Sunday, September 14, 2008

Website Promotion

Who do you know who has a website on the Internet that sells products?

Who do you know who wants a website that sells products?

St James Systems are looking to get in touch with companies who are interested in making the Internet work for them and who want to make more money and find more customers than ever before.

Our Internet marketing and search engine optimisation programmes have increased our clients income substantially.

Our results:

We have increased the turnover of one of our clients by 9 times within four months

We have increased the number of people visiting our clients' websites by up to 10 times

We have a number of means of working with clients including:
Building, marketing and managing a client's website from scratch
Working with existing websites
Working for a fixed fee or for a commission

If you know anyone who might like to increase their website traffic and turnover, please refer them to us and we will be happy to help.

We include one such letter below:


Having dabbled with Search Engine Optimisation techniques ourselves over the past year and to no great avail, we finally decided to hire the services of St James Systems. Soon after, a report was produced along with a list of suggested improvements that could help our e-commerce site increase targeted traffic and, more importantly, turnover.

Over a period of just 2 months, our turnover has increased from just £350 a month to £1800. In that time we have been introduced to a variety of exciting Search Engine Optimisation techniques. We have worked closely with Sam at St James Systems to improve our website, not only improving its search engine ranking, but also focusing on the customer experience and usability issues.

Our visits have increased from 289 in June to 1,061 in August. St James Systems really do seem to have the 'black art' of Search Engine Optimisation sewn up, and we look forward to working with them over the next few months to further increase the success of our store.

Richard Lang
Digital Design Manager
Tintisha Technologies
www.tintisha.com

Friday, September 12, 2008

Facebook - Are you a fan?



St James Systems are one of only a handful of firms around the world whose search engine optimisation and Internet marketing is focused on social networks. These social networks like Facebook & LinkedIn attract millions of loyal users every day. Facebook has over 100 million daily users, many of whom use their network of friends and contacts to find the products and services they are looking for rather than the search engines.

St James Systems recognise that the perception is that these social network groups are a colossal waste of time but the number of people who use them every day eclipses the number of people who use the search engines. The next person to find your website is far more likely to do so through social media than through the search engines and there are not many people who are making the most of this opportunity.

If you are a user of Facebook, why not come along and take a look at the St James Systems Facebook Page?

A Facebook page is a very simple means of interacting with your clients, fans and potential customers, of getting their feedback and of entering into a conversation with the people who are most likely to buy your products and services. Fans of your Facebook page will get updates of your latest news and additions and you will be able to build relationships with your customers quicker and more cheaply than ever.

If you are looking to build up strong relations with customers, Facebook can be a dream come true.

Would you like a Facebook page for your business? If so, please get in touch with us and we will be happy to help.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Saving Time



Recently, we uncovered a shocking statistic:

The average parent spends twice as long with their email as they do with their own children.

Let's give you an example of how you might be losing time and not realising it.

If opening an email using a keyboard takes 3 seconds (Press CTRL+O) and closing takes the same amount of time (ALT+F4 - go on, try it!) then opening an email by taking your hands away from the keyboard, moving the mouse, clicking, and then putting your hands back on the keyboard might take 15 seconds. The difference is 12 seconds. If you have to open & close 100 emails a day & create & send 50 emails a day, then 12 seconds * 300 clicks = 1 hour.

There is potentially one hour you could be saving a day just by learning how to use your computer more effectively.

We have been musing on these statistics and have been working on a solution. What we have come up with is twofold. Firstly, we are offering free cheat sheets for Windows - lists of shortcuts that save you time & effort. Please contact us for a copy. Secondly, we are offering some touch-typing software for £35+VAT. Let's look at another example.

Yesterday, I wrote 5,000 words worth of reports and articles.

At 30 words per minute this would have taken me 2h 47 minutes.

At 60 words per minute this would take 1h 13 minutes.
If I spent an hour each evening for two weeks using some touch-typing software and increased my typing speed from 30 - 60 words per minute (it is possible) then:

I'd be able to gain the time I spent learning within 10 days.

I'd save myself an hour and a half per day from then on.

At £35+VAT, this software is cheaper than a secretary and it helps with matters that secretaries can't deal with (emails, personal matters, etc).

We hope that this article is of interest to you. If you are finding that your knowledge of Windows shortcuts and your touch-typing ability is constraining you, then please ask for a free cheat sheet and let us provide you with some inexpensive touch-typing software that will help you to type quickly, in an entertaining way and at your own pace.

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Microsoft's Non-advertising Advertising with Jerry Seinfeld

In an attempt to distance themselves form almost everyting, Microsoft have released an advert featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. The advert is like the Seinfeld observation about the advert for Dockers that didn't mention the product.

