We’re also a sociable bunch and you can find out more about what extra curricular activities we get up to. Look out for our next issue of Inc Christmas that will be reflecting on the year’s highlights and successes. Sign up to receiving our online newsletters here.

A social media management project will usually be embedded within a broader campaign landscape of additional marketing. Many brands are now adding connections to social media at various stages of their customers’ journey through the awareness, engagement and transaction process. In particular online businesses can now enable users to share information about purchases or attendance at events through social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for example.

In addition to social media management we also work across all the traditional offline media too and our specialism is connecting up a brand proposition through cross platform marketing.

Design Inc UK is a west London based integrated online marketing agency. If you are considering updating your website and need social media management services, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack.

Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in all types of integrated and online marketing and social media management services, so whether you need social media applied to a simple marketing based website, or if you want to create a wide social media network to join-up online and offline communications, we can help with the creation and management of it.

To see some examples of our work, please see our creative website design portfolio.

How does social media management work? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

The Charter Company is a leading provider of the full range of private business jets and commercial airliners for Ad-hoc charter. This sector is a busy marketplace with a wide range of players ranging from major international charter brokers to small boutique broker firms.

Design Inc has considerable experience across the Aviation industry and especially within business & private aviation and we actually designed and produced The Charter Company’s original website in 2005. We recently undertook a second major revamp in order to improve prospect engagement and rankings within search engines and also to reposition The Charter Company within commercial aircraft charter. This was an opportunity to upgrade the website in line with evolving industry trends, technology enhancements and subsequent evolution in best practice. The new web 2.0 search engine friendly web development for The Charter Company, along with improved navigation, messaging and data capture now features a full investment in search engine optimisation, working in conjunction with pay per click Google AdWords. This improved search engine effectiveness for a wider range of pages & phrases from the team bios and service lists through to the private jets The Charter Company clients can choose from.

The importance of driving visitors to your site cannot be underestimated. The ability to understanding what will drive visitors, and what they do when they get to your site is essential if search is to be a key part of your marketing spend.

Search engine friendly web development best practice can include the following strategic elements as part of the mix: undertaking a search terms/phrases ‘Keyword’ report, selection of best performing and under competed-for phrases organic optimised placing of these phrases within the programming and visible site content, addition of a Blog to the website – to allow fresh searchable content to be uploaded and tactical key phrases to be deployed. Public Relations stories or news posted through blogs also provides the flexibility to use keyword insights from your search terms results. These elements combined with the more practical code, text and linking search engine optimisation compound the effectiveness of any investment even further.

Search engine friendly web development is embracing more and more use of social media strategies. Widening a company’s online presence through professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, leveraging blog posts through Twitter and a company’s social life with Facebook are becoming key to website’s ranking performance an prospect engagement.

The Charter Company now benefits from first page Google rankings for the search phrases ‘air charter broker’ & ‘empty leg charter flight’. Go ahead try it for yourself!

In addition to the search engine performance being greatly improved, Design Inc also provides complementary email marketing and data services for The Charter Company.

Design Inc is a West London-based website design & search engine optimisation agency. If you are considering re-designing your website and need a search engine optimisation strategy to support it, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s information pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in marketing the Aviation industry. To see more samples of work within the Aviation industry, please see our specialist Aviation portfolio.

Search Engine Friendly Web Development is a post from the Design Inc Blog

These days a website can cost from £49 for a simple out-of-a-box template to several hundred thousand pounds for a comprehensive digital asset for a major web based business or service. This top-end ‘brand experience’ may include areas created for multiple users and tailored interfaces, an information resource, an ecommerce catalogue section, a membership area, multiple regional/branch log in areas, live social media and other content feeds such as news and events for example. A sophisticated back office database or customer relationship management CRM ability may also be built into the site. All of these can increase traffic, enhance user experience and revenue generated by a website but are not required by most.

Design Incorporated are creative web developers and we work closely with our clients to understand their business model. This results in a joined-up and unique website design solution that includes: proposing and agreeing a strategic brief for appropriate functionality and defining of the site map, creative user experience design and technical build, testing and commissioning. The website spec will be matched to the business need and role the website plays for the clients’ business and may engage some of the features listed above. However, typically Design Inc projects may require clients to invest a budget of between £5k to £15k for a 20-25 page site including Search Engine Optimsation (SEO), content origination, a Blog and/or a content management system.

Although as creative web developers for many of our clients, the website forms only part of the service as we provide integrated marketing and design. A web design project will usually be embedded within a landscape of additional online promotional campaign activity such as emarketing, advertising, Social Media Marketing. We also work across all the traditional offline media too and our specialism is connecting up a brand proposition through cross platform marketing.

Design Inc is a West London-based Website Design Agency. If you are considering updating your website and need a strategy to support it, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s Information Pack. Alternatively, please contact us by calling 01784 410380 or emailing us to find out more.

