BUSINESS IN 2010: VERTICALLY-CHALLENGED SHOP ASSISTANTS - AND THE MYSTERY OF SEO.

IDEAL INTERFACE AND BRAND FAITH

BUSINESS FEATURE

January 18, 2010.

BUSINESS IN 2010: VERTICALLY-CHALLENGED SHOP ASSISTANTS - AND THE MYSTERY OF SEO.

Around two million new companies and organisations will open for business in 2010 – a huge number without any physical premises or shop windows – and their future lies in the hands of vertically-challenged shop assistants and invisible geeks practicing the dark arts of SEO.

The vast majority of those new or re-vitalised businesses will be walking into the unknown in ways they’re simply not expecting, says one of the internet’s most invisible men, Hayden Sutherland, a “digital user interaction” specialist with Ideal Interface (www.idealinterface.co.uk).

“We’re the people that ensure even the worst-looking website pops up at the top of searches, and the best-designed ones are as commercially successful as they are visually impactful. We’re the geeks of all geeks,” said Hayden.

“An internet presence is a fantastic shop window, but only if that shop window is highly visible on a virtual high street rather than anonymously placed on a virtual back street, and then only if the virtual high street presence - the design of the website – is a visual grabber: and being a grabber doesn’t mean packing in every video or visual effect.

“Unlike a shop or factory, an online business does not have a physical presence – it can’t put up flashing lights or have staff standing outside giving out leaflets, or hold a cheese and wine evening to draw in locals: it can be offering the best deals and discounts on the planet, but if nobody knows it’s there, then it’s going to find out that the biggest unknown was discovering just how unknown it is possible to be.

“You may have the most amazing-looking website, like you’re sitting in the brightest, ritiziest, most exciting shop anywhere, ever, but nobody’s coming through the door. So you step outside, take two steps across the pavement, turn round and see… nothing. Your shop is simply not there. Go looking for yourself on the internet, and you may be buried at best – invisible at worst.

“It’s down to one little acronym, SEO: Search Engine Optimisation.”

Design agency Brand Faith (www.brandfaith.com) often works with Ideal Interface – Brand Faith creating the design and image you see on your screen, Ideal Interface creating the mechanisms that ensure a website appears high up on searches.

“View Ideal Interface as the makers of largely unseen engine and gearbox, and designers like Brand Faith as the creators of the highly visible bodywork,” said Hayden.

Mark Rollinson of Brand Faith said: "It is important to strike a balance between design and functionality when planning a website.

“As designers, we want our work to look beautiful, but there's no point creating a masterpiece website that people don't know about (i.e. it doesn't feature in related searches), doesn't engage, have the right content, or is difficult to navigate. Website design is only successful if it effectively communicates what the company wants to convey and achieves its objectives, for example, online sales or brand immersion."

Added Hayden: “A badly-planned website is like a disinterested vertically-challenged shop assistant dealing with a phone enquiry. The customer wants to spend money, the store wants to sell, the goods are there, but they’re at the back of a high shelf the assistant can’t see – and he or she can’t or won’t go the extra yard and use the in-store search engine: a step ladder.

“A good website will shove the items to the front of the optimum-height shelf and provide and drive every possible method and means to make those goods as visible as possible to both the sales assistant and the buyer.

“The issue is that website design and construction is still a mystery to the vast majority of businesses, particularly small businesses – 90% of small businesses have fewer than ten employees, and 98% fewer than 50 staff.

“But worse than that, they don’t know what they don’t know: many think that simply having a designer create one and ‘putting it on the internet’ is the route to riches. But as soon as they do, they’re actually walking into a commercial warzone where only the most technically aggressive will win.

“Smaller businesses simply do not have the resource to employ cost-incurring techies who understand how to make a website really work – but a surprising number of bigger businesses also fail to grasp that a really good-looking website is not necessarily going to leap to the top of internet searches.

“To use another analogy, the best bar in the world may be round the next corner, but if you can’t see it, or a sign to it, or you’re not pointed in the right direction, you’ll never know. You want it, it wants you – but you’ll never know it’s there.”

Hayden and Mark have several tips for businesses launching or re-launching in 2010 – and which are creating or re-generating their websites.

1. Decide what you want your website to achieve: Communication (telling and listening); simply selling, or maintaining a relationship (listening and telling).

2. Talk to people or businesses that have trodden the path before you, and can explain in layman’s terms the perils and pitfalls – and positives.

3. Research and understand the language of the website developer.

4. Don’t skimp on getting the right techies to ensure the highest possible level of Search Engine Optimisation is achieved, so that you appear towards the top of search results.

5. Design: make sure your website designer is clear on your brand identity and values. Keep it clean, simple and easy to use, with logical and straightforward navigation.

6. Music and animation generally annoy site visitors, so, unless you’re in the music or animation businesses, simply don’t do it.

7. Don’t try to cram everything on to the home page – let visitors bite off a little bit more with each page they click on to.

8. Appreciate that a website is a living thing that can be updated annually – or by the minute, either by you or your designer.

9. Test it – if your website is delivered overnight, then it’s probably going to leave you in that virtual backstreet. Tests take weeks.

10. Build in analysis – usually a free tool – so that you can see who’s visiting your site, how often, what they’re looking at, and even develop your site to make it even more attractive to them.


Ends

Further information:
Iain Macauley
im@pressrelations.co.uk
+44 (0)7788 978800