The advert does not mention any of Microsoft's products and features a rather wooden Bill Gates. That Bill Gates is prepared to appear in a rather wooden fashion looking rather geekish is something but otherwise the advert is completely pointless.

Whereas pointlessness was the point of the Seinfeld comedy series, Microsoft is facing stiffer and stiffer competition and, despite its near monopoly is having a job justifying its operating systems and office suites in a time of increased possibilites made through the web.

Apple has done a good job of beginning to take back market share form Microsoft in recent years. As their handheld devices work and work well, so the public's trust in the Apple brand increases. Likewise, Google is muscling in on Microsoft's turf with a new free browser. Furthermore, Linux is becoming more important as an operating system platform.

In short, Microsoft's market is being eroded and the need for packaged software products are dwindling in an age where more and more applications are web based and Microsoft has a shrinking share of the web.

With this in mind, does a quirky, pointless advert just make Microsoft appear quirky & pointless?

What do you think?

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Google's Real Problems

As search engine optimisers, we get the impression that a search engine's biggest nightmare is the work we carry out. Not only is this egotistical but it is also untrue. Most optimisers try to give the sites they work with the best possible rankings for what they have and, in so doing, help to show the sites that are serious about their web presence, and make sites more accessible to the search engines and to people with all abilities and disabilities.

'Black Hat' search engine marketers might cause Google to miss a step occasionally as they find ways to fool the search engines but these efforts are short-lived and the brainpower of Google's 100 Doctors of Philosophy are either a step ahead or ready to react quickly.

In truth, Google's problems are much more mundane than industrial espionage or seditious optimisation practices: the main problem is that of scale.

Scale has been a constraint for all kinds of organisations and empires throughout time - the Romans were hampered by their limited mathematical abilities and could not grow beyond the limits of around 100AD and the British Empire found itself becoming the world's policeman, a title that came at a tremendous cost. Likewise, Google's size gives it tremendous problems. Here are a few that you may not have considered.

Breakdowns: It is estimated that Google runs 500,000 servers. At any one time there are going to be several machines that have gone down. Mechanical problems mount up and even if 1 in 1000 servers fails completely in a given year, that's 500 to be changed. With our experience with computers, things go wrong all the time & Google might expect 1000 servers to be down at any one time.

Power: Google has 3 main datacentres, each of which chew through power at around $5000 per hour. Such massive power usage causes massive headaches. Google has recently invested in solar power and put time & money into RE

Revenues: Furthermore, search is a costly area with an estimated 85% of searches being non-commercial and thus difficult to wrap advertising around. Google only has one tried-and-tested means of making money - advertising. But for that, they do not have a business. With the advent of social networking sites like Facebook, with the rise of other media like Video, more and more people are interacting with the Internet without needing search engines; they can get their information and products by interacting with friends rather than by asking a search engine a limited or clunky question. Google has to try hard to preserve its revenue stream - it has grown fat on search revenues and shareholders will demand that they continue to grow and do not get syphoned off by other Internet companies.

Costs: There are massive costs involved in search. Apart from the employment costs (of Google's 100+ doctorates), the costs of machinery, power and research are limiting.

Data: Google's index has grown to 20 billion pages, a gigantic amount. It takes 6 weeks for them to index the sites on the Internet. This amount of data, however, is dwarfed by the 1 trillion pages that they know about. If your dataset is 2% of the data that is on the Internet then you have to ber VERY good at indexing the right data or else searchers will go elsewhere. Google has to be sure that it provides the results that people will find useful very quickly or else users will go elsewhere - too much information and there will be spam and drivel in the index and too little and searchers will miss out on the Internet's variety.

Furthermore, the Internet is growing massively. With Web 2.0 applications like blogs that allow people to quickly & easily publish their information on the Internet (this blog is just one example), the Internet has grown exponentially. Around 140 million people were online in 1998 when Google Inc started compared to 1.4 billion today according to internetworldstats.com and all of them have access to publishing tools that were not available 2 or 3 years ago. There is the problem that the amound of information online might grow in excess of Moore's Law (the rule of thumb used by the founder of Intel in 1965 which basically stated that the number of transistors on an integrated surface doubles every 18 months). This means that if the amount of information on the Internet doubles in less than 18 months, Google either takes longer to compile and analyse the data or it must invest in more & more computing power.

Even more troubling is the problem of infinite scalability. I do not know the limits of technology but there must be significant software problems in co-ordinating the data on 500,000 servers and there must be a limit to the complexity of such a system. With a rapidly growing dataset with which to compute, Google is at the limits of the possible as far as computing is concerned.

