In our recent seminar on Digital Marketing Priorities for 2012 – we highlighted the importance of communicating your value proposition in all of your digital marketing.

Well it’s not exactly new – at the end of the day it’s what marketing has been all about since the term marketing was even conceived. So why on earth did we choose it as a digital marketing priority for 2012?

We chose it because it is so important. And with so many marketing channels, widgets, bells and whistles to distract us – sometimes it can be easy to lose focus the most important things. That’s why we came up with a simple checklist to make sure that all the marketing we produce from SEO to web design does what it needs to.

Here’s the checklist that covers what we believe is essential to every bit of marketing we do for our clients:

We like to have fun and apply these 7 points to lots of the marketing we see every day and it’s surprising how much doesn’t meet these 7 points. But hopefully now you have the checklist you can make sure your marketing does – we guarantee that it will get better results if you use it.

If you missed the seminar and workshop – you can download the full slide pack and worksheets here:

Design, Marketing General, Online Marketing, Web Design Design, LexisClick News

A new report from the research company Forester predicts that online sales in the UK will see a growth rate of 11%, growing from £30.1bn in 2011 to £51.0bn in 2016

Seasonal discounts on furniture and electrical goods, and early bookings of annual holidays have helped UK online retailers, as shoppers turn to the internet to find deals and offers to save money as technology becomes mainstream.

Among the report’s interesting findings:

• 53% of shoppers made an online purchase in 2011
• people believe they get the best deals when shopping online
• tablet devices like the iPad have spurred online impulse buying

If these stats don’t make you want to re-evaluate your e-commerce efforts – and perhaps a redesign – they should!

The opportunity for online retailers is huge but you’re not going to grab it with a DIY website. Cheap template driven websites look like what they are, and that devalues your brand and makes you look like you don’t take your marketing seriously.

If you want to be in business then you need to be online, but if you’re doing a bad job of it online, then you need to get help from a professional. At LexisClick Online Marketing we take website design and build seriously – click here to take a look at some of our work. We put a lot of time and effort into planning the websites we design. We start with your target audiences and what they are looking for, then we look at the key messages you want to communicate. Only when this is planned and agreed, do we let our creative web designers loose on making your website look fantastic.

If you’d like to find out more about our web design service, please contact our Bournemouth web design team.

Design, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Design creative web design, ecommerce sites, Web Design

Research conducted by the Design Council found that over a third of the UK’s fastest-growing businesses see design as integral or significant. Here at LexisClick we believe that any business that undervalues the importance of design may be missing out on vital opportunities.

Design can bring a range of commercial benefits if integrated across your business:

• a stronger identity for your business
• improved market position relative to your competitors
• increased sales of your products or services
• greater customer loyalty and fewer customer complaints

All businesses can benefit from an accessible and easy-to-use website, which comes out of good design. Online customers who find your website intuitive are much more likely to purchase from you and revisit your website in the future.

When planning your website, you should think about how your users will want to interact with your site. Attractive and accessible design, ease of navigation, well written content, clear ‘call to actions’ and well designed e-commerce functionality will all make a difference to how effective the site is. At LexisClick Online Marketing we can help you model different customer journeys for each of your target segments so that you use this insight to help define your site map, information and structure.

User-centred website development should include the following steps:

• Understanding your business objectives and how this will affect your website – for example, are there certain requirements that will have an impact on the usability of your website?
• Building ‘wireframe’ models of the website and other mock-ups that can be used to test the ‘look and feel’ of the website prior to full development
• Thinking about ‘persuasive design’ and how your website will support the customer to achieve certain goals on your website – eg a purchase or online registration
• Designing, building and testing – this should be an iterative process that moves towards more functional prototypes and the final ‘live’ website. At this stage, you should aim to use expert evaluation alongside further user testing to ensure your understanding of the user all the way up to launch

At LexisClick our Bournemouth team of web designers love producing sites that are good to look at and great to use. We put a lot of time and effort into planning the websites we design. We start with your target audiences and what they are looking for, then we look at the key messages you want to communicate. Only when this is planned and agreed, do we let our creative web designers loose on making your website look fantastic. When it comes to building your site, our team cover a range of technologies, including the latest content management systems, ecommerce systems and we specialise in building sites in php.

