Some web design companies will build you a website which you can update yourself and then that's the last you'll see of them.

If you want to ensure that your web site is reaching the first page of Google consistently then you'll to update the new web site regually and have great SEO (search engine optimisation) and a fantastic social media prescence linking back to your web site.

For a single price of £195 per month we can build your web site and do all of the above for you! Leaving you free to run your business while we generate the leads and look after your online presence. We will:

• build and maintain an up to date, state of the art, bespoke website for your business which includes an integrated blog and e-newsletter sign-up system
• set up, brand (with your brand) and promote your business, products and/or services through social media channels and accounts
• update your website with your new blog content
• optimise your website for easy discovery on search engines by your target markets on an ongoing basis
• promote your new blog content through your social media channels
• set up and design a bespoke e-newsletter template and then populate with your content and images and then send to your customer list as required  

If you need a new brand we can develop one for you at a very competitive price. 

Contact us now for more information about how we can help you get ahead online or to sign up for our small business package. If you are interested in this but feel you are a medium or perhaps larger business then do not be put off, we can still provide you with a similar package at a very competitive price. Just drop us a line and we'll get straight back to you with a quote.

We only need to look to the changes in our High Street in recent months and years to get an understanding of the growing importance of a business's online offer. When considered alongside the fact that OFCOM reported a doubling in the use of bandwidth by mobile devices in the last year, we can see the trend is not about to reverse. Although for many business owners the digital media territory may seem complex and confusing. However there are some simple ways of getting ahead of the competition without having to invest large sums of money. 

The first and perhaps most important step is to have a website that says all the right things about your business identity. If it looks bad and it feels bad then there's no point spending money on SEO or other advertising to get people to it ….it's not going to encourage them to buy.

By the same token there's no point having a beautiful professionally designed website with great functionality that no one can easily find. SEO (search engine optimisation) is the science of optimising your website so that it can be found by your target market. However it's not a science at all, it's a marketing exercise, as is the whole design and functionality of your website. It's all about the needs, aspirations and behaviours of your target market and if they're not fully understood by your web designer or SEO agency then you could find yourself spending time and money but not seeing the return on investment. 

At Morph PR and Marketing, we are an all service digital marketing agency based in Southsea, Portsmouth and we can ensure that your online presence is coherent and focussed and in doing so gives you the return on investment that you need.

By Jamie O'Reilly

Making the most of your Contact list with e-Mailshots

Most business owners understand the value of former customers as potential new customers - hence the widespread use of loyalty schemes. However there are still a lot of businesses in the UK and we see it here in Southsea, Portsmouth and more widely in Hampshire that are not taking advantage of new ways of marketing to their customer list - ways which are significantly cheaper than their printed counterparts. I'm talking here about e-Newsletters or e-Mailshots.

Why are e-Newsletters so useful?

• They're cheap
• They fast and direct
• They're very flexible
• You can see what works and what doesn't work very easily and adapt accordingly

What's more there are some great systems out there that enable you to create one of these fantastic e-Newsletters yourself. The market leading systems for the development and distribution of e-Newsletters such as Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor are great but be warned all US based systems are subject to very strict anti-Spam laws. Whilst legislation controlling Spam in the UK would not categorise as SPAM emails sent to a genuine list of your former customers, the Can-Spam law in the US would. This  means that if you use these US based systems to send out your e-Newsletters to people such as former customers who did not sign up explicitly for such emails on your website or at your busines, then you could fall foul of this law and at best see your account suspended or at worst find yourself in trouble with the US authorities. 

So if you're only sending e-mailshots to those people who have explicitly signed up for them, then the leading US based systems are probably the most sophisticated and easiest to use. However, if you're planning to send to a list of your former customers dating back for quite a number of years, then you need to opt for a UK based system.

If you'd like any advice on e-Newsletters/e-Mailshots and how they could help your business or want to discuss website design then don't hesitate to call us at Morph PR and Marketing. We're always happy to provide such advice free of charge.

By Jamie O'Reilly

If you have a great customer list and a well ranking website and yet you aren't making sales through your website it may be that your website is letting your business down.

A website can be well optimised but unattractive to customers so even though you may be ranking well and have lots of traffic to your website it maybe that after all that hard work to get to the top people are put off at the last minute by one or some of the following.

 Reasons people aren't buying from your website

• Not being able to find your contact details,
• Poor spelling
• No obvious base
• Poorly photographed products
• Not enough product information
• Confusing pricing
• No money back guarantee
• Badly worded or missing customer service policy
• Unattractive website which removes the perceived value for your product or services.

Read more ........

This is a commonly asked question on web design forums and I wanted to share how I worked around it to get it working with my hosting package on certified hosting -  which may just save you time if you are having the same problem.

To remove the index.php part of the url that turning on search engine optimisation - seo friendly urls creates you need to do the following:

1. Set both friendly urls and url rewrite to yes and then go into your htacess.txt file in your root folder and rename it .htaccess

This is common advice given in forums for people using Joomla 2.5.

However this did not work for me so I went into the .htcaccess file in the root folder of my hosting and found the following instruction to add a # before 'Options +FollowSymLinks'

I did this and it worked! Hurrah!!

Good luck I hope this helps you.