Sign-up using our home page to receive your free copy of our information packed e-newsletter. This month Managing Director David Woodroofe guides you through planning your own e-commerce website and give you all the top tips from Create Design Studio about selling your products online.

This article was written for the Networking group MBG  for their February 2010 newsletter.

Typical Twitter Page

1. The Page Background
You can set the background design and colour of your page by clicking on the ‘Settings’ menu tab (at the top right of the page) and then click the ‘Design’ menu tab on the page that appears. You can also design your own background or take a photograph and place it on your profile background. The background could display your photo, your company logo and a description of what you do or what your organisation does. It could also display your contact information.

2. What’s Happening?
Type in your tweets using this box.

3. Main area
Here are all the tweets of the people you follow arranged with the most recent at the top of the page.

4. Main Menu
You can view and alter your profile using this menu as well as change your user name, and search for people you know.

5. Following/Followers
These two numbers show you how many people you are following and how many others are following you. To see a profile picture and a description of them just click on the words and a list will be displayed in the main window.

6. Lists
Using a list allows you to group together people who you follow on Twitter so that you can view only their tweets. For example all the people who write about the subject of motor racing are in a list and by clicking on the list name only their tweets appear in the main window. Other people can include you in their lists and you can view all lists you create or are included in by clicking the ‘Lists’ link.

7. Home
Clicking here will refresh the main screen and show you the latest tweets from those you follow.

8. @username
Click on this heading to see all the tweets where your user name is mentioned.

9. Direct messages
If you want to privately message someone then click here and your message will not appear on the main time line.

10. Favourites
If someone sends you a tweet that you’d like to save then click the little star icon on the left of the tweet text on the time line and it will be saved in your favourites, click this link to view them all.

11. Retweets
When you rebroadcast someone else’s tweet add an ‘RT’ to the front and include their user name with the ‘@’ symbol at the front. Any of your tweets that are rebroadcast will be displayed under this heading, as are those retweets you make and retweets made by people you follow.

12. Search
Type in a name or any other search term to find tweets that contain that term.

Linking up
The most popular use for Twitter comes about when it is combined with your website or blog. Whenever you write a
blog post or update your website or e-commerce store you can promote it to your twitter followers by including a web link in your tweet to encourage them to visit your blog or website.

Using web links
Long web links really eat into your character limit when making a tweet so use a specialist link shortening website to help you cram more into each tweet. (Try www.Tinyurl.com or www.bit.ly). These sites allow you to past in a long web link which it will then shorten for you. Simply copy and paste the shortened link into your tweet.

Automatic updates
Facebook and Linked-in can now be set up automatically to update from your Twitter status. Most social and business networking websites have a gadget that allows you to set this up. Once your Twitter account updates all your social or business networking profiles it means that you only have to type in your links and promotions once for them to be rebroadcast to all the people you have connections with, however they keep in touch with you.

There is also code that you can use to include a twitter feed on your website or blog. This code fetches and displays your tweets so that they can be seen by visitors to your website or blog without them needing to visit the Twitter site at all.

Facebook Fan Pages
These are an extension to the personal profile that you can build in Facebook and are useful for business because they
have space for galleries of photographs, useful for portfolios of work or to show pictures of your office and how to find it. There is also a place for your address and opening hours, customers can write on your wall with testimonials or you can place special offers, news stories and events on there to keep your ‘fans’ interested.

Create Design Studio have covered Facebook Fan Pages in this blogpost.

If you would like to use social networking sites to promote your organisation please call Create Design Studio on 01962 737989 and we can help you set up your website or blog and create profiles using social networking websites as well as guiding you on linking them together effectively.

There are three really important Meta Tags that will help get your website found by search engines: the Meta Page Title, Keywords and the Meta Description.

The Meta Page Title appears in the bar at the top of a browser window, in the case of Microsoft Explorer it is the text that appears immediately before the wording in the blue bar that says Microsoft Explorer. Most search engines place a lot of importance on this title when ranking web pages, so you should ensure that you have a unique title for each web page and that it contains your top search phrase for that page.

The Meta Description, is as it sounds, a description of what that particular web page is about. It is also the text that many search engines use to describe the web page in their search results. Again this is an important Tag that can help get the website found. Like the Title Tag most search engines do read these descriptions and place a lot of importance on them.

Meta Descriptions should also be written with real people in mind, as a well-written Meta Description can attract people to click on that site when faced with dozens of listings on a results page, even if it is listed towards the bottom of the page.

The Keyword Tag started life as the place to put all the phrases that you wanted your website to be found by, however many website owners found that they could out smart the search engines using them, most search engines no longer pay much attention to them. However some do use them and most will check to see if they have been included, so it is important to include them.