If you’d like us to help you design and build a website, that’s easy to find, a pleasure to use, the first to return to and regularly recommended – give us a call.

We’re a full service digital marketing company based in Bournemouth, Dorset specialising in helping ambitious businesses achieve their objectives, through effective online marketing. Our services include web design,  SEO services, advertising, email marketing,  design and social media marketing.  If you’d like more information feel free to take a wander round our site, contact us or call 01202  788333.

B2B Online Marketing, B2C Online Marketing, Design, Marketing General, Web Design business benefits, business benefits of design, business value, creative process, Design, Web Design

As it’s the first week in January, it’s crystal ball gazing time and not one to be left out we’ve taken a look at the many predictions around what will be the next big thing in Marketing in 2012. We’ve selected a few of what we think are the hottest trends. So read on to discover why the only place to be seen this year is on screen. And if you’re feeling downcast by tales of economic woe, how brands will be ready to divert your attention through gamification and interactive apps. Find out why your purse could soon become a collector’s item and community focused initiatives are set to capture the hearts of consumers.

Digital wallets
Contactless payment devices such as near-field communication (NFC) and QR codes will enter the mainstream in 2012. When used in smartphones, they encourage customers to merge their wallet with their mobile phones. Surveys suggest consumers are ready to embrace this trend. Two-thirds of UK shoppers say cash is inconvenient , according to 2011 surveys by Barclays and PayPal. According to Juniper Research, 300 million devices will be on offer to allow consumers to “tap and pay” through NFC by 2014. It is estimated the value of contactless payments and ticketing using NFC will reach $113bn (£72.4bn) per year by 2016 around the world. (Source: Stylus.com)

Welcome to the cloud
Businesses will invest large amounts of money in cloud computing and mobile technology next year. According to the report: IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020, 2012 will see more money spent on mobiles and tablets than PCs and 80 per cent of commercial applications are set to be on cloud platforms. “The UK is underinvested in IT –  and with advertising and consumer spending rapidly moving online and kit becoming out of date, some rise there is likely,” points out chief executive of the Centre for Economic and Social Research, Douglas McWilliams. (Source: IDC.com, Insight.com)

Local marketing and partnerships
As the clean-up efforts following the London riots show, community love is on the rise. This year will see a resurgence of local marketing to tap into people’s collective devotion to their local community. While the internet by nature is international, there is a growing market for local websites and scope for businesses to tailor websites to specific localities. Brands are also set to tap into this trend for collective working as partnership marketing becomes more common. This will not just be about tactical value-based promotions but about strategic alliance with other brands. (Source:23red)

Screening
In 2012, if it is not on screen, it’s not worth seeing. Touchscreens and tablets have made it much more convenient for consumers to view online while they are on the move. UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has tapped into this trend by partnering with television provider Sky, allowing shoppers to watch sports events while they shop using in-cart iPad docks and speakers. In 2012, video consumption will soar as brands increasingly use this channel to engage with customers. Video brochures, video newsletters, and regular video communications will become standard features on websites. According to Cisco, 80 per cent of all internet traffic will be driven by video by 2015. (Source: Trendwatching.com, Milwardbrown). Running in tandem with this is the prediction that mobile is set to overtake the desktop PC and laptop – which is why it’s more important than ever to ensure that you have responsive web design to allow for the multitude of devices that your potential customers can access your site via.

Playfulness
In a bid to escape from the grim news about the economy, consumers will become more responsive to entertainment and escapism. Big brands will become more playful, using gamification and other “funware” that use points, puzzles and level progression to attract and engage customers. Social tools and technologies that enable people to interact with TV programmes will explode in 2012. Viewers will be able to interact with TV and producers will draw on this data for creative inspiration. Services such as Bluefin Labs and GetGlue indicate traditional TV ratings may be bolstered by “social ratings” as advertisers start to take into account how a show is travelling beyond the TV audience. (Source: Milward Brown)

LexisClick is a full service digital marketing agency, we specialises in helping businesses grow by using the power of digital marketing, with services such as web design and build, SEO, PPC, email marketing, and social media.

To find out how we can ensure your marketing is on trend in 2012 take a look around our website www.lexisclick.com or give us a call on 01202 788333.