These problems of scale mean that Google spends more and more time and money worrying about physical constraints than about giving the best search results that get the most advertising revenues. Will the company be able to continue to grow beyond these constraints and keep searchers & shareholders happy? Will they be able to continue to try to take market share from companies like Microsoft on browsers that do not earn them any money? Time will tell.




Thanks to Leslie Rhode & Andy Edmonds for their opinions.

Enough of the new search engines - how about a new browser?

There have been a number of interesting search engine offerings over the last few months and we wanted to write about something new.

Increasingly, we are finding that customers are interacting with the Internet in different ways and that their next purchase might not necessarily come from an interaction with a search engine. Video now dwarfs search with 10 billion pieces of online video were viewed in December 2007 & with 141 million Americans viewing video online every month (did you ever wonder why Google paid $1.65bn for YouTube?) as does social networking (with over 100 million people using Facebook alone). The common elements to all of these facets of customer interaction is the brpwser as everyone needs a browser to use video, social media and the search engines.

If the aim of the game is to influence people as early as possible during their Internet experience then the browser hould be one of the most important things. Browser wars, however, are old hat - Netscape bowed out of the race years ago and today Internet Explorer & Firefox have the market sewn up between them (IE had 72.15% of the market & Mozilla 19.83% in August 2008 according to hitslink.com). In this environment, a move by Google came out of left field. That said, moving into the browser seems like a logical step for a company like Google which needs to protect its advertising revenues.

This move could have real repurcussions for Mozilla which, until now has had a close relationship with Google (their offices are across the road from Google's) and, as such, might show Google's intent to topple Microsoft's dominance. If this is the case, then the next logical step to influence people beofre they are online is for Google to release an open source operating system. You heard it here first.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Atacama Audio - Contract Won

St James Systems are pleased to announce that they have won the contract to look after the Atacama Audio website. The company aims to increase the profile of the Atacama company online and to increase the conversion rate of Atacama's companion site which sells its products.

The agreement sees St James Systems working with another of Leicester's largest manufacturers and comes as very good news.

St James Systems welcome Atacama's ambitious plans for their websites and look forward to helping them in any way they can.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

The Assault on 'Party Products' - The High Seas Part 3 - The Press Release

A press release can be an important part of any PR campaign. It can open up your product or service to markets all over the world very easily. There are a number of ways of doing this including writing to local media outlets, writing to interest groups over the Internet, writing on your blog and sending a press release through an Internet portal.

In this instance we are using PRWeb, an online company who make press releases on your behalf. The cost of a submission is around $200 but, if you have the right product to sell, the coverage can be invaluable.

In the press release we have written, we have talked up the size of the Party Catalogue and that it does not rely upon advertising to gain its income.

Press releases must be written in a particular way so that the news media can quickly pick up what you have to say and so that your headline and a quick summary can be posted across the news and the web with the greatest of ease. Anyone interested in writing a press release would be welcome to contact us for advice.

it is always worth consulting with a professional before you send off your press release. At $200, you might be wasting your money and, with copy and content the most important considerations, you want to do it right.

The release is scheduled for 12.05AM PST. Wait & see what happens.

The Assault on 'Party Products' - The High Seas Part 2 - Lines of Attack

You may remember that we have been trying to get The Party Catalogue to the top of the search engines for the keyword Party Products. It's steady as she goes this week with the website sitting in the smae position but we have made a number of decisions.

We will be attempting to lift The Party Catalogue in 5 ways:

- Changes to the site
- Link building
- Social Networking and Social Bookmarking
- Article writing and article submission
- Good old PR

Each of these attempts will enhance the reputation of The Party Catalogue and, through the provision of well-written content, will help to deliver increased, targeted traffic in the long term.

Onsite changes will include a rewriting of the META data on the site (this is information that tells search engines about a particular webpage but remains hidden to viewers), a rewriting of the cop on the site and an increase of the copy on the front page and a restructuring of the site to ensure that the search engines focus on the fact that The Party Catalogue is a place that sells party supplies rather than anytihng else.

Link building will involve a campaign that will ask webmasters of sites in the gifts industry if they would consider linking to our site. Links act like votes in the search engines and each link on another person's site is an exit form their site and an entrance to yours - this is a very powerful tool.

Social media work will involve making the most of the new applications that the web is being put to. With over 90 million people on Facebook, with over 10 billion pieces of video media being viewed per month and with people quickly and easily communicating with each other in ways that do not involve the search engines, it is important to have a social presence.

Article writing is a way to enhance the reputation of your brand and to get targeted customers to visit your site. This is a matter of writing good content and finding good content partners.

PR is the art of figting a guerrilla war through the media to get the maximum exposure for the minimum of effort.