Design Inc has considerable experience in all types of creative web design and development, whether it be a heavily search engine optimised and marketing based website, or a fully integrated online business and associated online marketing campaigns. To see more samples of work, please see our creative website design portfolio.

How do creative web developers work? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

In its first 5 years, Twitter has woven itself into almost all major worldwide events: the news that a plane had crash-landed in the Hudson River; election protests in Iran; the rapid dispersal of the news of an 7.8-magnitude earthquake in China; updates from the ground about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

There have been less important moments – multiple billions of them, including Stephen Fry being stuck in a lift (“we could be here for hours. Arse, poo and widdle”); the race in 2009 between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to be the first past 1m followers (a contest rendered irrelevant by Charlie Sheen’s meteoric rise this year); Sarah Palin’s coinage of “refudiate”; and Clarence House announcing the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

It took three years for Twitter to gain a billion “tweets” – messages of up to 140 characters. Today, more than 200 million users post that number every week.

Twitter has become an endlessly flowing river of news, opinion, information, expertise, contacts, data, links, connections. You can not only find out what is happening, but can directly connect with the people who want to connect with you. And this connection is the holy grail for marketing and media agencies everywhere.

Twitter has changed the relationship between companies and consumers. And links to stories broadcast on Twitter are a new source of incoming web traffic for organisations – though presently far behind Facebook or Google.

The question now is: where will Twitter be in five years’ time? What will Twitter look like at age 10? How far will its influence spread? Twitter is only getting bigger and more pervasive – and will become all-important to companys’ online marketing plans with a much higher take up rate for new & existing companies trying to establish a foothold in their markets. Whilst it is still struggling to find profitability, it still generated $45m (£27.7m) of revenues last year.

Presently 40% of tweets originate on a mobile device, a clue to its enormous usefulness; its text message-length 140-character format made it the first widespread web service to break free of the PC. And with 5.3 billion mobile phone users in the world, and 90% of the world’s population in reach of a mobile network, Twitter has a far better chance of reaching everyone sooner than Google or Facebook.

So, we say Happy Birthday, Twitter. Many happy returns! We look forward to watching you grow.

And, for anyone who reads this and would like to follow Design Inc on Twitter, you can find us at http://twitter.com/DesignincUK

Happy Birthday Twitter is a post from the Design Inc Blog

For years now, we have always attracted significant numbers of visitors to our website but with visitor numbers increasing dramatically month and month – so much so that they are now double what they were only 6 months ago – we went to investigate what we had done differently over the past 6 months to help create this sharp increase in website visitor numbers:

Keyword Research – understanding which keyword phrases our potential clients are more likely to be searching for has always been critical to us. Even more important however, is the process of optimising our own website with these keywords and keyphrases so as to help ensure our website appears on the first pages of that particular Google search. Our SEO web development is highly important to us and over the past 6 months we have continued to keep our website highly optimised. We have, in fact, narrowed down the searches to be ‘quality-specific’. That is, if a potential customer is searching for a creative service at a certain high level of quality, it is more than likely that Design Inc will appear higher up the rankings.

Blog – our blog continues to grow. The quantity of blog articles is important of course but not as important as the quality (and the keyword relevance) of the content. This helps Design Inc rank higher in relevancy for all those keywords & keyphrases embedded into our blog articles. And that is one way in which Google works:- ie just how relevant is this website for the particular keyword/phrase which you are typing in? For us, we have become so much more knowledgeable in the past 6 months in understanding just how to write an effective blog, so much so that each story attracts hundreds of new visitors to our website daily.

AdWord Campaign – whilst our monthly Google spend has remained unchanged for our PPC campaign, it is important to note that in the past six months, the keywords in which we are investing have changed significantly. Having carried out extensive research into our Google statistics last Summer, we clearly saw where are money was best spent and where we felt it was being wasted. This enabled us to reappoint the Google spend in much more truly effective ways. Our AdWord spend is working so much better for us now without any increase in investment.

Social Media – last year saw the introduction of Design Inc’s social media marketing push. With accounts set up within Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, etc, we have been able to create more relevant industry networks, a dedicated following as well as many more inbound links to our own website. And of course, the more inbound links you have created, the more opportunities there will be to attract more website visitors.

Inbound Links – as mentioned, the more inbound links there are to a website, the more opportunities there are for visitors to find themselves on your website. And one very good way of increasing inbound links is through entries on online directories. In August 2010, the marketing team at Design Inc invested their time researching and adding our details to over 200 online trade & industry-specific directories (some paid for but most free of charge). The upshot is that the combined might of these directories help push more new enquiries our way than ever before.

