There are a lot of us who use our phones as work tools on the go, and even more so in the freelance sector; when you have a smart phone there is never a minute lost to make a bit of dosh.  Basically, anywhere you can get a wireless connection or some good old 3G is not off limits as a work place to the smart phone owner and Google had some rather interesting insights into this during their TFM&A keynote speech: The Future is Mobile….

According to Google, the growth in mobile use is a result of more mobile devices, more mobile use and more access to the internet and we are fast approaching an era of 10 billion mobile devices. Wowsers!

When considering smart phones, there is one that seems to stand out far from the crowd and that’s the iPhone, and I’m not just saying that because most of the Chichester Design team has one. It is the most successful product of internet use and, despite having only 11% of global shipment share, iPhones drive a whopping 65% of all internet usage, compared to Android’s 8%.

Then there are Apps, a phenomenon that’s been around for a while but has taken off really well over the last year. The Apps Store has recently received 3 Billion downloads! What’s more 25% of iPhone and Andriod users spend 2 hours per day playing around with Apps. Who can blame them when they have easy and instant access to games such as DoodleJump and Monopoly, music such as Spotify and Last.fm, social media platforms such as TweetDeck and Facebook as well as practical stuff such as Tesco Clubcard and TubeMap?

The thing about smart phones is that each individual part has more sophistication than it first may seem. Ok the camera on the iPhone isn’t likely to produce you a winning Wild Life Photographer of the Year entry any time soon but it becomes your eye to the world, even more so with Google’s introduction of Goggles.

Googles is an App allowing you to search the world by taking photographs, so if you were to go and take a picture of Chichester Cathedral with your phone and then ask it to perform a search it would recognise the image and pull up search results for Chichester Cathedral so that you could essentially find out what it is and its history before deciding to go in and visit. This is also designed to work with works of art, movie posters, business cards and signs for businesses on the street.

There is already capability for your iPhone to become your ears with the Google App that allows you to perform a website search using voice recognition. Therefore, if you say “Chichester Design” your phone will chuck back the search results for us and you’ll find our website, no problem. However, there are some issues with accents and we would hazard to say that you are far more likely to find what precisely what you’re looking for if you have an American twang as the feature still has issues with more unusual words such as “tapir”.

Google has taken this concept a step further and is soon to introduce a speech recognition feature to Andriod that helps you to compose texts and can also translate foreign languages. So, you would be able to simply scan a Spanish menu and it would be able to tell you in English what’s on offer- food for thought indeed!

What about navigation? If you thought your SatNav was the epitome of clever then you haven’t seen anything yet. The new Google Navigator is set to provide route information along with real-time traffic info so that you can change route according to how busy it is. It will even help you to make sense of the world around you by providing satellite imagery of your route so that you can see landmarks and traffic jams for yourself. As well as this, it will help you to search for food outlets, showing all those along your route when you type in a simple search command such as “burgers”.

It seems a mobile future is well on its way. There are already a significant amount of people using their mobiles for both work and play, and with the introduction of smart phones this use has gone colossal. Apps and features using real-time data are always going to produce the most sophisticated and timely results; receiving them while on the go is an added bonus. Also, features such as voice recognition will make online search more accessible to those who are committed to multi-tasking or are limited by their sight or the use of their hands.  Is the future mobile? We should coco!

Find out more about the services offered by Chichester Design by visiting: www.chichesterdesign.co.uk. If you would like us to help you with anything from web design to copywriting then contact us today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While Lewis Carroll’s original tale included its fair share of obscurity, in true Tim Burton style, with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland is tipped to be full of darkness and fantasy.

Artway Gallery artist Ellie Williams is embracing the moment by updating her collection with Tim Burton inspired Alice paintings. She has already a complete collection of Alice paintings inspired by the original illustrations (see main image) but as a fan of Tim’s films, she’s adding the modern to her mix of classics.

