Website design marketing and hosting in Telford Shropshire

I really don’t understand the UK. BT have announced that they are preparing to roll out a multi million pound scheme for installing more cable broadband in the UK. This will see a good proportion of us move from copper wires to fiber optic for our broadband, telephone and media content. This is great news and I applaud it, I’d snap their hand, no arm off if I could get it at home. And this is where I don’t understand the UK. I live in a street that is about 5 years old, 5 years ago it was development land, now it’s a new housing estate. The roads were constructed and gas, water, electricity, phone and drainage were installed… er… but no cable. Around me are thousands of new homes being constructed, Telford is exploding with new housing, and roads… er… but no cable.

So, along come BT in a year or so and… er… dig up the roads to lay cable. I just don’t understand.

I do understand that laying cable is expensive, but not as expensive as putting it in retrospectively surely? I would have had cable from day one, and by looking at the amount of Sky dishes on the houses around me, I reckon most other people would have too. I know lots of people in Telford who would love cable. So it’s a good announcement - don’t get me wrong I’m pleased.

In the same news report there was a line from Virgin that said we already offer what BT are proposing and it’s available today. Hang on Virgin! Not round here it’s not. And not in many parts of the country it’s not. But after BT do their stuff it will be. Virgin must be rubbing their hands with glee at all the prospective new customers they can get after BT puts in the infrastructure. But you know what? I’d make Virgin and Telewest and all the other cable companies pay for some of the upgrade, I really don’t see why it’s up to BT to do it all.

And another thing I’d do, is employ someone with some forethought and see that when building new estates installing future proof technology upfront is the way to go, should save us all a small fortune in the long run.

I heard on the radio this morning that the UK is about 3 months away from recession. I can well believe it, house prices are falling so nobody can sell therefore nobody can buy, food and fuel prices are rising fast and wages aren’t increasing to cover the extra outlay. Some people would say the recession is already here.

So what can you do about it?

Well one solution is: work harder. Yeah that’s right, knuckle down at your job and we’ll all pull together… oh wait… people are losing their jobs too. And those people that do hang onto their jobs probably don’t feel that happy about working their socks off when any moment they can be out of work too.

So, really, what can you do about it?

Have a back up plan. Do something for yourself, work hard at your day job, then work harder for yourself. A back up plan can be anything, start learning another trade, go back to college, or start a little business of your own on the internet. All these suggestions are great - but an internet based business is very easy to set up, register a domain name, set up the hosting and away you go, and do it right and it can earn you money!

Is it really so simple to set up a website?

Well, yes it is. OK so there are some challenges, but on the whole it’s simple, it’s made even more simple because Design Conscious have now set up a hosting service that automatically does (almost) everything for you. Take a look here Design Conscious .com Hosting - all you have to do is choose a domain name, then choose your hosting package. When you check out everything will be registered and set up for you, all you have to do is wait 24hrs for the domain name to propagate, then you can start setting up your site.

But I don’t have any software to create my website with

Don’t worry, as part of the hosting package is a very neat automatic install mechanism called Fantastico. Fantastico comes pre-installed with all manner of Blogs, Forums, Support ticket scripts, CMS systems - everything you could want for setting up your site. It’s all done through the admin interface right from your browser - you can literally have a site set up in 15 minutes.

Here is a trade secret

Set up a blog. Blogs are incredibly good at getting into the search engines, I’ve seen posts get indexed within 40mins of going live on a blog. Here’s what you do, pick a topic that really interests you, your hobby, your pet hate even your day job. Then start writing articles about it, download an Adsense plugin from google and start hosting google adverts on your site, approach fellow bloggers or adverstisers and look at ways of monetising your blog

It won’t make you a millionaire over night, but do it right and it can make you money. Enough to get your through the credit crunch or a recession? Who knows till you try it, and for such little outlay and a few hours of your time - you’d be mad not to. And to help you get started as cost effectively as possible, we’ll send you a money off voucher when you sign up to the hosting newsletter, just follow the links in the pop up window on the Design Conscious .com Hosting website.