Over the next few weeks, you will find out how we use these tools to gain favourable positions for our clients. Stay tuned to find out more.


Friday, August 08, 2008

The assault on 'Party Products' - The High Seas Part 1

We thought you might be interested in a serialisation of how we mount an assault on the search engines. This might give you ideas about how to promote your own website as well as giving you a chance to gague our own success. We've been working with a company called The Party Catalogue recently and we've picked out a number of keywords that we want to see them rank for. For this serialisation, we've picked two keywords for the homepage, party products and party supplies.

We hope you enjoy reading about the rise & fall of the company on the high seas of Google & look forward to seeing what happens. We've done a bit of preliminary work on the website & the site has begun to show up - a Google UK search currently reveals position 85 for party supplies & 19 for party products.

Search Engine optimisation is shrouded in mystery and we aim to remove that mystery & we hope you'll be interested in the results. From our studies, we know that being on the front page of Google can mean getting five times as many visitors as being on the second page and so there is the potential for revenues to increase by 5 times. That said, the top spot on Google can have 3 times as much traffic as lower spots on the first page and so competition is fierce.



Some Cold, Hard Facts:

On average, there are 595 searches a day for the keyword party supplies and 160 for party products.

We are competing against 15,700,000 & 21,200,000 other sites respectively & so we're not doing too badly to start with.




If you'd like to help and you have a web page or a blog, please put the following code into it:



and lo, we might make a difference.

Female Voiceover - the site & the sounds

We have recently uploaded a new site for Louise Wilson Voice Imaging, a company specialising in providing voiceovers for corporate videos, e-learing courses, websites and on-hold marketing. You may well have heard Louise's voice but you're going to hear a lot more of it as time goes by.

The website aims to be simple and clean and to show Louise's breadth of experience. A full FAQ aims to answer many of the queries and problems that Louise has encountered in her work and aims to provide an informative resource to potential clients.

Testimonials are vital for any business and in LW Voice Imaging's case, they don't come much better as she has worked for a number of high profile clients.

Finally, there is an audio showreel, which showcases Louise's talents and works as a 'greatest hits' for her voiceovers and which gives her customers an ideal chance to 'try before the buy'.

We hope you enjoy it and welcome your comments.

Friday, August 01, 2008

Cuil - the fallout

As with every young pretender that promises much, obscurity is an ever-present threat. The naysayers and detractors are waiting in the wings.

Part of the reason for the failure of a new search engine is the symbiotic relationship that many companies and search engine optimisers have with Google. Google gets 60% of the searches and so those who want to get the best from their websites will focus on Google and encourage people to use Google.

Another part is the failure of the search engine. Although the verdict is still out on Cuil (pronounced 'Cool') there are whisperings that it's not all it's cracked up to be and that hubris reigns at their Palo Alto HQ. Sarah Carey, a journalist and friend of Cuil CEO, Tom Costello, was somewhat taken aback by the profligacy of the operation being amazed that the company pays for muffins, drinks, a personal trainer and a gym membership for everyone. Dragons will be rotating in their dens at hearing this. With only $33 million to play with, can such expenses be justified in a fight against multi-billion dollar search engines?

Time will tell for Cuil but things don't look good already.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Cuil - the future of search...again

With search eninges being the gateway to knowledge and power on the Internet and with the massive amounts of money that can be generated through controlling this, it is not surprising that there are young pretenders jockeying for positioning.

Search engines live or die by the information they can provide. If you search for something and don't get what you want you will go somewhere else. If you search and find spam the search eninge will get a bad name and will lose market share, money and the eyes & ears of a legion of fans.

Cuil is one of these young pretenders. It claims the largest index (120) billion pages and it is developed by former Google search engine developers. The budget for the search engine was arounnd $30m which pales next to Google's billions but small & nimble is often an advantage in the Web 2.0 world.


Verdict:

Results are laid out pleasingly in columns with pictures to give an added sense of what is happening.
Form a small sample, results seem less spammy.

Behind the scenes with search engine optimisation

There are many methods that a search engine optimiser can use in order to help their site to gain more favourable rankings. By far the most important part of this is building links. This effectively channels some of the importance from other sites into your own. This influence (or Page Rank as Google call it) flows through links and, as a general rule, the more links there are to a page, the higher the Page Rank for that page.

In order for the work of link-building to be put to best effect, it is important to channel the influence your pages carry properly. This can be done with the rel="nofollow" attribute. This attribute is used by search engines like Google to prevent link spam and it allows you to tell search enignes not to follow a particular link and thus to assign a greater importance to the other links on the page. If you nofollow the links on your site that lead out to sites that you don't want to give influence to or the links that do not contain your keywords, then the links on your site that link to your content using the right keywords for thaat content in their anchor text will be given a far greater level of importance by Google.

