Category: Articles

 

I was just reading this article, http://gizmodo.com/internet-access-is-now-a-basic-human-right-1783081865 on Gizmodo, that the United Nations Human Rights Council has now defined access to the Internet as a Human Right, and that any attempt to restrict or cut off access to the Internet is a Human Rights Violation.

Now while this might make a dispute with your ISP if you don’t pay your bill slightly more amusing, and probably a lot more bemusing for the poor soul at the other end of the phone. “You’re violating my human rights!”, it has no legal standing, and you certainly won’t be able to call in the UN Peacekeeping forces to help (UN Resolutions only bind countries, not individuals or companies). It does lead to an interesting new part of human existence, where access to knowledge, communication and entertainment is considered an absolute right of all of humanity.

Progress continues at an ever increasing rate, and while making the Internet a Human Right might seem frivolous to many, the fact it’s how an increasing proportion of people get their news, talk to their friends and families, share cat videos and organise political movements makes this a very forward looking and necessary decision.

Like any business starting out one of the first brainstorming sessions we had at Scruffy Dug was about how we can build a customer base and finding ways to demonstrate what we can do.  We didn’t have much evidence to actually show potential clients so we decided to start our portfolio by offering our services free of charge to local charities.  However this process takes time so we also wanted to do something with a shorter turnaround.  It had to have reasonable costs, affordable prices and help local businesses at the same time.  After lots of discussion, reading, videos and soaking up top tips we were eventually inspired to create something that ticked all the boxes.   We decided to create a visitor map.  It can be produced in a relatively short time, it gives us the chance to get out and meet the people behind local businesses, and the opportunity to increase commerce in the area.  With the summer holidays just around the corner it also seemed like a great opportunity to remind the local community as well as visitors of what our area has to offer.  We are based in Irvine, a coastal town in the west coast of Scotland, so we decided to start there.

We opted for an A3 sized page, so that people could use it with ease, creating 20 spaces around the edge for adverts and a map on which the location of each of those businesses will be highlighted. On the reverse we earmarked space for a cover, introduction to the town and a large advert.  We will be producing 5000 copies of the map to be dropped into information stands in local hotels and the train station, as well as being delivered to local residents by the end of the month.

Businesses can simply use their business card or an existing advert to fill their slot but we are also happy to design an advert for them at no extra cost.

We’ve been given the chance to show some of our work and it’s been lovely meeting so many local business owners and getting positive feedback.  Hopefully the map will also encourage people to spend their hard earned cash in some of the fantastic bars, restaurants and wide variety of retailers Irvine has to offer.

So if you’re a small business in Irvine, North Ayrshire and you’d like to get 5000 copies of your advert out to potential customers just get in touch.

Email us at info@scruffydug.com to find out more.

  

 

 

 

 

 

The weather in the west coast of Scotland has been fantastic this week.  It’s the sort of weather that makes you stare out of your office window and wish you could work outside.  Is that really such a ludicrous idea?

We don’t think so!  Between us this week we’ve worked in parks, gardens and strolled in the sun between field-visits and it’s been nothing short of absolutely lovely…and productive too!

When morale is high, productivity is also high.  So if people would rather be in the sun why not let them?  Let’s face it, in the UK it will never be a permanent arrangement and with modern tech there’s not much to stop you.  You could create your own space outside that has the functionality of an office by utilising the resources you already have, mobile devices such as laptops, tablets, or smartphones.

There’s nothing like warm sunny days, fresh air, nature and blue skies to help you feel positive.  These can, of course, be distractions but they’re the sort that can make you more creative and energised; a far cry from a stuffy office.  Feeling the breeze instead of air conditioning, natural light instead of fluorescent bulbs, a view instead of wall art – it all has an uplifting, positive impact.  It makes sense that the more happy or comfortable you are on a hot day the more you’ll achieve.  The outdoors can be an inspiring surrounding, boosting morale and offering the best of both worlds, you can enjoy the heatwave and get on with your work without constantly checking how long it is till home time.

Try not to let the imbedded associations we have with sun and leisure make it difficult to stay focused on work.  Approach your tasks in the same way as you normally would, prioritising and managing your time.   You might even find that you get more done because you’re relaxed or because you want to finish your tasks early to enjoy some recreational time in the sun.

If you can’t move everything outside for the full day, try to set a little time aside to work outdoors.  Cafes and restaurants often have tables outside that can be stimulating office alternatives, suitable for working for a couple of hours.

