Author Archives: Aileen

Case Study – Prestonfield Golf Club

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prestonfield-golf-club by Little Voice CommunicationsLittle Voice has designed a number of golf club websites now, and the challenges they face are quite unique.

Golf club websites have to satisfy a number of audiences, including:

  • current members
  • potential members
  • visitors

and, in the case of Prestonfield Golf Club in Edinburgh, they were also keen to attract sponsors and advertisers.

The solution for Prestonfield was to produce a site full of information that potential members and visitors would find useful, combined with the facility to provide fresh, up to date content for their membership. Moreover, it was vital that the up to date content was actually pushed to the membership, rather than having them always have to make the effort to come and find it on the website.

Prestonfield newsletterSeveral committee members and staff at Prestonfield have access to the website to post news.  As soon as they add news to the website, it is immediately also published on Facebook and twitter. Additionally, on a weekly basis, this news is automatically gathered and emailed to the membership based on their pre-defined preferences and without the need for any further intervention on anyone’s part. Members can chose to receive weekly summaries of ladies news or gents’ news and a general summary of club news also goes out once a week. In the future, junior news and course news weekly summaries may also be produced in this automated fashion. The club can receive statistics on how many people open these weekly emails and any links that they clicked within the newsletter. This lets them see which particular news items are popular and how engaged their membership audience is.

All in all, the website, news and social media features are extremely useful tools for a club that sees membership engagement as a top priority.

Additionally space is available for advertisers who may wish to reach an audience of over 9000 visitors a month in peak season and the club has just started to seek some income generation via website adverts.

Finally the club is starting to see some success from marketing special deals to visitors by utilising the website, social media and their intelligence-led email messaging facility.

Check out the Prestonfiled Golf Club website here.

Would these tools work well for your golf club? Why not contact us to find out more.

 

Latest websites designed

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image of www symbolWe’ve just completed two websites recently- both golf related.

The first one is for a young Carnoustie Based golf professional, Katy McNicoll. She wanted a dark, portfolio look with a simple layout and the ability to upload content and images herself. Take a look at Katy’s site here, and follow her on Twitter – you can do that from her home page.

The second new site is for the Angus County Golf Association.  They wanted a site where several of the executive could contribute news and results throughout the year, plus the ability for their members to enter competitions online. Take a look at the ACGA site here.

Both of these sites are responsive, which means that they adapt to any screen size.  Ideal for mobile devices, or small tablets.

 

 

 

WordPress web hosting from Little Voice

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wordpress web hosting from Little VoiceOur WordPress optimised web hosting is the perfect choice for WordPress powered websites of all sizes. Our easy one click install technology means your WordPress website can be up and running in minutes. We also offer a full WordPress design service accompanied by training videos to guide you through the process of changing your content once we’ve built and designed your website.

Why choose WordPress?

WordPress is the award winning Content Management System (CMS) powering millions of websites around the world. Thanks to its intuitive interface, extensive customisation possibilities and huge library of themes, plug-ins and widgets, WordPress is powerful, flexible and easy to use.

WordPress has evolved in to much more than just blogging software and is now a fully-fledged CMS, supported by a huge network of designers and developers creating new functionality for websites of all types. Whether you are looking to create a personal portfolio, business website, ecommerce website, affiliate review website or even a forum, WordPress makes website management quick and easy.

WordPress hosting features

Our WordPress hosting is supported by these great features…

  • One click install: Set up your WordPress website in minutes.
  • Affordable: Great WordPress hosting at a great low price.
  • Flexible: Our WordPress hosting gives your WordPress website room to grow.
  • Purpose built UK Data Centre: Your WordPress website is secure in our state of the art UK data centre.

Jetpack

Our WordPress hosting comes with Jetpack automatically installed. Jetpack is a collection of WordPress plug-ins bundled together so you don’t have install each one individually.

  • After the Deadline: Spelling, grammar and style checking based on artificial intelligence.
  • Gravatar Hovercards – Show your user’s Gravatar profile son your blog.
  • Latex – Mark-up language support.
  • Shortcodes – Add different types of media (including images and video) to your blog using short codes.
  • Sharedaddy – Make it easy for your readers to share your content.
  • Shortlinks – Automatic URL shortening.
  • Twitter Widget – syncs your tweets to your website.
  • WordPress.com Stats– In-depth visitor and readership stats.

WordPress websites designed by Little Voice

  • Full set up and admin panel
  • Designed for you
  • Integrated with social media
  • E-commerce – sell your goods and services online
  • Google analytics
  • Training so you can add pages, posts and update your content
  • Web hosting, domain name and email addresses included

Buy WordPress hosting

Give your WordPress website a home it deserves with our WordPress optimised platform. If you already have a WordPress website and you are looking to join us, transferring your website is easy and only takes a few minutes to upload your files. Web hosting starts at £40 per annum.

Contact us for more information.

Do you need to get your website mobile?

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image of man beside a www symbolSurfer’s habits are changing rapidly. No longer do they do all of their browsing on large screened PCs or laptops. Tablets and smartphones will increasingly become mainstream alternatives for surfers, and therein lies a challenge – does your website cater for smaller screen sizes?

According to Adobe, 62 percent of smartphone users said that they had bought physical goods from their smartphone devices in the 6 months to February 2011, and by all accounts that is set to increase.

So the world wide web is changing and businesses need to think about how to adapt their online offerings to compete.

Step 1 – look at your site on a mobile smartphone. Is it easy to navigate? Can you retrieve all the information you need? Can you buy what you want to buy?

