#cloud concepts

Most Businesses Not Getting the Most Out of Online Presence Says Web Developer

Businesses are discovering that they need more than presence on the high street, but Australian SMEs have been slow to get started with building an online presence. “People are changing the way they shop,” says website designer Oliver (Ollie) Brooke, proprietor of Cloud Concepts, “and in Australia, the realisation is only just beginning to dawn among small and medium-sized businesses.”

But, Ollie warns, just having a website isn’t enough. He equates a business’s website to its shopfront: “You maintain your shopfront,” he says, “you put new stock in the window for passers-by to see. You show which brands you can supply, and you keep it looking fresh because you want to attract attention. You need to do something like that with your website too.”

Ollie’s shopfront analogy may be nearer the mark than it may seem. People’s shopping habits no longer include a leisurely stroll down the shopping street and the willingness to visit several stores before finding what they need. Instead, up to 81 percent of people will do an online search before they head out on a shopping expedition.

Clearly, it makes sense to have a website. But, says Ollie, it doesn’t end there. Just because you have a website doesn’t mean you’ve arrived. And if you thought your prospective customers were the only ones to win over, you’re mistaken. Search engines are smart. They’re programmed to give users what they want, and if you aren’t sending them the right signals, your business won’t feature in search.

“A lot of people think there are a bunch of tricks they should be using,” says Ollie, “but there isn’t a magic formula. Instead, it comes down to being user-friendly, relevant, local, and active. These are the three things that search engines are looking for, but a lot of businesses are missing the point.”

When it comes to making the most of an online presence, Ollie says that activity and user friendliness are among the biggest stumbling blocks. “Search engines don’t want to direct users to sites they can’t navigate. Mobile browsing is huge, and mobile friendliness is a criterion if you don’t want to end up with a website that is, to all intents and purposes, invisible.”

Search engines also don’t want to direct users to businesses that have already closed their doors. “A dead website where nothing is ever updated tells search engines your business might be dead too,” explains Ollie. “You do need to add fresh content from time to time, otherwise you aren’t going to feature when people plan their shopping trips.”

Ollie says that keeping a website current doesn’t need to take a lot of time – but small businesses are inclined to overlook basics like checking analytics – and they rarely add fresh content. Just having a website is a good start, but you can’t leave it at that and expect it to be an effective marketing vehicle.

There’s no rule of thumb that works for everyone. Ollie recommends that businesses work with experts who will be able to advise them on how to make an impact and keep on doing so. People shop differently these days, and we need to move with the times. For a brick and mortar store, you talk to property agents. For your online presence, your web designer is the specialist you need in your corner.

Ollie Brooke is director of a full-service website design company, Cloud Concepts. He applies his philosophy of putting customer convenience first to the websites he designs. If you’d like to contact Ollie Brooke about website design or learn more about Great Websites For Small Businesses visit his website or call +61432 362 637.

Syndicated by Baxton Media.

Growth Driven Design the New Website Design Trend Says NSW Entrepreneur

Information technology is constantly developing, and with it, it’s terminology. Oliver (Ollie) Brooke, CEO of NSW website development company, Cloud Concepts, explains the latest buzzword to do the rounds and why the concept it represents is a step in the right direction.

The simplest way to explain Growth Driven Design, says Ollie, is to say that it uses customer feedback as the backbone of website development. When a business first develops a website, a lot of what it serves up is based on what the business thinks its customers want. But no matter how carefully they think things through, customers and website visitors have the final say in whether they’re happy with the website and the information in offers.

“It’s something we’ve known for years,” says Ollie. “A website is only as good as your customers think it is. Ask them straight out and they’ll probably tell you it’s marvellous, but user behaviour during website visits may tell a different story altogether.”

Growth Driven Design goes through three stages, and they all contribute to building a website that’s a powerful marketing tool. To begin with, the client and the website developer must be on the same page about the problem the website’s supposed to solve when people visit it.