Wikipedia is an exponent of the nofollow attribute. In order to stop people from changing Wikipedia entries in order to gian links to their websites, Wikipedia used the nofollow attribute on all external links. This means that people interested in external resources from Wikipedia can follow the links if they so choose but the search engines will not and will not give any extra importance to the sites behind them.

An example of the practice of using the nofollow attribute in a business context can be seen at Tintisha's website. The site is optimised for the keyword speaker stands and so links that do not relate to speaker stands or to any of the other keywords that the site uses are nofollowed. This means that the site can use navigational elements to help people find what they are looking for but inform the search engines that the deeper content on the site relates to the keywords you deem to be correct rather than those that anyone else thinks is right.

In order to see this in action, you can either use your browser, click on View & then Source Code. This shows the code that goes to making up the web page you see. You can then search for the word "nofollow" and see which hyperlink it pops up agianst.

To save time, however, if you have a Firefox browser you can download the Search Status plugin that puts some useful optimisation tools into the browser. Once installed, you see an extra bar. If you click on the 'q' on the bar and select 'Highlight nofollow links' you will now get a visual representation of nofollow links on a given website. Nofollow links will be ighlighted in pink and you can see how people use this attribute and get a sense of how to harness it.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

St James Systems Facebook Group - Are you a Fan?

In an attempt to drag ourselves kicking and screaming into the 21st Century, St James Systems have created a Facebook page as a showcase for the company and its work. the page, which can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/St-James-Systems/20350889982?ref=ts includes pictures, recent work and this blog.

Facebook is an important social networking medium with over 60 million members at the time of writing and St James Systems would urge any other company interested in gaining business over the Internet to do the same.

If you would like to talk about the benefits of an Internet marketing or search engine optimisation campaign then give us a call on 0116 2836699. For now, however, go along to www.facebook.com/business and sign up for yourself.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Tintisha.com

St James Systems are working with Tintisha.com on a project that has changed the look of the site and increased its profile on the Internet.

A blog has been introduced to keep customers and those in the audio visual industry up-to-speed with what is going on, a forum has been installed which will aim to answer the questions of anyone who uses audio visual electronics. The site has been revamped and St James Systems have begun optimising it for the word speaker stands and for many others.

Yesterday, 10 times as many people visited the site as when St James Systems started working with Tintisha at the beginning of June.

The aim is to make Tintisha.com the online market leader for speaker stands and gadgets. St James Systems aim to increase the level of traffic visiting the site and the conversion rate (turning those that visit into customers).

Peterborough Cathedral - Website Design

St James Systems are proud to announce that they have won the contract to redevelop the Peterborough Cathedral website. St James Systems will be maintaining the current website until the new site comes on stream. The new site is expected in October.

St James Systems are excited as phase 1 of the developement is an exciting project including new content management tools and phase 2 will introduce some web 2.0 elements, allowing visitors to get involved and interact in a way that is not being done on any Cathedral website.

New Websites - An update

We have been putting a number of new websites online recently and we wanted to show you a couple of them:

Harborough Tiles - Bathrooms, Bedrooms, Kitchens & Tiles: www.harboroughtiles.co.uk

This site has a flash-animated gallery and some information on the different facets of the business.

Louise Wilson Voice Imaging - Voiceover services: www.female-voiceover.co.uk

This is a relatively simple website but very effective. Louise lives & dies on the sound of her voice so we've put up some recordings & we've included a comprehensive FAQ so that her potential clients can feel confident in her.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Planning your office network

When running an office there are enough things to worry about without the perils of an IT infrastructure. IT is something we want to be as unobtrusive as possible. When there is a problem and the network goes down, it seems that everything is wedded to computers and that there is nothing we can do. This is more the result of bad planning than the inexorable march of technology on our daily lives. With a bit of thought, with redundancy and backup procedures built into your system, you need not lose valuable time if there is a problem.

In order to have a well-planned network organisations need to think about the following facets of IT:

Network Layout - A periodic review of the changing layout of buildings and the changes in technology that might make for a more reliable network shoud be undertaken. Networking speeds have increased steadily over the years with Fast Ethernet (100mbps) overtaking Ethernet (10mbps) as the common networking speed and then with Gigabit Ethernet (1000mbps) becoming more common over the last three years. It is worth bearing in mind that data transferred using Ethernet speeds will theoretically travel a hundred times slower than that over Gigabit Ethernet. As Internet speeds increase, as more tasks are accomplished over the Internet and as the IT system becomes more integrated, it is important to assess whether the benefits of increased speed in the network outweigh the costs of upgrading equipment. Wireless networking has been in its infancy with limited speeds and ranges being unsatisfactory for use in the office environment but the upcoming 802.11n protocols will mean wireless devices have a wider range and faster transfer speeds. This may be a viable option in the future.