Classic literature to modern Twitterature

This is something that we see again and again. Take Twitterature (Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin, 2009), for example, a book committed to the world’s greatest books retold through Twitter; all be it rather tongue in cheek .

I picked this book up and couldn’t put it down as I saw the likes of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet summarised and modernised Twitter style. Macbeth was revealed to me in 19 paragraphs of just 140 characters or less and contained the text-speak abbreviation LOL- remarkable, and just how Will intended it I’m sure. Here’s what they did with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll @AliceInTheSkyWithDiamonds

Like many book characters, I’m pretty bored. Oh! A white rabbit! Just like in The Matrix. That movie was pretty dope, if you’re on drugs.

Down into the rabbit hole I go! Ohh, that’s rich, I feel like Neo.

Is it OK to drink from a mysterious bottle that’s been opened? What if there are Ruffies in it?

I don’t know what’s going on, but in a typically feminine manner I’ll allow confusion and being flustered to make me cry up a storm.

Am I still the same little girl that I was before? I feel like my ‘self’ is being deconstructed. And in HD, to boot.

I asked a mouse how to get dry from all my tears. He gave me a dry history lesson. People are purposefully confusing my words.

I’m still in the rabbit’s house. Here’s more mysterious juice. Should I drink it again? Oh what the hell. Hope I won’t be sore afterward.

Whay are people throwing rocks at me like I’m Mary Magdalene? I’m a little girl, not a biblical prostitute…er, Christ’s wife.

I found a stoner Arab caterpillar. He made fun of me. Oh yeah? At least I’m not three inches tall with a case of the munchies.

At a tea party with a crack-head hat man. He’s a schizoid. Insanity is part of his public image. After all, he put ‘mad’ in his name.

Sound has become distorted.

This land is terrorized by the Queen of Hearts. She’s a card. Wouldn’t it be funny if I destroyed her army by shuffling them?

I’m in trouble. I’m not sure what I did. This is the worst day ever. I need a drink. Not from an unmarked bottle, though, no more of that.

Now I’m on trial. Another worst day ever. The queen stole my integrity and made me a felon. If I knew magic, I’d make her disappear.

If only I could grow large and crush them beneath me. Wait. I feel so strangely powerful, I’m huge. This courthouse is going down.

Oh, my sister is here. She’s waking me for tea-time. Good, I’m home again.

A grinning cat, a tweeked-out hatter? A sadistic queen and terrifying baby? This is the kinda shit that send people to years of therapy.

God that was just insane. I need another adventure like that like I need a hole in the head.

(Please note that none of the words expressed in this excerpt are the views of opinions of Chichester Design 2010).

Marketing- combining old classics with new digital

But this same concept can be applied to anything and Chichester Design are actually looking into the possibilities of communicating one of the classic arts through Twitter – more of that to come later!

You can extend this to marketing techniques, with so many stuck in the old routine of print flyers and email marketing. Why not think about applying a modern twist and using a bit of social media to mix up those stale marketing strategies?

I think that it’s healthy to shake things up a bit; it keeps life interesting. I love modern art and in the digital era there’s so much crossing over with technology that everything just moulds into one, in a pleasant and comforting way. Classic and modern can go hand-in-hand. Modern technology can represent art, just as it can represent marketing through the likes of social media. Have a think about that when you’re planning your next marketing venture and feel free to contact our Digital Marketing Consultant for a new and effective marketing strategy today.

Digital marketing can be defined as any number of mediums such as social media, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimisation, articles, blogs and forums.

Utilising digital marketing is clearly becoming more popular when we consider that there has been a 70% increase in budget spends for 2010 on off-site social media investment and a 64% increase in on-site social media investment as well as a 64% increase in budget allocation to Search Engine Optimisation (Econsultancy, Marketing Budgets, Feb 2010).

It also seems that Google AdWords is still the digital marketing medium where people spend the biggest chunk of their budget but Twitter is the most popular social media marketing tactic used.