“Although a few people might visit your site because they want to find out more about you, most website visitors are there because they have a problem they think you can solve. They’re more interested in what your business can do for them than in your business itself. It’s a fine distinction, but an important one,” says Ollie.

“Once we know why people are visiting your website, we can make it easy for them to find what they need. But that’s only going to work if we accurately pinpoint the problem and how your business solves it.”

The next step in the process is the Launch Pad Site. It’s a complete website that’s been developed to meet the needs identified in the first step. Theoretically, it could be your website forever, but Ollie says that’s not going to confer the benefits of a full Growth Driven Design programme.

The final step is the most important one, because it evaluates how visitors interact with the site. It isn’t based on assumptions. Instead, the developer looks at real data. “We want to know whether website visitors found the information they needed, and what process they followed in order to reach that point,” says Ollie. “Then we make it better, easier, and more satisfying to use the website, only this time we aren’t just guessing at what your customers want.”

This last step isn’t completed all in one go. As Ollie points out, markets and consumer behaviours change over time, and businesses (and their websites) need to move with the times. It’s a process of continuous improvement with regular, small updates and adjustments along the way. “Your website grows with your business and your customer’s motivations are always front and centre,” he says.

Ollie Brooke is director of a full-service website design company, Cloud Concepts. He applies his philosophy of putting customer convenience first to the websites he designs. If you’d like to contact Ollie Brooke about website design or learn more about Great Websites For Small Businesses | Cloud Concepts visit his website or call +61432362637.

Syndicated by Baxton Media.

Why This NSW Tech Company Has Announced a Focus on Local Business

According to Gallup surveys, up to 70 percent of consumers prefer local businesses. Now, high-tech is going with the trend. Oliver Brooke explains why his web design company, Cloud Concepts, which could easily market itself to a global audience, has chosen a local focus.

We may think of farm stores and corner hardware stores when people talk about local business, but Brooke says that local is better, no matter how technologically-oriented your business may be. “Unless you’re very much in a niche market, working locally makes sense for you and your customers.”

Admittedly, there are no transport costs or complex logistics involved in exporting website design services, but Brooke says that personal contact is what makes the difference. No matter how happy you are with Skype meetings, there’s no more effective way to communicate than in person says Brooke.

Effective website design begins with communication. Clients know what their website will be about, the audience they’re hoping to attract, and the impression they want to create. The website designer knows how to make it happen – and the best communication is still the old-fashioned chat between two or more people without a computer screen as intermediary.

“Frame of reference is also important,” says Brooke. “When you work with locals you know you’re on the same page. There’s less room for misunderstanding caused by cultural differences.”

But the biggest reason why Brooke has chosen to work locally despite having gained widespread recognition for his work is his love of smaller businesses. He found the Gallup survey interesting because the reasons for consumers preferring small businesses that it uncovered match his own.

According to Gallup, consumers feel that smaller, local businesses are more accountable, more invested in what they do, and more determined to get things right than bigger firms are. There is also an element of sentiment. Customers respect local businesses because they from the backbone of the community and the local economy.

“I’m not averse to working with larger concerns, but it’s invariably a more impersonal experience,” says Brooke. “Small and medium enterprises seem to be more passionate, more personal, and easier to build lasting relationships with.”

Brooke points out that website development and design is, in fact, not a once-off initiative. Even when clients are able to update their own websites with fresh content, they often find that they or their clients identify a need for tweaks they didn’t think of when first specifying their requirements.

Analytics might show the need for slight changes to the site map to allow website visitors easier access to the information they want, the business might decide to rebrand, or it might simply be a matter of changing the site to suit a more up-to-date aesthetic.

“That’s why I think lasting relationships with local businesses are so important. I go out of my way to get to know my customers’ businesses. That saves them a lot of time and effort when they decide it’s time for a tweak or an update. We’ve been through the orientation learning-curve. I already know a lot about the business and its customers.”