Keep in touch with your customers and promote your website at the same time
Any correspondence that you send from your organisation to a customer can also promote your website. Think about printing on your envelopes, having printed headed letter paper, printing your website address onto your invoices, comp slips, flyers and anything else you post out. Also have an email signature with your website address on it, these can be updated easily so you can always promote whatever you are doing online to any clients you communicate with via email. If you hand out any promotional items like pens, postcards or notepads then have these printed with your website address in addition to your logo.

Create Design Studio offer a range of new media marketing services, and we have years of experience designing and building websites and blogs, speak to our MD, David Woodroofe on 01962 737989.

A well thought-out website works hard acting as a salesman working 24/7 on your company’s behalf: always providing information, reassurance and your contact details to potential and existing customers who are looking for goods or services. Now that mobile devices are increasingly used for internet access your website could be guiding customers straight to your door.

A really effective website is updated regularly to remain at the top of it’s game. Without new information on products or services and company news it can slip down search engine rankings and customers may drift away from a site that always looks the same.

Take an objective look at your website: are there parts that could do with an overhaul? Make a list of things you could add to your website that could make it more effective as a sales tool for your business, always think from a customer’s point of view and try to imagine what they would be interested in. Why not survey your customers to find out what they would like to see on your website or take a look at the websites of your competitors to see what they do. Critically assess websites that you visit and work out what features you find useful that could equally be applied to your organisation’s website.

Making your website more effective means helping visitors to find you easily, stay longer once they arrive and more likely to initiate contact or leave their details with you. Once site visitors engage with your web site they are more likely to buy from you. These topics will all be covered in the next few weeks on this blog.

Personalised support to update and change your website is available from Create Design Studio if you would like to speak to us about your website please call 01962 737989.

E-mail newsletters have become popular because they give companies an opportunity to speak directly to their customers. Offers that appeal to recipients of the newsletter could encourage them to take the next step and make a purchase, or make a repeat purchase in the case of existing customers.

Send regular newsletters to customers that focus on articles of interest to them, rather than being purely about promotion of sales, because sales messages are a turn-off to readers. Newsletters get your name in front of receptive customers and provides your organisation with an opportunity to offer your customer articles, special offers and contact information. Once your newsletter is up and running it can be promoted as a great place to pick up special offers and information that will encourage interested customers to sign-up.

If you would like advice or help to set up an email newsletter for your organisation please call David Woodroofe of Create Design Studio on 01962 737989.

Create Design Studio have just completed the design and build of this website promoting green investing. After designing a logo based on the theme of growth we designed the website based around the Teak Trees that the investments are based on.

If you would like to visit the site click here.

Its a great pleasure to bring you this baggage e-commerce website. It’s been programmed and filled with images of luggage to ensure a smooth buying experience for site visitors. But most of all I love that fact that it was designed to look just like a well-travelled suitcase, complete with stitching and stickers.

If you would like to have a look at the site please click here.

Create Design Studio are experts in the design and build of websites as well as helping our clients with online marketing and search engine optimisation. If you would like to have a chat please call David on 01962 737989.

If you already use Twitter, Ecademy and LinkedIn you might be interested in using Facebook to set up a fan page. It works in a similar way to your own profile page as you have a wall to write on and most of the other tabs: info, photos, notes and events. Instead of friends you instead ask your friends to become fans of the page you create. We have set up several photo albums to display images of our graphic design portfolio, our website design and our logo design archive. All our fans can see these images and invite their friends to become fans of our page too.

Create Design Studio Facebook Page

We have begun to publish ‘notes’: these can be the length of a status update or as long as a blog post and are great for publishing news of projects, testimonials from clients and for making special offers that are available to fans as the notes appear on their news feed when they log-in.

The events tool allows you to create events on a calendar and invite fans to RSVP. This could be useful for attending or organising networking events or open days that are open to fans. This tool could also be used for promoting special offers that are time limited or open only to fans. Giving any organisation the opportunity to thank their fans for following them and promoting their fan page as a place to get special offers. Creating this exclusive ‘club’ atmosphere can encourage customers to sign up and allow you to carefully target special offers at an audience who are likely to be interested in them.

The information tab is the place to post contact telephone numbers, email addresses and your organisation’s opening hours. Encourage your fans to get in touch using this information.

If you would like to have a look at our fan page on Facebook simply search (top right-hand side of the page) when you log-in for ‘Create Design Studio’ and we should appear in the results. If you like what you see why not become a fan and write us a note on our wall?

Create Design Studio are specialists in using online marketing to help your business sell more to your customers. Call David woodroofe on 01962 737989 to find out how we could help you.

