Case Studies
This is a brief look at some of the web
sites which we have assisted to improve their customer reach and content design.
It also highlights the importance of third party testing of your site from an
independent viewpoint.
Although no longer running a website VistaBalconies,
had an error in the code for their web pages, which meant that it would not display on
all internet browsers. This bug was easily tracked down by ourselves,
notified and corrected by the Company within a couple of hours.
It also
suffered from the problem of using a previous template
to build the website - the description and keyword tags
did not relate to the actual business of the Company.
This was reported by ourselves and updated by the
Company. We also provided them with a full
marketing report on how to provide their company with a
bigger profile on the internet and how to ensure that
they build up a greater customer confidence, by
alterations to their terms and conditions and adding
further information to their website.
 Holidaynet
- This website is well laid out and appears to meet most
of the rules of internet programming practice.
However, our testing of the website, showed a major
flaw, in that the default content-type on their web
server was set to text/plain instead of text/html.
This may not mean much to your average Internet user,
however, new security measures in Service Pack 2 for
Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, meant that
Internet Explorer would no longer display this website
and in fact, displayed only the source code for the web
page. After we identified this problem, again it
was corrected quickly by the website owners.
 RWAP
Software - This website is about supporting
the needs of retro computer users. However, the
business needed to identify its market and help to build
its customer base in order to launch new products for
computers which have been around since 1980! We
identified various ways of assessing market need and
generating discussion about products pre-launch in order
to generate a buzz within the user base. The
methods used to help generate the market at a time when
other traders were falling by the wayside have included:
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) (for example, try
searching for "purchase sinclair ql computer" on Google)
- Creation of visitor guestbooks where people are
invited to leave details of their interest in products. The guestbook
also creates a mailing list of email addresses for people who leave their
details, so that as soon as more details are released about up and coming
projects (or the product is ready for sale), they can be contacted immediately
and turned into customers.
- Creation of user forums using phpBB (such as the
innovative
Sinclair ZX80 / ZX81 Discussion Forum) which can be used to talk about
ideas with actual users and potential customers alike, in order to generate
discussion and interest in future projects, as well as test the market
- Creation of other marketing tools to ensure that any
special offers are picked up by search engines and displayed in search results
within 24 hours of the offer going live. This has been used, for
example, to promote special offers on second hand printers (for example, try
searching for "second hand OKI c9500 printer" on Google).
Over a period of 3
years, the turnover has expanded from £5,000 to £22,000
and is continuing to grow.
A university recently
called on our expertise to help proof read their Health
& Safety policy documentation, to take account of
changes in recent legislation and best practice.
Although initially only engaged to proof read the actual
documentation, we offered advice on where clarification
was required and where improvements to the text could be
made to help promote Health & Safety - the University
stated on receipt of the first document: "The majority
of the changes are clear improvements so in general this
is very useful to us.... We will be back in touch in a
few days - once we have had a change to think though
exactly how we operate the proofing (as it is more
extensive in nature than we had initially expected) and
sorted out a way of making best use of what looks to be
a very useful service."
Following this initial document,
we were then contracted to proof-read a further set of
documents linked to the original Health & Safety policy.
Other tasks which have passed over our books, range from
development of internet spiders to verify a database of corporate information
and also to search the internet for Annual Reports and accounts for listed
companies; and creation of customer enquiry forms. |
