To say that my two small children were extremely jealous would be an understatement.  But I wasn’t bunking off work to go to a petting zoo - this was a long anticipated visit to one of my most interesting clients.

Over the Stile is a smallholding in Broad Oak, East Sussex.   Run by husband and wife team Roland and Jane Horton, they have chickens, turkeys and soay sheep for sale.  They breed their livestock and then sell them, usually as poults.

They asked us to redesign their website for them and to promote the site on an ongoing basis.  You can judge whether we did a good job on the website for yourself by going to www.overthestile.com, but I wanted to tell you a bit more about the results we have had from promoting the site.

I started this exercise by doing some thorough keyword research.  By understanding what people were searching for out there that was relevant to Over the Stile’s business model, we could then optimise the site to target these searches.  Without doing this research, everything else is just educated guesswork.

Once we had identified and agreed on which keywords we wanted to target, I then set about writing suitable Titles, Descriptions and other bits of code like Alt Tags to include them.  I also reviewed and rewrote every page on the site to target its own set of keywords.

Once the client approved all this, we then made changes to the website and began monitoring performance for the first 4-6 weeks.

I’m very pleased to announce that the new site is already exceeding expectations.  The website attracts around 500 visits each month and, more importantly, generates 1 or 2 enquiries each day for Roland to deal with.  I went to see them yesterday and they were delighted.

We have now set out a plan for developing the promotion of the site further, including the introduction of a blog (www.overthestile.com/blog) and plans for an email newsletter.

I’m really rather pleased about this - and so are they.  If you would like to talk to me about doing this for your website, please email me (mark@blueplanetinternet.co.uk) or call 01825 760909.

If, however, you rather fancy having a little baby lamb to stroke, you need to give Roland a call…

Links:

www.overthestile.com

This post I wanted to tell you all about a new product that we are launching, which we have called My Restaurant Online.  I have written about this in more detail elsewhere on this site, but here I wanted to take the opportunity to tell you a bit about the process involved in us bringing the product to launch.

Back in September, we identified that we wanted to create a new product and set about investigating some potential markets with a brainstorming session.  At this point, all sorts of weird ideas came out - there was no justification or analysing at this stage.  This was tackled a couple of weeks later, when we zeroed in on the ideas that had merit, were achievable and we believed had commercial value.

Out of this came the idea to develop a website specifically aimed at restaurants.  We had all had plenty of experience of bad websites for restaurants - in fact, the good ones were in a minority - and we had heard certain restauranteurs expressing frustration at not being able to update their own websites, so we felt that the market was there and we set about developing the product.

During October and November the prototype and a demo site were created and we were almost ready to go.  We came up with a slightly different pricing model, whereby clients pay a small amount up front and then a monthly fee, for two reasons:

1. It appeals to the client to spread payments, especially in these acknowledged “difficult times”
2. It builds regular income in to our business model, helping us to plan ahead

We are now at the point where we are telling the world about it - there is still some work to be done on supporting literature and sales materials, but there’s no point hanging about…

So now we need some clients…

Does your favourite restaurant have a website?  Is it rubbish?  Is it good but out of date?

Perhaps you could give them our details and we’ll give them a call.

So, here we are, firmly back into the swing of things and Christmas seems a million miles away.

After a quiet(ish) first week back, things have suddenly got very busy indeed for Blue Planet and we can now definitely consider that we have had a good start to the year.  We also found ourselves quoting for an awful lot of new jobs just before Christmas, so if a few of those come in as well, we really will be flying.

Which is great.  So why do I feel so guilty?  All we hear in the meeja at the moment is how bad everything is and I almost felt like I didn’t want to tell anyone about how busy we were in case I got lynched.

However, it appears that I am not alone…

This week I have visited several clients, and whilst it’s true that some sectors are finding it hard at the moment, there have been some that are also reporting a great start to the New Year.  Two that stood out for me are from surprising sources; the first is a high street shop selling ski clothing and equipment, and the second is in the drinks business.

Even those that are struggling are maintaining a positive outlook.

So although it’s certainly a mixed bag, don’t get too gloomy.  At least it’s not raining…

Ah.  Right.

Although over the last few years, especially since I’ve been running my own business, the first few weeks of December are always turbulent - there’s the inevitable slowing of new business as people have other things on their minds, but you’re really busy trying to finish stuff off so you can enjoy “winding down” - in the last few days before the break you can’t help but go all…well, Christmassy.

There’s something about old festive films and seeing kids get excited that warms even the frostiest of cynical hearts, I think, and right now I’m sitting here, an hour to go before I go home for my own Christmas thinking about the things that really matter.

Staying positive at the moment is a bit of an effort really.  I don’t listen to the news that much as I find it all a bit depressing, but in this 24 hour “meejah” world we live in, you just can’t get away from it and frankly, if you believe everything you read and hear the “experts” say, you might as well pack up now and go and hide in a dark room.

Except you’re not going to are you?  I haven’t checked recently, but I don’t believe that the world is going to end or the sky is falling in, so why worry about it?  Worrying about things that you can’t change is the biggest single waste of time humans indulge in.

So I say don’t bother.  Go and do something else more interesting.  Have a mince pie and watch a soppy Christmas film with your missus.  Make Christmas cards with your kids.  Phone up that friend that you haven’t spoken to for ages and have a natter.  When you look back, wouldn’t it be great to feel that you’d always enjoyed your Christmas?  So why don’t you enjoy yours?

Go on, dare ye…

Merry Christmas to you all and see you in 2009.

Over the coming weeks and months we hope to provide useful insights into a whole range of issues relating to the web industry and our company.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your thoughts or comments - this blog is for you, so feel free to have your say…