Make sure you’re prepared, check that your devices are fully charged and anti-glare screens will also be handy.   If you don’t have any countryside beauty spots or parks nearby why not try working from a beer garden?  As long as you don’t get too distracted by the beer you’ll reap all the benefits of working in the sun and you don’t have to worry about practical things like wi-fi connections…or the loo.  Oh, and don’t forget your sun screen.

The weather will turn soon (perhaps in a couple of hours) but the sunshine will be back soon enough.  When it returns, make the most of it.  Have some fun while you work and soak up some vitamin-D.

If you see Catherine and Claire wandering around Irvine on Thursday, pop over for a chat.  We are looking for restaurants, cafés and bars to advertise on our Irvine Visitor’s Map.

We have limited availability so if you would like to guarantee being included catch us before Thursday and we can secure your advert.

The map is A3 sized with 20 advert slots around the edge with your premises highlighted on the map.  Each advert is 7cm wide by 3.95cm tall.  5000 full colour, glossy copies will be distributed to homes and businesses in the Irvine area.  We are happy to use an existing advert if you have one but just as happy to design one for you at no extra charge!  Get in touch to book your space or if you would like more information.

You can reach us on Facebook, Twitter, or email us at info@scruffydug.com

Speak to you soon!

I’m never through ranting about website being ready for Mobile, and Google has just released a new tool to measure how ready your site is for mobile.

https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/

Now, of course I’ve been punching in lots of sites to see how they rate, starting with this one, and it doesn’t look good. However, when you start to see comparisons, and you rate favourably compared to Twitter, you know the numbers are low for everyone. The best mobile speed I’ve found, is Google itself, which gets a “fair” ranking, but everyone from Microsoft, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, gets “poor” for their mobile speed. Which I guess just tells us that we’ve got a lot to do before Google is willing to rank even itself as “Good” for mobile speed.

The more interesting parts of the tool, come in the pages after the initial scores, where Google gives you a list of improvements you could make to improve your score. Running a WordPress site, you’re lucky that taking their list of faults and searching for Plugin’s which help with each problem, means you can get around many of these with only a little work, we’ve managed to get our score up a few points by installing compression on our pages, and I’m sure there are others which will help even further.

Anyway, as well as being a useful little tool Google has made available to us all, it’s an interesting peek into how other big name websites are dealing with the move to a mainly mobile web, as well as a peek into exactly where Google itself thinks the web must go to remain useful.

So, you’re looking to get your site ranking highly in the search engines . . .

Let’s be more honest, you’re looking for your site to rank more highly in Google. Google accounts for 69.89% of the global share today, so more than 2/3rd’s of all searches are done through Google, so while you could care about the 13.88% who are using Bing, your time is better spent on where the people are.

So who should you go to for expert information about ranking in Google, well Google of course. And they’ve very helpfully put a channel on Youtube which talks through lots of aspects of their services, such as SEO tips for startups. Very useful stuff, and highly recommended.

I wrote recently on the subject of Content being King , the fact that no matter what attempts to cheat the system, the fact that good content will always rise to the top of the search engine rankings. This is one of the core facts of publishing on the web, that quality content rules over everything else, and something which has been proven to be true in recent weeks due to Googles admission that they have a team dedicated to looking at web pages and ranking them. This means that while everyone is looking for a way of fooling the search engine algorithms, Google has avoided that from ever working 100% by using humans as part of the ranking system.

This information changes the game, meaning that page loading times, readability and presentation of pages mean a lot more than was ever believed.

So slow loading page times, which everyone knew were penalised by Google, and everyone knows that visitors will accept a delay of around 4 seconds before some of them lose interest and move on to faster pages. But now we know that the team Google has, are not only affected by the same annoyance at slow loading pages as everyone else, but since they’re on a timeclock and have so many pages to deal with each and every hour, slow loading pages may receive a low ranking as the Google team may have to abort the checking of the page and mark it down due to them needing to move onto the next site.

While a lot of this is down to the speed of whoever is hosting your site, you need to keep an eye on the plug-ins you are running on your site, if the page is waiting for content to be loaded from your Twitter feed, and your Facebook, your Tumblr, images from your Flickr, etc. Then the page is going to load slowly as it waits for all of these to come in. So ask yourself. do you really need all of these on your webpage, surely many of them can be made into links so visitors can head off and view them for themselves, rather than forcing everyone to wait for them to load.