According to Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights, when it comes to creating the very best digital marketing mix, you should make sure that you:

• Start with your website goals and how to create value for your customers
• Research your online marketplace to define your most appropriate marketing mix for your digital strategy
• Integrate web analytics, on and offline conversion tracking and optimisation so that campaign performance can be tracked and optimised
• Implement the tactics that fit your goals best and remain flexible and agile

 And when considering the recipe for campaign success, Dave suggests that you:

• Develop a campaign that creates a buzz that people can engage in and participate with
• Develop a campaign with momentum
• Use a steady drip effect to connect with your audience e.g. repeat email  campaigns when possible
• Reach prospects and customers through your networks
• Integrate cross channel messages e.g. sending a teaser email prior to a direct mail increases success rates
• Integrate email newsletters with social media

 If you would like to know more about what makes a successful marketing mix or you would like Kate our Digital Marketing Consultant to start work on your campaign strategy today, drop us an email.

You like that? Bet you did! Stay tuned to read more from Chichester Design on this year’s TFM&A including YouTube Vs Facebook and Is the Future mobile?

TFM&A – the Chichester Design lowdown

Well, there is of course rarely such a thing as a free lunch and the downside to the event having free entry was all the queuing for limited seminar seats. We realise that us Brits are supposed to live for lining up one after the other but we’re not big fans, particularly when at the TFM&A you could queue for a good hour and still not get into the talk that you want to listen to.

In order to make the most of the event we had to adopt some careful queuing strategies (we didn’t push in, honest!) And while listening to the muffled whinges from around us we gathered that the general consensus was visitors would have rather paid for a ticket and spent less time queuing, with a more guaranteed chance of getting to see an industry expert give a talk. But hey-ho, that’s life and we did manage to make the most of it regardless.

As we did get a lot out of it we couldn’t justify going to London for two days and coming back with nothing for you. We thought what you’d like most of all would be to hear some of the helpful hints and tips we picked up. So, over the next few weeks we’ll be revealing some tantalising titbits, here’s the first…

Optimisation rules

Chichester Design is always banging on about the importance of Search Engine Optimisation to increase natural search traffic to your website but at this year’s TFM&A Christian Howes of Webtrends highlighted just how important it is to optimise your website to increase conversions:

• On average search optimising a website leads to 10-20% increase in traffic, but this can be an increase as much as 100%
• It is important that PPC landing pages are optimised to keep bounce rates low
• More optimised and qualitative landing page copy will also keep PPC bids lower and save you money in the long run
• Anything you can critique on a webpage, such as headlines, copy and colours, should be A/B tested to achieve the best user experience for your visitors
• It is easier, and both cost and time effective, to get immediate statistics and keep track of how optimisation is working for you using online analytics tools
• On average 3% of website conversions are a result of natural search so 3% of your sales occur because of good SEO

Find out how Chichester Design can help you with your Search Engine Optimisation by contacting us today.

Google Buzz is the latest thing from Cyberspace those whiz kids at Google. Some might argue that it’s Google’s response to not being able to buy Twitter or Facebook off of their crafty innovators and other might argue that it’s just the next step in social networking. I’m going to have a play with it as I write this and see what I think…

What is Google Buzz?

Google Buzz is a social networking platform where you can share updates, photos, videos and start conversations about the things that interest you most. It’s built into Gmail so there’s no fiddling around with setting up an account and you can automatically follow your contacts and ultimately the people you already chat with the most – so it’s blurring those boundaries between professional and social contacts a little further still. You can even share to choose your Buzz with the entire world or keep it private between a small group of chums.

Buzz goes further than allowing simple updates- it automatically pulls up images and links, plays videos and lets you see photos the way that they were meant to be seen, in all their high-quality image glory, downloaded quickly and seamlessly. You can also connect with other sites you use such as Picassa, Flickr, Google Reader and Twitter, so that you can keep up with your friends and they can keep up with you, all from one central place.