Cloud Concepts is based in Port Macquarie, NSW and Oliver Brooke, it’s founder and proprietor, has been developing websites since the 1990s. To find out more about this NSW company, contact Brooke at tel +61432362637 or via the Great Websites For Small Businesses | Cloud Concepts website.

Syndicated by Baxton Media.

Web Design Guru Points Out the No 1 Reason Why Brick-and-Mortar Businesses Need to be Online

Tech speaker, business owner, and website designer, Ollie Brooke has been developing websites since the nineties. He says that one of the biggest mistake smaller businesses make is in thinking they don’t need to have a website.

He often hears it. Business owners with an established business and client base in a good location often don’t understand the need for a website, but Brooke says that these businesses could be missing the point.

Your Website Isn’t for You

According to Brooke, thinking a website is for the business owner is a mistake that a great many businesses make. “Your website isn’t for you, it’s for your clients’ convenience,” he says. “Yes, your clients like buying from you, but if they aren’t sure if you have the stock they need or offer the service they want, they probably won’t drive to your store to find out. This slightly different perspective can have a major impact on how useful a website can be.”

“Nowadays, people want information at their fingertips. They won’t visit your store to ask a question to which the answer could be: ‘No, sorry, we don’t have that.’ They’ll take their mobile phones, and they’ll make their enquiries online. If you don’t have the answers, you don’t get the business.”

Even corporates often make the mistake of being too inward-focused in their website design. “It’s as if they think it’s all about image-building,” says Brooke. “I’m going to be brutal here. Your customers like a good image, but they like useful information better. They’re not interested in you; they’re interested in what they can get from you. Once they know that you have something they want, they’ll look at your business’s image to see if it looks professional.”

A Phone Call Away Might as Well be a World Away

Today, Generation X is dominating the workplace. It’s the generation with the most money to spend, and it’s not a generation that likes to talk. Those who joke about young people sitting side-by-side texting each other might not be far off the mark.

A lot of the information available appears to be anecdotal, but survey after survey seems to indicate a preference for text over voice calls, ATMs over tellers and apps over physical stores. If that assumption is accurate, expecting people to call a business for information might lose that business a substantial volume of its potential sales.

“Just about everyone has a smartphone these days,” says Brooke, and it’s the first thing they reach for when they want information – but they’re not making calls. They’re browsing. If we’re to assume that a call or even an email are the second option for those seeking a business to buy from, then the first option is the internet. If you aren’t there with conveniently presented information and someone else is, you just lost the sale.”

Give the People What They Want

Brooke is confident that the customer journey begins online. “If there’s one reason why you need a website, that’s it,” he says “It’s the place they go when they’re looking for your business or one like it. But you’d better be sure your website is giving your customers what they want too. What they want is convenient access to information, and without that, there’s no real point in having a website at all.”

Ollie Brooke is director of a full-service website design company, Cloud Concepts. He applies his philosophy of putting customer convenience first to the websites he designs. If you’d like to contact Ollie Brooke about website design or learn more about Great Websites For Small Businesses visit his website. After all, it’s the best place to begin.

Syndicated by Baxton Media.

NSW Web Design Expert Says Smaller Businesses Can Gain Marketing Synergy Online

NSW-based web designer, Oliver (“Ollie”) Brooke says that one of the reasons why most small brick and mortar businesses aren’t gaining traction with their online marketing is because they fail to create synergy in their marketing efforts. He believes that businesses can get more effective marketing done in less time and for a lower investment – but they do need some help.

Not Always Obvious

While there’s a lot to do if you want to become the next local hero in your line of business online, it’s not an impossible feat. Some tasks need only be done once. Others need to be done periodically, and some must be frequent routines. Some, like maintaining your website and social media platforms are obvious, while others are less so.