From the LexisClick Marketing Team

(Adapted from Trends for 2012 from The Marketer January 2012)

B2B Online Marketing, Blogging for business, Email marketing, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Web Design

The end is finally nigh for IE6. Microsoft announced Tuesday that Internet Explorer 6 usage in the U.S. has dropped below 1% and is at 7.7% worldwide.

“So as we kick off 2012, we call on the rest of the world – make it your new year’s resolution to end IE6 and move to a modern browser like IE8 or IE9,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post.

So keen is the software giant to move beyond Internet Explorer 6 that they’ve launched a website – ‘The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown’ that bears the slogan ‘Moving the world off Internet Explorer 6′.  On the website IE6Countdown.com Microsoft is making a concentrated effort to get users to move away from the decade-old browser with messages such as ‘it’s time to say goodbye’.

The goal of the website is to get Internet Explorer 6 usage to drop to less than 1% worldwide. Current UK usage is 1.4%.

If you’d like to join the campaign to encourage Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade visit www.ie6Countdown.com.

Are you still using IE6 let us have your comments!

(Information  sourced via Mashable.com)

Marketing General, Online Marketing, Web Design

We love ‘to be’ and ‘to get creative’ – here’s a design project that we’ve worked on recently. The brief was to create a stand out look and feel for a Women’s only networking group, aimed at management professionals and business owners. The organisers wanted a creative solution that would help them stand out in a busy market place. The design together with the positioning statement incorporates both the fun element of the group and its educational  purpose.

To date the concept has been used on their marketing collateral, email template, pull up banner stands and business cards.

To find out more about our Marketing Services click here.

If you’d like us to give you a fresh look  contact the Design Team at LexisClick on 01202 788333.

Design, Fun Corner, Inspiration, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Uncategorized, Web Design

If you’d like to refresh your brand, or want to inject new life into your marketing materials – give us a call!

Design, Email marketing, Inspiration, LexisClick News, Marketing General, Online Advertising, Uncategorized, Web Design

More information about the producer can be found via the following link

http://blog.piajanebijkerk.com/WordPress/2011/03/18/giving-credit/

B2B Online Marketing, Blogging for business, Email marketing, Marketing General, Online Marketing, Uncategorized, Web Design

If you are responsible for your company’s website you should be aware of the recent changes to EU privacy rules governing websites and information they might save on users’ computers. The most common method used is cookies, that store information that your website can access on your website users’ computers, until they expire or are deleted.  If you have read the guidance from the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) you may well have come away feeling none the wiser about what you should be doing in regards to this new ruling. Well you won’t be alone; the guidance is woolly to say the least. So what do you do? Stick your head in the sand and hope for the best? Or make sure you are doing what you can to comply with the law, whilst making sure you aren’t giving up competitive advantage for your business and its website.

You may not even know whether your website is using cookies. A cookie is a common method used by web developers to temporarily save information from a website that can be accessed by the website as you move between pages, sites, or return to the site at a later date. It is commonly used by website analytics software and is also used by a number of online advertising networks to personalise advertising based on your browsing history. If you don’t know if you’re using cookies, then find out if you are using Google Analytics or Google Adwords conversion tracking. If you are using one of these common tools, then your website will be using cookies.

It might be tempting to wait and see what happens or perhaps hope it washes over, but one thing that the ICO guidance is clear on is that it will take a dim view if a business doesn’t have a clear plan on giving users the option to opt out of information being stored in regards to their use of its website.

To help Bournemouth based businesses understand the implications of this change in the law in regards to their website we have teamed up with Grid Law, a Bournemouth based legal firm, to offer a FREE assessment of your website and guidance on whether your website complies with this latest EU ruling and what you should do if it doesn’t.

For further information on how we can help you ensure that your website is complying with the law contact us on 01202 961336

B2B Online Marketing, Marketing General, Online Marketing, Web Design

Your potential customers are coming to your website to buy from you. You have about 50 milliseconds to impress them.

Give them the right first impression and you’ll significantly increase your chances of getting the sale. Give them the wrong impression and you’ll be facing an uphill battle to win their business.

Don’t underestimate the time, skill and experience it takes to create the right first impression. Read more…

Web Design colour, Design, usability