Any comments that are left on your posts can be sent directly to your Gmail inbox when you include @ e.g @tomjones. You can then respond directly from your inbox to keep the conversation fluid, unlike Facebook or Twitter where you would have to login to your respective account to post a response. Buzz will also recommend posts from people who aren’t your friends but that it thinks might interest you. This is similar to the Twitter Retweet function – you may Retweet a post that particularly interests you so that it reaches all of your followers who may not necessarily be following the person the Tweet originated from. But Buzz this extra work for you, so to speak.

Another great feature is that it works on your smart phone and with geo-tracking you can keep track of what people close to you are Buzzing about, taking the conversation to a whole new local level. 

What do I think?

Ok, so I can accept that the concept is very good. As I’m very involved with social media as part of my job, anything that makes my many accounts easier to keep track of and essentially saves time and keyboard effort is a plus with me. I’m also a fan of the geo tracking functionality as I think this could be really handy for marketing new brands at events; you will see who is talking about your brand, where they are and in real time. It also has potential to introduce a slightly more “social” form of social networking where you can actually locate and meet up with people in the flesh if you wish. However, I have a couple of problems that I think should be addressed:

• Google Buzz is linked to my Gmail account- this concerns me because every now and then Google decides that it would like to chuck me out of my Google account and not let me in no matter how hard I try. It has done this to me twice in the last 6 months, once losing my entire account to cyberspace and the last time letting me back in as though nothing had occurred two months later. So, my point is that if I really get into Buzz, so much so that I can’t live without it, are Google going to whip it away from me cold turkey and make me start over?

• Although Google says that you don’t need to create a profile to use Buzz you do if you want people to find you on Buzz and if, like me and the rest of those Search Engine Optimisation hungry peeps, you want your Buzz posts to show up in Google search results. And I found a bit of a glitch when editing my profile details. I wasn’t quite happy with the way my details were displaying so I clicked “edit details” and instead of having my previous profile details saved for me to edit in the box fields all it had saved was my name so that I had re-type the whole lot. I don’t have all day, Google!

• I have a feeling, I could just be wrong, that this is just another string to Google’s ever-expanding orchestra and little more than that. In that, after releasing this last week they will already have moved on to something else. With Google Wave before Buzz, we went through that whole phase where getting free invites to use the preview of Wave were like gold dust and everyone was raving about it for a few weeks and now there’s something new to tantalise us, a new Buzz as it were. If Google were more stringent to concentrate on just one thing at a time and perfect those things with user feedback more quickly then I’m guessing that the masses would be a lot more satisfied for the most part. However, Buzz could be the next Twitter, who saw that one turning out quite the way it did?

Well these are just my humble opinions; you should make sure yours as informed as possible with a recap of what Google sees as Buzz’s highlights…

Google Buzz features, a recap

No setup needed – automatically follow the people you email and chat with the most in Gmail.

Share publicly or privately – publish your ideas to the world or just to your closest friends.

Inbox integration – comments get sent right to your inbox so it’s easy to keep the conversation going.

Photo friendly – see thumbnails with each post, and browse full-screen photos from popular sites.

Connect sites you already use – import your stuff from Twitter, Picasa, Flickr, and Google Reader.

See updates in real time – new posts and comments pop in as they happen. No refresh required.

Just the good stuff – Buzz recommends interesting posts and weeds out ones you’re likely to skip.

Did you know that Chichester Design is an authorized Google Apps resellers? If you were thinking about getting Gmail so that you can check out Google Buzz, why not consider opting for a Google Apps Premier account that incorporates Gmail and many other fantastic functions? Google Apps is available from Chichester Design today. Contact info@chichesterdesign.co.uk for more information.

TFM&A (Technology For Marketing & Advertising) is the UK’s only integrated marketing event. It delivers all the latest expert industry insights, trends and developments including seminars and keynote speakers such as Google, YouTube and Facebook- some of Chichester Design’s absolute favourites!