It may be November, and it may be raining but we have been thinking about the great British summer beach holiday while we designed and built a website for Weymouth-based company Charm Properties.

Charm Properties New Website

Charm Properties let holiday homes in Weymouth and Portland to customers seeking a break in the UK. They wanted a website to reflect the sights of the local area and to promote the fact that Weymouth is a great area to take part in watersports like windsurfing and sailing.

Overall the site has a relaxing blue colourscheme and postcard style images illustrating local sights. We helped them by searching photo libraries to find appropriate images for the website. Plenty of information and images from their Holiday properties can fit on every page, enabling visitors to get a good look at each property before they choose where they would like to go on holiday.

Visit the Charm Properties website by clicking here.

We are Create Design Studio and we specialise in using the web to benefit our clients businesses. If you would like to speak to the the new media experts at Create Design Studio call David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 today.

The Create Design Studio Newsletter | November 2009

Developing your brand is about creating a relationship with your customers based on their perception of your organisation. Start not with what you sell but those who will buy it and find the appealing values that your organisation shares with them to give your organisation a personality they can relate to.

Successful branding helps to make sales easier because trust has been created between customer and organisation. Creating this kind of successful brand doesn’t happen overnight but it can be supported by making your organisation accessible to customers on the web.

A blog is a type of online diary, often used by businesses to publish articles about issues and events relevant to their industry that will be of interest to their customers and their peers. It can be hosted separately from your main website or the free blogging software can be installed on your web-server to integrate your website and your blog. Some smaller companies or freelance workers only have a blog as the software is versatile and can be used in a similar way to a traditional website with pages for services, products and contact information. You can update your blog as often as you like and as soon as you hit the ‘Publish’ button your articles are live on the web and can be indexed by search engines.

Blog-posts can be effectively promoted through the use of the social networking site Twitter where users write their current status in messages of 140 characters or less. These messages can contain hyperlinks that direct readers to your blog post, your website or to any other online resource you want to promote.

Your Twitter status can also be linked so it updates your Facebook status and your status on the Ecademy business networking site, meaning you only have to write updates once and all the people who ‘follow’ you will be informed. If you are trying to spread the word out about a new product or service it is obvious that linking your updates this way could provide an effective and low-cost way to promote them online.

These websites can also prove useful in other ways. By posting questions to those in your network others can respond quickly with personal recommendations and links to information resources. Additionally, social networking can enable you to keep in touch with friends and business contacts you may not often be able to meet up with in-person due to geography or lack of time.

Social networking has received coverage in the mainstream media and on the BBC news website an article by Claire Prentice  explains how small firms are harnessing social networking for their marketing. As many small firms cannot afford to spend large sums on advertising they have turned to the social networking websites to reach a global audience with a minimal cost. Promoting special offers, new services and even to fill cancelled appointments at the last minute, updates on Twitter or Facebook build trust between customers and your organisation because they know the information comes from the source.

Social networking sites invite your customers to enter into dialogue with your company and the feedback you receive can be used to improve your services. However, your organisation also becomes open to criticism. Approach criticism as a chance to improve your service and potentially win back a customers and even this aspect of social networking for business use can have a positive outcome.

Are you a newcomer to social networking online? Here’s some tips on how to begin:

Online social networking site http://twitter.com, uses short messages to help you stay in touch with other twitter users and http://www.facebook.com is a full social networking site that allows you to upload photos, update your status and instant message other friends online at the same time as you.

Business networking sites include http://www.ecademy.com which is a large site with users from all over the world with clubs and regional networking groups you can join. You may also like to look at http://www.linkedin.com for opportunities to network with other professionals.

If you’d like to start your own blog visit: http://wordpress.com or https://www.blogger.com. Try reading a few blogs to see the breadth of writing that exists on the web. You can search Google for blogs or you can visit a blog search engines like http://technorati.com which has a list of 100 top blogs to browse. Also try http://mashable.com for blogs about the world of social media online and a series of articles on ‘How to’ that should help you if you are struggling to use any of the sites mentioned in this article.

Create Design Studio have a dedicated service for those of you who would like to start your own blog but don’t know where to begin. Setting up blogs on your existing website, designing the pages, showing you how to login and write articles as well as using Google Analytics to see how well your blog is doing. Call Create Design Studio’s Managing Director David Woodroofe on 01962 737989 if you would like to discuss having your own blog. To see an integrated blog visit: www.createdesignstudio.co.uk/blog.

If you decide to take the plunge why not look up Charlotte Lamb, Creative Director at Create Design Studio, on Twitter by searching for @charlotte_lamb to read Charlotte’s Tweets on Graphic design.