Email Marketing Services – all the email marketing solutions we send out – whether this be eNewsletters, eShots or simply the eSignature at the bottom of our everyday emails (introduced in July 2010) – all provide active hyperlinks back through to certain areas of our website, therefore offering more opportunities for increased visitor numbers. Our eShots are sent to those who specifically sign up to receive information from us, and although we have been creating eShots for years now, we can see that sign up numbers were much larger than they were than in previous years. The more people who sign up, the more receive our information, the more they mention us to others, the more new visitors we attract. And, with our own eMarketing statistics report, we can directly see just who has clicked a link through to our website, what they were interested in, who signed up, etc. This information is priceless to us.

Overall, it is impossible to pinpoint just one factor which has helped us increase visitor numbers. All the above website marketing tool (and more) are responsible for bringing more visitors to our website, and ultimately more enquiries from it. Rest assured we will continue to keep this trend going, not just for ourselves but to all of our website customers.

Attract record number of visitors to your website is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Getting the most out your own sales data and data captured from your website can automatically create profiles of your prospects and segment them to ensure maximum engagement with the highest possible level of response and ROI.

It’s no coincidence that the direct mailings you receive from the larger corporates and retailers are completely relevant to you, your lifestyle and interests. It’s a scary thought, but they know your age, personal circumstances, the car you drive, what you earn, what team you support and what wine you drink!

These techniques apply across the board. Whether you are a B2B or B2C online retailer and want to promote your products, or you’re a professional supplier promoting your range of services. Initiating the process of data gathering can be time consuming, but once the mechanisims are in place, sending communications and eNewsletters to all your clients and prospects will be fast, cost effective and rewarding.

Just imagine how powerful a professionally designed website with a clear sales route and data capture forms which in turn feeds mailing lists would be for your organisation.

Design Inc have implemented integrated direct marketing processes for the Aviation, Energy and Conference & Events industries.

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Making Email and Direct Marketing Campaigns Work is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Whether your business is actually based and sells online or simply marketed online, an effective website is your most important communications asset. There are many elements to the location, design, build and population and promotion of your site. All of which present both opportunities and threats. Opportunities that is, to get it very right, and the real threat of getting it very wrong.

Here is our guide to the elements; can you tick all the boxes? First off, what is the desired response from your user? If you can answer that question instantly and have the resources in place to react to that response, then you know what we are working to achieve.

If you are considering a forthcoming creative/marketing project, you may be interested in receiving Design Inc’s  Information Pack.

Design Inc’s guide to a sucessful website is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Search engines provide the majority of traffic to websites across the internet, regardless of website focus. Therefore, if your site cannot be properly located and indexed by the leading search engines, you are missing out on the best opportunity to drive targeted visitors and potential revenue.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, is the process by which web pages are optimised to increase their organic search engine rankings. This is done by assessing what the individual search engines are looking for and providing that. The outcome of an SEO campaign is to create high organic rankings for the keywords/phrases for which the client is an authority. This will ultimately create an increase in targeted traffic.

A good SEO campaign includes the following three aspects;

1. Keyword Analysis
2. Onsite Optimisation
3. Offsite Optimisation

Keyword Analysis is the process by which you analyse and select keywords based on traffic, competition and relevance. If you are not selecting the most effective keywords, the rest of the optimisation process is really a lost cause. The text and theme of the site needs to revolve around these keywords and very much define how the site appears to both users and search engines.

Onsite Optimisation deals with changes made to the site itself. This involves making changes to the text content, architecture of the site, HTML code, and page layout. This is the most commonly understood aspect of SEO, but only accounts for about 40% of a site’s rankings. This is where your keywords are placed throughout the code to show the search engines what your site is about.

Offsite Optimisation deals with changes made outside the scope of the website. This mainly involves increasing the quantity and quality of inbound links to the site. Approximately 60% of Google’s current ranking algorithm is based on inbound linking. Your goal is to maximise the site’s exposure on the web and get as many high quality sites as possible to link back to your site.

What is a good keyword and what is not?

This is the ultimate question we have to ask ourselves when judging keywords. There are many variables you have to take into account when selecting exactly what keywords your site will be optimised for.

Use the following criteria to determine the viability of a keyword:

• the estimated amount of searches for the keyword in a 24 hour period
• the number of sites competing for the keyword
• the quality of the sites competing for the keyword
• the ability of the site to support the keyword
• relevance between keywords
• the target audience of the site

Keep in mind that your number one goal is to accurately depict what the site is about through the keywords (and the eventual text content). If your site is not properly described by the keywords then either the site is targeted wrong or you’ve selected the wrong keywords.

Search engines like sites that are targeted to a specific topic. If a site is spread too thin as far as topic goes, then it will be harder to appear as an authority for any one topic. Search engines do favour large sites, but generally it is better to have a smaller targeted site than a larger broad site that is about many topics.