Users - The number of people using the system and their needs should be kept under observation. Each user requires bandwidth, a network identity and licenses for the software you are using.

Hardware - A strategic look at hardware purchase is often advisable. This might mean that the majority of hardware is purchased at the same time ensuring uniformity for users and lower prices. Furthermore, regular diagnostic checks of the hardware can keep everything running smoothly and help in identifying pieces of equipment that need upgrading or replacing.
Software - It is worth keeping a record of the software used across the network and periodically polling users to see if they have changed anything or added any software that might be useful to other users. Furthermore, if an organisation's policy is to bring a certain degree of uniformity to the network, software should be volume-licensed. This will ensure large savings in the long-run. By doing this, it is also easier for people to understand what is happening and quickly pick up on work should a staff member be away.

Shared resources - Some thought should be given to the resources that can be shared over the network, be they public emails, shared files and folders, shared databases or anything else. Sharing resources across the network can save large amounts of time and can avoid duplication of work and resources.

Remote access - Many office networks can be made available online. Company members should be able to check their email or access their PCs remotely. This can be beneficial for sales staff out on the road or for directors or partners that need to check that an important correspondence has been received whilst on holiday.
Upgrade schedule - A schedule that could give a timescale for the upgrading and replacement of PCs is useful on a budgetary level and it would ensure that staff neither become frustrated nor waste their time staring at egg-timers.

Future needs - The future needs of any organisation must be looked at and budgeted for. There is no point in one department replacing some equipment to a system that will be redundant in six months. A strategic look at the future needs of users in terms of what they would like and what hardware and software is becoming available would be of benefit as it will give users a sense of technological developments and allow technology to fit their needs rather than vice-versa.

Current problems - A list of problems is something that can be easily drawn up on a departmental level and shared. It is often the case that these problems can be dealt with quite swiftly once recognised rather than being allowed to fester.

Current labour-intensive tasks that could be automated - The identification of the most tedious parts of every department's day could help to inform the IT policy.

Backups - It is important to have a strategic plan to back up and secure information. Organisations must know what information is being stored where. Furthermore, backups should be stored safely and, preferably, offsite to ensure that work is not completely lost should the worst happen. If the worst happens, a good backup is one less tihng to worry about and can mean you can get back to work as quickly as possible.

Redundancy - Try to analyse the parts of the network that are mist used and most valuable and ensure, that if they go down, you can stil continue. Redundancy can be built into any system in several ways, including having backup Internet access, having a RAID storage array that copies files to multiple disks & having uninterruptible power supplies that will keep equipment working in the event of short power ourages and shut it down safely in the event of long ones.

Inventory - An inventory often helps inform policies for upgrading. Its use might mean that equipment is down for less time when there is a problem as support information can be gleaned more quickly.

Website - The web is fast becoming the easiest way of getting information. More and more people use it every day and it is ever more important to provide fresh, up-to-date content over the Internet. It is therefore important to know who is in charge of reviewing the information on the website, who will keep the site up-to-date and how often this information will be checked and changed. Furthermore, periodically polling each department in your company to see if there is more information that they would like to include can be a good idea as it enables new ideas and initiatives to be better communicated to the general public.

Syncing - An understanding that files can be synced can be helpful as it means that more resources can be made available offline.

Terms of use (network, email and Internet) - there are a number of important steps that the companies can take to ensure that their staff are aware of what conduct is satisfactory over the network, email and Internet. New staff might have terms of conduct written into their employment contracts and organisations might consider the use of a disclaimer on all outgoing communications.

If you are thinking of changing your network infrastructure and would like either to approach the issue strategically or to find an IT firm who will, please call us on 0116 283 6699 or email info@stjamessystems.com and ask for a free consultation with one of our experts. We can oversee all of the issues outlined above and will be happy to hear from you.

Satisfaction 100% guaranteed

In a move that makes St James Systems unique in the UK, a 100% money-back guarantee is now offered on all web services including design, optimization, copywriting and marketing.
This means that if you are unhappy with our work. for any reason. we will not charge you for it.

This decision was reached after research undertaken on 250 businesses in the Midlands which revealed that our confidence in our services could be better used. The moneyback guarantee means that we can stand behind our services and that there are no risks for our customers. This is a win-win situation
.