Last year’s TFM&A won Best Trade Event for 2009 at the recent Event Awards, and was attended by our Digital Marketing Consultant Kate. As well as extending her Search Engine Optimisation and digital marketing know-how there, Kate developed an excellent grounding in social media knowledge, which has continued to grow throughout the last year. The tips and hints she gained from TFM&A 2009 have bolstered Kate’s abilities and made her more than able to offer social media consultancy for Chichester Design and even embark on some exciting educational projects- more about that to come!

Seeing as she got so much out of it we thought it would be a great idea for the rest of the team to join over 9,500 thousand of their industry colleagues, with the exception of Jeremy who will be holding the fort in Chichester, this year at TFM&A 2010 and keep their thirst for industry knowledge satisfied.

As well as the keynote lectures from industry gurus the team will be attending some of the 60 plus free seminars being held. Just some of the talks that are catching Kate’s eye right now include:

• Driving business online: email innovation in the era of Web 3.0.
• Keeping your audience engaged through email and social media
• Viral Gaming – Exploring the Buzz and the Benefits
• Optimise Your Website to Increase Online Conversions
• How did retailers and others benefit from social media over the Christmas period?
• Beyond SEO: new developments in the search industry.

But there’s so much to choose from, no matter what you’re role in the Marketing and Advertising industry or whether you’re just looking for extra info to improve your own business, with 6 talks a day on each of the following subjects:

• Digital Marketing
• CRM & Campaign Management Software
• Data & Marketing Analytics
• Content Management & eCommerce
• Online Advertising & Social Media

The Chichester Design team will most certainly be joining in on the event’s social media mash-up – which aims to bring everyone who’s talking about #tmfa together in one virtual environment. So look out for us in cyberspace if you don’t make it to the show.

However, this event is something that we’re sure that we, and in turn you, will benefit from. If your business is interested in moving forwards and you would like to come along why not join our Facebook group and let us know you’re attending the TFM&A 2010 event we’ve created there? Here’s to more industry knowledge- cheers!

In some cases this is possible and will just take a bit of careful bit of attention from our Search Engine Optimisation expert, in other cases this process will be a longer process and may involve a complete overhaul of the website content.

There are also some who are just unwilling to take our advice as gospel when we talk about the benefits of Search Engine Optimisation. You are very wise because we are not omnipotent (if not fairly close to it) and there are many unscrupulous companies out there who are ready to take your money for a load of old rope in return. However, when you come to Chichester Design asking for our advice then you could do worse than to listen to what we have to say.

Take social media, for example. We advise as part of a mixed marketing strategy that most of our customers employ the benefits of social media. We advise them to build their brand through Twitter, create social communities through Facebook and make and stay in touch with business contacts through LinkedIn. But many are still a little frightened of the consequences or confused about the benefits:

People who are interested in my product/service don’t use social media?

What if someone says something bad about my brand?

How is social media really going to help me?

And blithely, I would have to answer:

Did you know that 67% of those online use social media, there are more than 580 million social media users worldwide and that the majority of those using Facebook on a regular basis are aged 30-50 years?

Did you know that social media acts as a digital word of mouth and that people will talk about your brand whether you like it or not and wherever they like? Wouldn’t you rather have a right to reply and clear up any issues online, in real time?

Did you know that Google is now integrating real-time data from social media platforms in its search results so that social media will help you get higher up the search rankings?

Yes, that’s right, Google is including real-time data from more than one billion web pages, including status updates from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and blogs, in search results. So, if you write a status update referring to a brand name then there is a distinct possibility that it will show up in the search results when someone searches for that brand name via Google.

The fact of the matter is that if you’re not using social media to promote your brand, product or service then you’re playing a dangerous game. You’re risking not only losing valuable traffic referred from those social media sites, by way of a url link to a recent blog post or new product page, but you are also losing out on the traffic generated by organic search results. If you want to rank well in the search results, then you simply have to get on with social media.