Best of luck in your new venture!

I’m annoyed. This has happened before and in the past I have just binned the letter, but now I think it’s better to mention it.

Domain Registry of America sent me a Domain Name Expiry Notice, if you read it - which I know a lot of people don’t ‘actually’ read things. It says that your domain will soon need renewing and that you can do it through them. They aren’t saying you ‘have’ to but that you will ‘need’ to.

Now, I register my own domains, so I know I have never used the DRA before - and they have nothing to do with my registrar. So under no circumstances am I going to fall into the trap of transferring my domain to them… but a lot of people - I suspect - do.

It’s happened to a client of mine in the past, the letter is very convincing that it is the right thing to do to renew with them. So they went ahead and renewed without asking me or waiting for me to remind them.

I get annoyed by this because so many people don’t know what they are doing on the internet, so many people don’t know what they are buying when they take a domain name or a hosting package. And this blatant attempt to capture someones renewal is just adding to the confusion.

So the advice is:

• Check with your webdesigner when your domain is up for renewal
• If you bought your domain direct, login to your control panel and double check what you are doing

Design Conscious .com is proud to announce that it is now a Zero Carbon Footprint office.

All our electricity and gas is supplied by British Gas on their dual fuel tariff which now means the office here in Telford has gone carbon neutral.

This step means we are well on the way to become the greenest web design studio in Shropshire as we are looking at ways of persuading our hosting companies to go Carbon footprint Free.

This week I’ve had 2 phone calls from potential new customers, both of which totally confused me. Now I understand that people not in this industry don’t understand the technical terms, but there is no excuse for not knowing what you want.

The typical opener I get is: ‘Hello, how much does a website cost?’

OK, lets try asking that question at a garage: ‘How much are your tyres?’ Who can answer this question without getting some further information: what size wheels, type of car, how many are needed?

A website can cost anything - it could be a holding page at £75 or it could be a shopping site the size of Amazon and cost £30k upwards.

Here is a quick list of info that you need to have and the type of questions you need to ask:

Tell the designer:

• if you have a domain already registered
• if you have hosting
• what type of site you want and the type of content you have for it
• what other sites you have seen that you like
• if you have a budget to consider
• if you require photography, or if you have the photograph, or if you need stock photography purchasing

Ask the designer

• whether you can see their previous work
• what are their techniques regarding search engine optimisation
• if they have payment options
• whether they work from templates or design bespoke

Try and think of any useful information and offer it in the conversation, I quoted at least one of my potential clients an incorrect price because I didn’t fully understand what they wanted.

The incorrect price was in their favour by the way!

MARKETING: - Take every opportunity to tell people what you sell.I was recently on holiday and needed some beach shoes, you know those rubber soled scuba jobs that you can walk into the sea with - I was in half a mind to get a wet suit too - well it was a holiday in the UK and the kids wanted to be in the sea.

I took a stroll into town to start searching for shoes and came to a fishing tackle shop (of all places) with crates of shoes outside. I looked at the price label which said £9.99 each - that seemed a little expensive to me so I went to walk away. Out of nowhere up sprang the shop keeper to point out that she had written on the back of an old label (which had turned over in the breeze) and the shoes were actually 2 pairs for £5. I bought a pair (and some for my daughter) and as I was paying, the lady mentioned that they had the cheapest wet suits in town. I had a good walk round and, she was right - they were the cheapest. I went back and bought 4 - one for all of us.Now think about that for a moment - I could have walked away from that shop and would never have grabbed a bargain. But what’s worse the shop keeper might have missed out on two sales. All she did was tell me (the customer) what she sold and because of that I was able to make up my mind and buy what I wanted.

This is a fundamental rule to apply to any business, just tell people what you sell, plain and simple, and shout it louder when you have items on sale. There are many ways of doing it too, send out letters to your past customers, run a mailing list on your website, print flyers and have them inserted in the local free papers or just go house to house and push them through letter boxes.

Remember if people don’t know you sell it - they can’t buy it from you.