Planning Your Web Presence

These days, a website is a must for businesses. With over 8 in 10 businesses using broadband, the Internet has become as useful a resource as any to find information.

Ask yourself how you find information about potential suppliers. Do you use the Yellow Pages, do you look in the newspaper or in trade magazines or do you finds search engines like Google are far quicker and can deliver informaiton that answers all your questions?

The planning of a web presence should never be taken lightly. You are creating a shop window (or even a shop) that is acting as your online ambassador 24 hours a day. If you judge the people you do business by how they appear then people will judge you by your website. This can be truly liberating, however, as the Internet gives even the smallest business the chance to shine. This can only happen, though, if thought is given to the following aspects of your online arm:

Domain Name - The first step in gaining a web presence comes with registering a domain name. Ensure that your name makes it clear what your company is about as this will help your search engine rankings in the long-run.

Hosting - In order to put your site on the Internet, it must be hosted on a web server. There are a myriad of hosting companies offering different services. You need to think whether you're going to stream video or audio from the site, whether the site is built on a database, what scripts the server needs to run (do you just need a contact form or will you need something more elaborate) and how many people will use the site in order to make an informed decision.

Copywriting is an important part of selling online. Our research has shown that clear, well-written copy on the homepage of an e-commerce site increases sales by 40% on average.

Design encompasses a number of subjects from the logo to the look, feel and structure of your site. Be sure to set up your site in a way that emphasises what you do and why you do it better than anyone else. Try to devote seperate pages to different elements of your business as this will help larger portions of your site to be of relevance for those searching for you.

Optimization is a key part of any business's web strategy. Without trumpeting yourself to the general public you are practically invisible. Without favourable search engine rankings you limit your audience to those who already know about the site which is not helpful at all.

Try to find an optimizer that knows the specifics of the UK market and the details of UK searches. Be sure that the firm offers statistical packages showing not only how you are improving in the rankings but how many people are visiting your site as a result of the optimization process.

Marketing - A good design firm should be able to offer marketing services. Marketing can cost as much or as little as you want it to and it can bring massive rewards. Try to include a news page so that your site's content is kept fresh and up-to-date. Include anything that is newsworthy in this section and people will begin to pick up on it.

Advertising - If you are advertising products or a high-value service you may need to consider a pay per click advertising scheme. This can bring you instant traffic and sales. See if your design firm has pay per click services.

Email campaigns - In order to keep your clients and customers up-to-date, an email campaign can be an unobtrusive but highly effective way of increasing sales. Try to run a campaign before every special offer or change in your company's practices. Be sure that your campaign tracks the number of emails that are read, the number that are bounced back & treated as spam and the number of sales made as a result of the email so that you can calculate your return on investment.

If you are thinking of starting a website and would like to approach the issue strategically, please call us on 0116 283 6699 or email info@stjamessystems.com and ask for a free consultation with one of our experts. We offer all of the services outlined above and will be happy to hear from you.

Data cabling & New Electrical Regulations

From July 1 2008, all commercial, domestic and industrial wiring installations must be designed, constructed, inspected, tested and certificated to meet the requirements of BS 7671: 2008 the new IEE wiring regulations.

This new set of regulations offers the first new edition of electrical standards since 1991 when the 16th Edition was first printed and enables the combination of new products & technologies into a safe electrical framework & it allows for continues harmonization with European standards.

St James Systems have undertaken a number of data installations since 2003. With wireless speeds being up to 20 times less than the speed of wired data cabling and with wireless networks being far more susceptible to environmental factors, a wired network is always preferable to a wireless one in a business setting. St James Systems have worked with a number of firms across the midlands installing networks for as few as 2 computers and as many as 200. We have recently worked with companies like JCB and with Alstom to develop and refurbish their offices and to enable the smooth, fast and efficient transfer of data between different members of the organisation.

If you are considering installing data cables, please ensure that they will be compliant to the new standards. Please call us if you are thinking of having any data cabling or electrical work done on the buildings within your organisation and we will talk you through. If you would like for us to arrange for an electrical engineer to visit your site and discuss your proposed changes, we will happily do so.

From July 1 2008, all commercial, domestic and industrial wiring installations must be designed, constructed, inspected, tested and certificated to meet the requirements of BS 7671: 2008 the new IEE wiring regulations.

This new set of regulations offers the first new edition of electrical standards since 1991 when the 16th Edition was first printed and enables the combination of new products & technologies into a safe electrical framework & it allows for continues harmonization with European standards.

