Steve.Richardson - Profile

Welcome aboard Joseph, glad to have you with us 

Great post and top advice 

I remember years ago me and the missus decided to spend xmas in a log cabin on the banks of a Scottish Loch. Drove up from Stratford in my ageing Nissan Patrol with all the xmas food in bags on the floor as well as the Turkey.

What I didn't know was the exhaust was on the way out and bent so part of it was touching the floor pan, super heating the underneath of the car, slowly cooking our Turkey for us two days early

After much pondering and after a couple of glasses of wine, against all common sense, we cooked and ate it on xmas day  More luck than judgement, but it was great! May have thought differently if we had kids at the time or guests!

First question, no idea  Have you tried to edit any categories? There's no reason that we would have changed it, or that I'm aware of. But have removed it.

Web link wise, we have a URL checker that auto checks web links and removes any that are reported as broken. It works by looking at header codes, which some websites can report incorrectly. It can report incorrectly occasionally, but without  going all mumbo jumbo techno babble, I've switched the checker off  

Welcome aboard 

I removed all the links as it triggered our spam filter  Feel free to introduce yourself properly. How long have you been going, hows business, any funny stories? 

I don't think new generations will disconnect, I think it's more evolve.

Youngsters are using different platforms to Facebook and Twitter, where they have more privacy in private groups, whilst conversations are deleted after a set time. 

I can see this trend increasing as new technologies imitate our real life social behaviour. Very few of us would want to get on a stage in front of thousands of strangers and show pictures of our drunken past, yet people do it all the time with open profile Facebook accounts, or even twitter.

So I think it will be more discreet groups, where the currency will be privacy and trust, a bit like how you communicate with friends in the real world. Kids now talk with their mates via headsets while playing games. While we were outside with our mates in the 70's or 80's, now the kids get together virtually and have fun virtually. I'm no fan of this, but you can see the attraction, get together with your buddies and race cars or go round shooting things up, all without getting wet or bored!

But far from being disconnected, we are moving to an even more connected world, how about this - Micro-Chipping Staff 

Originally Posted by Your Local Girl Friday

“I saw an advert the other day for 'Black Friday Week'  

Point?”

It does make you laugh. Amazon was advertising Black Friday week. No doubt next year it will be Black Friday Month 

Personally I think it's run out of steam. Consumers aren't daft, that product you are offering for £100 was never really £500 and I'm sure I'll get your discount price throughout the year. Plus it encourages smaller eCommerce sites to join in a self destructive race to the bottom in regards to pricing, just to try and stay competitive with the big boys

Because the IT team is interacting with your customers. And they call them users. Or ignore them.

The local bank, for example, decided that adding a seventh and eighth digit to its two-factor authentication system would make it more secure (it’s a vanishingly small difference, but that’s a story for another day.) I’m sure that they didn’t consider the cost to the thousands of customers who will use it millions of times of day. Remembering 43948394 is very different than remember 439234.

Or consider this note from the TTP website:

“Please remember to revisit our website for your application status updates. Notification of when you may schedule an interview appointment (if one is needed) will only be posted here.”

Check back when? How often?

While it might be more convenient for them to forego sending out some sort of email or text alert, it’s definitely a fraught moment for the customer, the paying customer who is either going to forget, or not read this at all, or miss the appointment…

Marketing used to be advertising.

Now, marketing is everything you do. And what you do either adds to the experience or takes away from it.

Reproduced from Seths Blog: seths.blog/2018/11/is-there-a-marketing-person-leading-the-it-team/

It's a powerful message, I know I sometimes struggle to see things or relate to a customers point of view, retreating to it's the "users" fault  

Having a customer facing non techie, yet that can talk to techies is an invaluable resource. Particularly when techies are in disbelief at how users dare to interact with their system. The number of times we have had the conversation, "but they are not supposed to do it like that!" Tell that to the customer... 

Very odd, hyphen shows in Opera, but not in Firefox.

Downside of these template website services as you have no control. It will be a bug from their end, something not encoded properly. As a pure guess, I suspect it will be something to do with the number of characters in the title tag. 

Wouldn't worry about it too much 

If you are doing it all yourself and can't afford to outsource it, getting to learn Google analytics can be invaluable in understanding your online marketing and how your website is or isn't performing.

Google does an online course for beginners, I think it's free: analytics.google.com/analytics/academy/

Contact info is here: Income Tax: general enquiries - HMRC

Hi Robert

I can see you are using a 1&1 template, so it can be hard to be objective as you will be limited on what you can change. The biggest thing is the lack of structured data behind the scenes.

But visual website wise, it looks ok, it's clear what you do, you've got reviews and a gallery of previous clients, so ticks all the obvious boxes.

The title tag on your home page has a hyphen in it for some reason:

Question is how is it performing compared to your old website (or pre revamp)? Have you got a baseline on the number of conversions/leads/job requests that came through the old website? If so how does the new one compare? Is it better or worse? If worse then investigate why and fix it. If better, can you which identify why and improve it further.

You've got Google analytics installed so all the answers will be in there. Make sure you set up goals on your contact form, ie each time it's submitted.