To find out more about our social media marketing services or Search Engine Optimisation contact us today.

Ellie Williams completes portrait of Simon Batchelar to enter into BP Portrait Award 2010 (see left).

We’re all very impressed – the proud Simon has even changed his Facebook profile picture to Ellie’s portrait. What do you think?

The Chichester Design team have their fingers and toes crossed for you Ellie! Keep checking back here for updates on Ellie’s progress in the competition.

I worked for a large publishing firm which was, let’s say, a little backwards about coming forwards when it came to the deadly importance of online content. As I had experience of Search Engine Optimisation I taught my team what I knew, some of them embraced the knowledge and some of them ignored it but I took the stance that only time would tell…And did you know that for Christmas 2009 the sale of ebooks was greater than the sale of traditional material?  Yes, times are most certainly changing!

I’ve just read an article that debates whether marketing magazines are soon to be superfluous. I must admit that I read this particular article in a paper format magazine and that I do like to read magazines on occasion although my daily thoughts are inspired by what I read online. I will read articles by the same people, or recommended by the same people, time and again because I have come to trust their opinions. The magazine I was reading highlighted some key points as times change about the ever increasing importance of becoming known as an authority in your field to maintain interest when it comes to online content and the possibility of charging for this content.

Becoming known as an industry expert is something that I stress to my clients time and again. The way to get people to read your content is to build your brand around being the forefront expert in your industry so that readers come to trust and respect what you have to say. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sharing recipes, fitting windows or selling used cars, if you can convince people that you know what you’re talking about then you are more likely to gain and retain readers.

This is where blogging becomes imperative. It’s a quick and easy way to talk about your business and related industries while naturally including keywords relevant to your business and introducing more fresh content to your website. Not only that, but the more regular your posts become, and the more comments and discussions they provoke, the more of a trusted source of information you are likely to become and people may begin to spend the money that they would have spent on a magazine subscription on a subscription to your blog.

Food for thought…

Would you pay for online content if it was high quality and from a trusted source or are you determined to stick to reading the books and magazines designed for your industry?

Surely, you’re going to consider creating a blog and becoming the specialist in your industry though, just in case offline content can’t compete? Come on; introduce yourself to Joe Blogger, he’s a useful kind of chap…

Chichester Design can incorporate a blog into your website design and development and their professional copywriter is more than happy to get you started writing search engine friendly blog posts. Contact us today.

Simon’s fiancée Ellie Williams is entering the BP Portrait Award 2010 and after careful contemplation of which face inspires her most, husband-to-be Simon was the perfect subject choice.

The Portrait Award is now in its thirty-first year at the National Portrait Gallery, is open to everyone aged 18 and over and is aimed at encouraging artists to focus upon and develop the theme of portraiture in their work.

Last year over 1,900 artists submitted their work and the exhibition, which featured sixty paintings, was seen by a record 298,000 people in London alone. Many artists who have had their work exhibited have gained commissions as a result of the considerable interest in the Portrait Award and the resulting exhibition and let’s hope that such successes follow for Ellie.

The portrait process

After settling on her subject, and with the competition’s submission deadline of 14^th February fast approaching, Ellie went ahead with the preparations. She commissioned Ben’s lovely Lucy to take some portraiture photography of Simon looking moody and thoughtful as a starting point.

You can see more of Lucy Hackett’s fabulous photography, featuring the original shots of Simon at: http://www.lucyhackett.co.uk.

Ellie, who showcases her artworks at the Artway Gallery and via various social media platforms such as Facebook has recorded each stage of the long process to perfection.

The stages show how Ellie started with a simple sketch and then gradually built up both detail and colour with the greatest care and precision. I think you’ll agree that’s Ellie has captured Simon beautifully, even if his multitude of freckles were giving her painter’s cramp

Stay tuned to find out about Ellie’s progress in the competition…