Readability of pages is tied in with presentation, the ease of reading the text, and the clarity and way the information is presented will affect a pages ranking, as will the use of colour and images, as making the teams job as easy to perform as possible, allowing them to read and rate more of the page, will obviously lead to higher search ranking.

So you should bear in mind, not only do you need to edit and prune your writing down to just what you wanted to say, but also to check your Grammar and Spelling, as if someone is trying to figure out what you mean then it’s slowing them down, and slow means penalty points on your search ranking. Make sure the font is readable, and large enough to read comfortably, as again this affects the speed the page can be read and comprehended. You should spend time making sure the text breaks in easy to read places, make sure your paragraphs and text are readable with sensible use of whitespace

And finally, you need to present the whole thing in not only a clear and readable fashion, but one that is attractive, and makes the reading process enjoyable.

It’s a lot to remember, but these things are obviously really, if your site is enjoyable to use, easy to read, and has great content, then it will get good rankings on Google.

So, while Content remains King, it appears that Loading Speed is the Queen, Readability is the Prince, and Presentation is the Pretty Princess, and all of them are important if you want to position highly in the search engines.

While your website may be full of great pictures, writing and information, you’re missing out on a key way to drive increased sales if the pages contain no calls to action.

What a call to action is about is giving the reader a reason to buy from you, or at least a reason to return so that you have a second attempt to sell to them. Putting in more calls to action is one of the key ways to market and sell business online today.

By giving them something to do, some next step they need to do, whether that is to return and read further, or question themselves whether they need your services, or even to just buy on the spot, you’re connecting with your customer in a very personal way on a one to one basis. You’re asking them to make a decision, not the collective visitors, but them directly. While they may dismiss this out of hand, it’s a proven method.

Calls to action work better from positions of authority, if you don’t come over to the visitor as a reliable source of information then they’re unlikely to be involved when you ask something of them, but if you’ve provided information, then it is almost instinctual for them to trust you and want to return the favour.

Of course it is important if you’re asking questions of the visitor to your site a question, that you have the answer. Do they have a problem, you’ve got the solution, do they need something, you’ve got it, do they need help, you can do it, do they know who’s the best, you are. By being an authority they can trust, and having the answer to the question you’ve asked and they find lacking, then sales and repeat business should follow.

By appearing to be an authority, you’ll appear larger and more confident than most businesses, and you’ll inspire trust in your brand. The key to success in online sales and businesses is providing the visitors to your site with a confidence in you and a belief that you can best provide them with the solution to their wants and needs.

And it seems somewhat uncouth to finish with, but they say practice what you preach. So why not read some of our other blogs to help us establish our authority, or get in touch once you have come to trust that we know what we’re talking about.

In the world of e-commerce and online business, it seems all you need is a good idea, and the knowhow to take that idea forwards to become a success. We all read of multinational corporations started by university students, and success springing from the most unlikely of places.

So how do you take your idea forwards? It seems sensible to choose a business that you see working and copy it with your own ideas, but unfortunately what works for one business doesn’t necessarily work for another and may in fact be useless to you in your venture. What you really need is expert advice because no one person has all the answers.

So you are the expert in your particular niche, no one knows your ideas or business better than you, however buying in experts and consultants for the areas outside your expertise is essential. If you need legal advice, seek a lawyer, for technical advice seek an expert in their field. While avoiding the costs might seem attractive, avoiding wasting a lot of time, energy and resources should seem more attractive.

The online marketplace is always changing, so seeking out someone who has a regular stream of testimonials, and someone who is promoting new ideas and methods is something you should definitely consider. You should definitely prefer being offer the potential of new services and revenue streams, rather than never be offered them and fall behind the market. What you deserve is a safe pair of hands to guide you through any areas you’re unsure in.

And never ever underestimate your intuition, if a potential business partner doesn’t feel right, look elsewhere. Even if there’s nothing detectably wrong with them, the nagging doubt in your mind can lead to hesitation, misunderstanding and lack of trust which will harm your business. You should always have reliable experts on your side, people you can trust, share your ideas with, and have confidence in that they will be doing their best to help your business.

So, it’s never too late to ask for help with your business, and never too late to reconsider whether the help you’ve got is really doing everything it can to take you forwards.