St James Systems have undertaken a number of data installations since 2003. With wireless speeds being up to 20 times less than the speed of wired data cabling and with wireless networks being far more susceptible to environmental factors, a wired network is always preferable to a wireless one in a business setting. St James Systems have worked with a number of firms across the midlands installing networks for as few as 2 computers and as many as 200. We have recently worked with companies like JCB and with Alstom to develop and refurbish their offices and to enable the smooth, fast and efficient transfer of data between different members of the organisation.

If you are considering installing data cables, please ensure that they will be compliant to the new standards. Please call us if you are thinking of having any data cabling or electrical work done on the buildings within your organisation and we will talk you through. If you would like for us to arrange for an electrical engineer to visit your site and discuss your proposed changes, we will happily do so.

Maximizing your returns in a difficult economic climate with IT

For many people, computers and technology are the bane of their lives, a necessary evil in the world of work. Not only can computer systems be unreliable but every so often there is another program to learn or the ‘Save’ button of an existing program which seemed to work quite well is hidden in a completely different place. We end up becoming slaves to IT rather than masters of it.

In an economic slowdown, however, businesses can maximize their return on investment by taking control of their IT system. There is still business to be had and companies can get it by maximizing their exposure to clients and potential clients. This article talks about four relatively new facets of IT, their benefits and utility.


Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is unique. There is no better way of putting businesses in touch with targeted customers than by placing your company right in front of people who are looking for the services you provide. SEO opens up a market of people who have no idea about your company but who want your products and services.
In order to do this, your SEO firm should take the time to get to know you, your products and services. They should try to get the most targeted visitors to your site rather than maximize the number of visitors (as 100 people interested in the mechanics of a car will not do the same business as 1 person interested in buying a car).They should give you a strategy of changes both on the website and off and their details of a link building strategy. If we imagine that search engines are a meritocracy with the best information being placed first, the more links to a site from authoritative websites effectively mean that there are more votes for that site as an important destination. A link-building strategy thus helps your site leap up in the rankings as it means that sites with authority in your area of expertise are recognising you.
SEO is often much cheaper than an advertising campaign (such as one using Google Adwords) and it is much more long lasting – your products remain in the search engine even after your budget limit has been reached.


Email marketing

Email marketing provides a way of reaching your clients and prospective clients for a fraction of the costs of a mailshot or advertising campaign. A monthly newsletter or a listing of special offers can pique the attention of prospective customers and get them to find out more about you. The Direct Marketing Association in the United States recently reported a return on investment of 57 times. For each £1 spent on email marketing, £57.25 is received in sales.

The advantages of an email marketing campaign are that an unlimited number of emails can be sent for practically no cost (when compared to the cost of a mailshot, this is quite an eye-opener). More importantly, the sender can find out who has opened their email, who has not, who has clicked through onto their site and who has done this many times, helping businesses to build up a picture of those interested in their products.

The downside of email marketing is spam. Your IT consultancy should give you advice on appropriate use of email marketing and should prevent you from killing the golden goose. However, the reason we have spam is that email marketing works and works very well. Although spam might not have a high return, the return on 0.02% people buying a product that has been emailed to 4 million is still very high.

Spam aside, all companies have lists of clients and customers who like to be kept in touch with developments. Many companies build up a lot of good will with clients who like to know about the latest range or discount and, by using this good will responsibly companies can considerably increase their turnover.


Customer Relations Management

Customer Relations Management (CRM) is relatively easy in the early days of a company when there are not many clients and businesses are struggling to find prospective clients. When the number of potential clients and opportunities gets into the hundreds, or even the thousands, it becomes very difficult to keep on top of everything.

In difficult times, companies have to rely more on service and contact with their clients to sustain and grow their business. As a client, t is extremely frustrating when someone says they will call but does not and, as a business, it is extremely disconcerting when you realise that you have missed out on some business because you forgot to make a ‘phone call.

CRM software can make a big difference, automating the processes behind keeping good relations with your clients from reminding you to make a call to helping you see just how many opportunities you are converting, to seeing the return on your investment to linking with the contact page on your website to ensure that clients who reach you electronically are not lost in the bowels of your email.

If you pride yourself on service and want to increase your business in difficult times through good service then CRM can help to take your business to the next level.


Remote access software

Remote access software can be a massive timesaver for businesses. For small companies whose owners go home at night but wish to look at information and emails on the company’s computers, for businesses whose main fee-earners often travel on business and for companies who cannot afford in-house IT staff but need problems resolving quickly, such software can enable companies to work much more efficiently.

IT can be a frustrating and ephemeral sphere but, with a bit of careful planning and advice, in a slowing economic climate, there are numerous opportunities to gain market share over your competition, maintain good customer relations as your business grows and increase your return on investment. IT can, when used with a bit of strategic thought, get workers away from tasks that take time and help them maximize the time that they spend making money.