It is not uncommon to discover site theme issues when doing keyword selection. Often, it leads to a reassessment of the site as a whole (which is a positive thing). In this way, general marketing, user experience, and SEO overlap. If you do not feel your site is targeted towards the correct keywords and themes, it is important that you retarget the site and its content prior to optimisation. You should understand your audience, the purpose of your site and its themes before even starting an SEO initiative.

It is also common for sites to get caught up in industry jargon. You have to look at your keywords as your target audience would. If you’re targeting the general consumer and you use lots of industry jargon, then you cannot expect much of a return on investment.

Another thing to watch out for is overly generic keywords. If you are attempting to optimise your site for keywords that can mean many other things, you are bringing in a whole lot of new competition.

So, we now have a small list of what to avoid:

• * keywords that are not relevant to each other
• * keywords that do not fit the theme of the site
• * industry jargon if it is not applicable to the audience
• * keywords that are too generic/overly competitive

Links

Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a ‘vote’, by page A, for page B.

Link popularity is one of the most important factors search engines use in determining where you will rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your keywords and phrases, as it helps them to determine how important or popular your site is and what its reputation is. Link building, as part of the offsite optimisation process, is the process of finding related/relevant websites and receiving a link from them to you. Natural linking occurs when a site has good content that others will link to without being asked. But to get these links, people have to know about you. It is a catch 22. Building links has become pretty sophisticated over the past couple of years. Today, you need a mixture of links from various sources including articles, press releases, social media, blogs, directories and others.

HOW TO?… Optimise your website for Search Engines is a post from the Design Inc Blog

• A great commercial proposition, what are you selling? Something hard to find elsewhere? Something individually customised, collectors items, something unique or specialist?
• A search policy that enables your customers to find you. What have you got to sell, what does it do for purchasers, on what occasions would they buy it?
• A website design that clearly showcases the products on offer – a striking shop window display, and path to purchase navigation.
• A partnership with a hosting and maintenance provider who will keep your shop open 24/7.
• A secure method of receiving payment from your customers.
• A way of providing peace of mind for customers providing you with their credit and debit card details.
• A returns policy that extends at least beyond a consumer statutory rights.
• A logistics partner who is a safe pair of hands.

Design Inc, definitely not business as usual.

Looking to set up an online retail business? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Flexible, fast access, low value short term loans are quickly becoming a popular form of lending in this country and are currently one of the most common form of short term loans in America. Since August 2007 and June 2008, the number of these loans grew by 130%.

Design Inc. Managing Director Daniel Gilbert said “Winning this contract will give us a great opportunity to showcase our expertise in marketing for the financial sector through an effective digital and search marketing as well as associated advertising campaigns”.

“It will be our mission over the coming months to raise our American client’s profile and corporate image, raise awareness of it’s products here in the UK. Our regional marketing expertise will prove very valuable indeed.”

“Based on our preliminary consumer research, we think the timing is perfect for a UK brand re-launch. We have identified many target market opportunities, and also have good expectations of a high ranking within Google and other search engines.” The campaign will be supported by trade PR and targeted IFA comms.

Money Makes the World go Round is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Services, products and expert opinion within your organisation should be showcased as widely as possible and promoted by strategic use of the main social media cornerstones such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and blogging. Doing so will create a powerful and integrated cross media campaign message, which in turn will have both SEO & PR benefits in this new ‘Attention Age’.

Social media marketing can be used for:

• Announcing a new service or special offer

• Addressing media related issues regarding you or your company

• Strengthening your brand and raising your profile

• Promoting new advertising campaigns online or offline

• Launching your new logo and brand identity/strategy

• Guiding your network to your newly designed website

• Support a new direct mail and email marketing campaign message

Social Internet Marketing you can do:

• Answering questions within LinkedIn will raise your profile as an expert in your/your companies field

• Ensuring your LinkedIn profile is 100% full of informative and ‘keyword rich’ content

• Enter regular company/industry comment in your blog, link that to Twitter and sign up for alerts. A great way of getting free advertising on the web

• Always quickly respond to comments posted within your blog

• Create an ‘entertaining/viral’ presentation by yourself and post it on YouTube, and then promote/share it through your network

This is the least any company/individual should be doing as part of their internet marketing strategy, and should you need any assistance with any aspect of social media management, you know where we are!

What is social media, and what are the benefits? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

Check out what the experts say…

How Does your Website Rate? Image versus Content. is a post from the Design Inc Blog

1. those who are happy to invest more into website marketing because they want to make their company money in the long run.
2. those who wish to save their company money and hold back on real SEO investment at outset.

The question is…which camp are you in?

SEO or no SEO? is a post from the Design Inc Blog

• Flair Pool awards
• FPO Rallio
• Pollofair House

APRIL FOOL is a post from the Design Inc Blog