As an example, says Ollie, you have an online presence that includes things like your business’s address and contact details. You might not even be aware that information is out there. If it isn’t correct or conflicts with information elsewhere online, there are search engine penalties because the algorithms are no longer sure what’s correct.

“It’s little things like this that can hurt even the best efforts when you try your hand at marketing your business online,” says Ollie.

Drive Traffic. Save Time

Despite the ins and outs and technicalities, however, Ollie says it’s perfectly feasible to deliver a unified message across social media platforms and drive traffic to small business websites.

The website itself should be up to date, mobile friendly, easy to navigate, and able to give the visitor information they need about the business and what it can do. And as soon as valuable information is added, it’s time to hit social media, and send out an email campaign.

“You can get an enormous amount of mileage out of every single thing that you do online if you know how,” says Ollie. “But it’s important to work strategically, and you need to follow up on analytics. If you aren’t adding value for your audience, you need to rethink.”

Get the Online Marketing Tech Right – and More

Part of the problem that small businesses have with online marketing is compartmentalisation of the different things involved in turning an online presence into a powerful marketing machine. “You have the web design guys, and the SEO guys, and the marketing guys, and the social media guys, and the copywriters and so on,” says Ollie. “And that’s the problem with marketing right there. That’s why I chose to do it all under one roof.”

If you want the tech to be right, you need it to meet your marketing goals, says Ollie. Trying to separate web design from marketing doesn’t work. To get synergy, every online element and platform must function together perfectly, targeting the same goals. When it does, you get more out than you put in. “That’s what synergy’s about,” says Oliver.

If you’d like to find out more about Cloud Concepts and Ollie’s approach to website design, online marketing or learn more about Let’s Talk About Your Website | Cloud Concepts visit his website. After all, it’s the best place to begin.

Syndicated by Baxton Media.

The Latest Design Elements for Websites are Telling Trends, Says NSW Web Developer

The latest website design elements are telling. People are going bigger and bolder, but ease of navigation and near-instant gratification are still tops. So says Oliver (“Ollie”) Brooke, CEO of Cloud Concepts, a NSW web design company.

“Visual impact is huge,” he says, “but I’d like to remind businesses that people go online for information first and eye-candy only comes second.”

Nobody likes to seem dated, so we talked website design to Ollie and extracted what we think are the top design elements his clients are asking for right now.

Big Fonts, Unique Fonts, Varied Fonts

Now, more than ever, people are using different font sizes to draw the eye and get the most important facts across. They’re also looking for unique fonts, although Ollie warns us against getting overly creative: “It needs to be easy to read,” he says.

However, he notes that web designs are starting to use text as “informative artworks,” that get people reading just because they’re a pleasure to look at.

Large, Sometimes Responsive Hero Images with Text Overlay

This is something you’ll see a lot these days, and failing to have big, showy images might just create the impression of being dated just because this trend is so popular. Again, Ollie warns that we shouldn’t get so carried away with creativity that we forget our website visitors want information.

However, a striking hero image with a few words of text announces a web page or blog topic much more effectively than a conventional line of text. Just keep the “at a glance” rule in mind. If people have to think to see what your website is about, you’re getting it wrong.

Video, Video, Video

With connection speeds getting faster and more reliable and coverage improving, watching videos online is no longer a costly trail of patience. Predictably, websites are getting moving with a TV-like approach following on the magazine-like look we’ve been used to in the past.

Market research shows massive impact for video – far more than text or images, so smart designers are popping videos into websites to make a big impression.

Hamburger Menus

At first, hamburger menus were solely used in mobile apps. But the compact, “invisible” menus come in handy for websites too – especially if you have a fairly extensive menu of navigation options.

“A couple of years ago, a lot of people didn’t even know what to do with the hamburger menu icon, but by now, everyone’s familiar with it. Making information easy to find is one of your top goals, and this is a trick that can help you get there,” says Ollie.

Huge or Magnifiable Product Images

In many instances, people prefer to shop offline because they can get a closer look at the products they’re buying in-store. E-commerce sites are overcoming that with responsive images that allow you to view the product from various angles and at various magnifications.

