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

LexisClick recently re-launched Rock Recruits – a revolutionary service for online recruitment advertising for their client Rock Recruitment. Rock Recruits, which can be found at www.rockrecruits.net, allows business to publish their vacancies to over 9 million active viewers searching for the next career move across a range of leading UK job sites.

LexisClick helped Rock Recruitment develop this advertising platform to market it as a stand-alone service, which publishes vacancies across the leading UK job sites, with massive cost savings to customers in comparison with advertising directly with job sites.

“LexisClick are very proud to have worked with Rock Recruitment on re-launching their Rock Recruits service. We have made the site easier to use and made it a much stronger proposition to help get it out to a lot more businesses across the UK, so they can benefit from the massive cost savings it provides. We have used it ourselves for our own vacancies and it has generated a very good response with very good quality candidates at a much better price point than when we have advertised with job boards directly” commented Stephen Bavister MD at LexisClick.

Angela Fletcher –

“LexisClick have been great to work with. They made the positioning clear and simple and suggested a number of ways that we can enhance the service we offer through Rock Recruits that we’ll be working on over the coming 12 months.  Compared with other digital agencies I have worked with in the past, LexisClick have been a dream to work with and supported us at every step of the way”

If you are interested in our web design services please contact us or call us on 01202 961336.

LexisClick News Web Design

LexisClick Online Marketing have recently completed work on a tasty project – a blog for Moroccan hotel and travel site Morocco Gateway.

Morocco Gateway is a site with the mission to provide independent and reliable information and advice on a range of Moroccan riads and hotels, which negotiates special discount rates at a wide selection of hotels and riads in locations such as Marrakech and Fez. The site, which is administered by LexisClick, has been running since 2006, and after a conversation with LexisClick’s MD Stephen Bavister, Tim Evans, Managing Director of Morocco Gateway, decided to launch a blog. LexisClick were only too happy to help. Read more…

LexisClick News blogging, LexisClick News, Web Design

I’ve just finished listening to a very interesting webcast by UK Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, during which he was asked about the competitiveness of the UK’s digital economy.

Osborne likened the development of super-speed broadband to that of canals, railways and road systems in centuries past, and I think that’s a fantastic analogy.

Should the Conservatives get elected at the next election (rumoured by pretty much everyone to be in May) they have plans to utilise part of the BBC Licence Fee to pay for the rolling out of superfast broadband to help ensure the UK remains and grows as a competitor in the digital economy.

Listening to Osborne’s speech, I couldn’t help thinking that the same was true for the UK’s millions of businesses.

A recent report by Kelkoo reveals that UK consumers were responsible for almost a third of all European online sales in 2009. The average annual spend by consumers in the UK was £1,102 on 37 items, while the rest of Europe spent, on average, £774 on 20 items.

Kelkoo forecast that in 2010 UK online retail sales will grow by 12.4% to £42.7 billion, while total retail sales will grow by just 1.7%. European online sales will grow by 20% to reach £153 billion.

Bruce Fair, Managing Director of Kelkoo UK, said of the findings: “2010 is when we will really start to see online sales achieving a significant share of overall retail trade in the UK. While the retail industry is showing slow signs of recovery, the online shopping sector bucked the trend in 2009 delivering double-digit growth, and is expected to continue to perform strongly in 2010.”

That means that getting your online marketing strategy right is more vital than ever this year.

With so many businesses, large and small, online, what you first need to think about is what makes your business stand out from the crowd. Can you offer the best prices, the fastest service, the most knowledge and professionalism in your market?

Identifying what it is that makes your business unique – and will attract and retain the customers you want – is an essential part of your business’s online strategy. Then there’s social media – how best can you use it to market your products and services?

These are just a couple of points you must consider when planning your online sales and marketing strategy. For expert advice on all aspects of online advertising, marketing and web design, contact LexisClick today.

Marketing General, Social Media Marketing Online Advertising, Online Marketing, Social media for business, Social Media Marketing, Web Design