a 52” TV. Good accurate measurements can make all the difference even to the point where you visualise the product with each individual measurement overlaid on the image.

Delivery

Not only do customers like to know how long a product will take to arrive but who is delivering it, can they book a delivery date/ time, can they track the progress and so on. Providing a good service from the website to their door increases return customers.

Top Tips

  • High resolution images showing as much detail as possible
  • Time-scales – what is the lead-time for the item to reach the customer
  • Bullet points or key information describing the product
  • Provide accurate dimensions & measurements
  • Reviews/ Star rating
  • Special offers/ Discounts
  • Delivery / Tracking options
  • Try to include at least three of the above in your site search

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Posted in search marketing, web development by Tom Hood | No Comments »

Want to manipulate images without buying expensive software?

July 8th, 2011

photoshop alternative blog image

Try Pixlr a great Firefox add-on

Browsers are increasingly becoming more advanced and feature many impressive add-ons that help everyday office work. Pixlr is a great example of this by having many features similar to Photoshop. Examples of this are the ability to apply filters, have multiple layers, and keep track of manipulation history.

How do I get this add-on?

Firstly you need to have Mozilla Firefox installed on your computer, then simply go to a search engine and search for “Firefox add-ons”.

The official address is https://addons.mozilla.org.

Once on the site go to the search function and look for the term “Pixlr”. In the results you should see Pixlr Grabber – click add to Firefox where it will then be installed to your browser. After installation give it a test by going to any website and right click on the page. In the menu you should see a “Grab” feature that can grab the whole page or a defined area. Also while browsing you can right click on an image and in the menu you will see an “Edit Image” feature that will take the selected image and send it directly to Pixlr for editing.

We recommend

Add a bookmark to the main editor of the Pixlr add-on. This way it takes you straight into the editor where you can create a new image, open an image from your computer & so on.

The direct address for the bookmark is: http://pixlr.com/editor/.

Advantages

This great addition to Firefox is completely free and is fast and easy to use. So if you’re looking for a Photoshop alternative that’s free then Pixlr Grabber is Wisetigers recommendation.
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Posted in content services, web development by Tom Hood | No Comments »

Improve email marketing by up to 19%

June 17th, 2011

Giraffemail and Social Media

Many organisations are using social media to reach their audience. Many organisations are using email marketing to reach their audience.  And of course all organisations have a website to attract their audience. According to Nielsen recognising that your audience is on a multitude of online channels of communication is important to improve your overall marketing performance.

Reading this recent article on MAD: The challenge of channel choice, it is clear that Nielsen’s research shows that email marketing can be made up to 19% more effective when integrated with other channels of communication.  Indeed in the same research Nielsen report that “22% of the time people are online worldwide, they are engaging with social media”

Being able to ensure that your messages about your latest news, announcements and other information is distributed across multiple channels is now very important to drive overall marketing performance. Recognising this WiseTigers latest email marketing update to Giraffemail enables you to integrate the most popular Social Media channels with your email marketing campaigns.  This update was released to all existing clients earlier this week. You can read more about this update on our email marketing update news release.

Forrester Research agrees, “The most important theme for 2011 is ‘multichannel planning’.“ Reading their Midyear Planning: Predictions For 2011, they insist it is important for technology to help organisations manage the growing number of marketing channels.  The latest update to Giraffemail is just one of many such improvements that WiseTiger are delivering this year.

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Posted in content services, email marketing, projects, social media by Andrew | 1 Comment »

What’s in the future for cookies?

May 18th, 2011

UK Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 Fortune Cookies

Or, what do the changes in the U.K. Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 mean to me?

The key thing is not to worry unduly. Whilst the changes in the regulations, effective from the 26th of May 2011, require you to be conscious about how you use cookies on your website to service your users or customers, there are exceptions that are little understood.

Information Commisioners Office Advice

The U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued advice to businesses and organisation to help ensure compliance to the new EU privacy directive.  This advice is, in effect, a guide to getting compliant. The ICO plan to issue further guidance once the regulations are implemented.

The new rules which revise the U.K. Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) apply to cookies, including flash cookies, as well as other technologies that store or gain access to information on users computer (or devices like iPhones).  From the 26th, websites are required to gain explicit consent to store the cookie on the users computer (or device). Previously websites only needed to explain how and where cookies were to be used in it’s privacy policy and provide an opt-out capability.

Exception

There is a little known exception to the regulation that allows cookies to be used without consent if what you are doing is ‘strictly necessary’ for a service requested by the user of your website. While the ICO suggest that this exception should be considered to be a ‘narrow’ one it does suggest that examples would include shopping activities. i.e. “to ensure that when a user of your site has chosen the goods they wish to buy and clicks the ‘add to basket’ or ‘proceed to checkout’ button, your site ‘remembers’ what they have chosen on a previous page. You would not need to get consent for this type of activity.”

What to do next

ICO has urged businesses and organisations to:

  1. “check what type of cookies and similar technologies you use and how you use them”
  2. “assess how intrusive your use of cookies is”; and
  3. “decide what solution to obtain consent will be best in your circumstances.”

The key step in the process is No.2. How intrusive is your use of cookies? It goes on to say “Some of the things you do will have no privacy impact at all and may even help users keep their information safe.  Other technologies will simply allow you to improve your website based on information such as which links are used most frequently or which pages get fewest unique views.”  The ICO suggests that cookies involved in creating detailed profiles of an individuals browsing activity are more affected by the regulation changes.  Indeed I would suggest that cookies that collect user data are the ones that need action.

The ICO also discusses various options for obtaining user consent through the use of pop-ups, terms and conditions, and similar solutions. “What is clear is that the more directly the use of a cookie or similar technology relates to the user’s personal information, the more carefully you need to think about how you get consent,” concluded the ICO.

Where can I find out more?

You can read the full ICO guidance here. The ICO may provide further guidance as the regulations roll out and are implemented; “We will be keeping the situation under review and will consider more detailed advice if appropriate in future.”

WiseTiger will keep abreast of this and will update you here, so keep coming back :-)

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Posted in web development by Andrew | No Comments »

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