It can also be useful when you are explaining the technical features of a product and want users to understand what to look for and where.

Clean, Simple, Navigable

Ollie says that the best way to describe a modern website is that there’s nothing to detract from its message. “People are starting to realise that a lot of elements and extras aren’t necessarily a good thing. Less is more. The focus is on information, and the images and videos are there to bring the point over visually.”

If you think your website is starting to look a little dated, Ollie will be happy to take a closer look. “All website designs need updating from time to time,” he says.

If you’d like to find out more about Cloud Concepts and Ollie’s approach to website design, online marketing or learn more about Outstanding Website Design | Cloud Concepts visit his website. After all, it’s the best place to begin.

Syndicated by Baxton Media, The Market Influencers, Your Digital Marketing Agency.

Managed Software as a Service vs Software as a Service: What Small Businesses Need to Know

There may have been a time when small businesses could duck tech terminology, but those days are gone says the web developer behind Cloud Concepts, Oliver (Ollie) Brooke. Choosing between software as a service (SAAS) and managed software as a service is among the biggies, and opting for what seems like the simplest solution might not result in optimum outcomes.

Software as a service means just that. The client gets a program, and puts it to work. It could be payroll software, or it could be software used to design a website. The user has to find ways to get what he or she wants within the operating confines of a one-size-fits-all software scenario.

Managed software as a service means that the software is built, maintained, and managed just for you.

SAAS Has Advantages – and Disadvantages

The “mass produced” options offered in SAAS packages could be just the thing for your business – but not your website, says Mr Brooke. “It depends on what the package does and what you want it to do. For example, if all you need is basic payroll software and your payroll needs are the same as those of most other businesses, then there’s no need for customisability.”

But, says Brooke, websites are different. “Just because you can build a website doesn’t mean that you should, especially if you’re running a business. Using an expert to guide you and the decisions about what to put on your website is vital.”

“On-size-fits-all might present some minor inconveniences when you’re just doing something routine like payroll – now imagine how cumbersome it gets when you’re trying to express something unique like what your business can do for its customers.”

Having a Website vs having a Website That Helps Your Clients

Brooke won’t deny that you can have a website using SAAS products, but he says that just having a website isn’t an end in itself. “A lot of people see a website as a showcase for their businesses. They’re wrong. A website shouldn’t be a static exhibit and it isn’t about you. Instead, it should work as a dynamic electronic entity that serves your clients.”

SAAS websites are easy to spot, says Brooke. They get set up, and their owners, satisfied that they now have a website, leave it at that. “Unfortunately, those websites become dead online real estate. Even supposing that clients or prospective clients find them, they won’t necessarily find the information they need or be interested in supporting that business.”

Small Businesspeople: One Entrepreneur, Many Hats

Those who have run their own small businesses know how many roles they need to learn. A small business owner must be willing to tackle functions that are performed by entire departments staffed with specialised personnel in larger businesses. And the business of doing business isn’t getting any simpler.

Increasingly, business thinkers are pointing towards outsourcing as the way small companies can achieve excellence in areas outside their core businesses. “You don’t have to do it all yourself,” says Brooke, “in fact, you shouldn’t try. Unless you’re doing something that’s absolutely bog standard, SAAS is for people who are still stuck in a rut where they try to do everything themselves. Why not spend more time on the things you’re really good at, and get the rest done professionally? Your customers will notice the difference!”

Cloud Concepts is a web development company serving clients across Australia. Its proprietor, leading web development expert Ollie Brooke, is especially passionate about helping small and medium enterprises to market themselves online. “It’s where your customers are,” he says.

If you’d like to contact Ollie Brooke about website design, managed software or learn more about Let’s talk About Your Website | Cloud Concepts visit his website. After all, it’s the best place to begin.

Syndicated by Baxton Media.