What does a good mobile site look like?

  • It should be easy to read
  • You shouldn’t have to scroll left and right to see information
  • You might have to zoom, but it should zoom intelligently
  • It should load quickly
  • You should be able to do everything it says you can do.

If it doesn’t work very well. Don’t panic!

Step 2 – find out how many people are accessing your site via mobile browsers.

If you run google analytics, the information will already exist in your reports. Expect the figure to be low, but also expect that this will increase over time.

Step 3 – talk to your web designer about your options – there are several available to you:

  1. consider redesigning your traditionally built site to look/work better on mobile.
  2. build a separate mobile site that kicks in when someone using a mobile device visits.
  3. redesign your site using responsive design so it will automatically present itself well regardless of browser size. Check out this great illustration by James Mellers by changing the size of your browser window.
  4. build your next site with all browser sizes in mind.

Of course all of these options cost money so my advice would be that whilst you don’t need to rush out and rebuild your site tomorrow, the next time you want to redesign your website, bear in mind the changing surfing habits of your users and design your site accordingly.

Is there still a place for printed material in modern marketing?

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Image of a smart phoneThe growth in internet marketing has only increased the dilemma facing business in terms of how to spend their limited marketing budgets.

More and more customers are accessing information about suppliers via PCs, Laptops, iPads and smart phones. Fewer and fewer customers will go to the yellow pages or pick up leaflets. I wonder how many yellow pages directories go straight from doorstep to recycling bin? Mine certainly does.

Printed newspapers, with dwindling sales, are now having to adapt or die as their readership turns to the web for news and information. The likes of Amazon Kindle has completely changed the publishing landscape and readers grab books and magazines from their store with the minimum of effort. Night time readers don’t even have to get out of bed to select a new book to read – it all happens wirelessly, downloaded in seconds.

With web marketing it is perfectly possible to pull people towards your goods and services without any additional cost, barring time and effort.

And therein lies the second dilemma for businesses. Precious time must be dedicated to build up that web presence. Regular blogging, newsletters, social media, adding your company to the best directories, Google places and the likes all take time. Time which, traditionally, graphic designers, printers, leaflet distributors and snail mail carriers took off your hands by producing and delivering your printed marketing material for you.

I believe the best marketing mix for the modern business world includes both offline and online activities.

A company that spends that little extra to produce quality business cards, as opposed to the free, or very inexpensive ones promoted by certain online printers will stand out from the crowd. Printed material is tactile, thus introducing the touch sense to the prospective buyer’s overall impression of you as a business.

A well targeted direct mailing campaign can still reap rewards – banners, posters, vehicle graphics, glossy brochures and even printed letterheads still have their place. However these can’t eclipse or replace a quality and easily found web presence.

With the same limited time and budget constraints as before, businesses have to be absolutely clear where their marketing budget will be spent and how to measure its success. Then they must commit wholeheartedly to ensuring that the decisions they make result in success. This may mean paying for the help of social media and search engine experts in much the same way as businesses paid for graphic design, print and postage in the past.

Clearcad has teamed up with business growth and customer development strategists Neontics to offer you a variety of solutions including consultancy, CRM, web design, authoring, web hosting, Search Engine Optimisation, print design and analytical tools. We would be happy to meet with you to look at the options you have for developing both an online and offline marketing plan.

Is Press advertising worth it?

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Image of a newspaperThis is a question I am regularly asked by clients, particularly because advertising in newspapers, compared with some of the other online and offline  advertising opportunities that now exist, can be expensive.

My answer is, it depends on a number of factors:

1. What type of business you have

Do you sell direct to customers? For newspaper advertising your target market should be consumers. If your target market is businesses, you need to look at trade publications. Do you have premises for people to visit or is your business fully online. If it’s online, newspaper advertising may not be for you, unless they offer advertising on their website.

2. Doing your homework

It’s important that you do some homework to help you decide which publications are best suited for advertising your business. Most publishers give details of their circulation numbers and prices. You need to weigh the opportunities up before making an informed placement decision.

3. Do you operate locally or nationally?

This will inform which newspapers you consider placing adverts with. If you look at local papers you do see national advertisers, but they have placed these adverts in the belief that there is a strong local demand for their product or service.

4. Your ability to fund regular adverts

Can you afford to pay for daily or weekly adverts depending on how often your chosen publications are printed? Newspaper advertising is MUCH more effective if your advert is regularly seen.

5. Whether you can include regular special offers

The ability to offer a good deal on current stock, or a percentage off a particular service will make your advert more appealing. It’s worth also planning ahead for seasonal opportunities.

6. Can you meet the demand an advert might generate?

You may have heard horror stories about companies advertising on voucher sites and not being able to supply the goods offered at a discount price. Whilst I wouldn’t want to excite you by saying your advert might generate huge business for you, it is something you need to bear in mind.

7. Have you exhausted all of the free, or less expensive alternatives?

Because it is expensive, I usually advise clients to try other alternatives first. Particularly for new businesses, there are a number of lower cost online and offline options to consider and try before looking at paid press advertising.

8. Do your main competitors advertise regularly?

If they do, then you may feel that you need to do the same to compete. If they don’t, advertising yourself might give you an advantage.

9. If you are already advertising is it working or you?

It’s important to measure the success of your current advertising to ensure you are getting value for money. Take steps to find out where customers heard about you. Stop your adverts for a month to see if it makes any difference to your customer take-up. Make informed decisions about how you promote your company to ensure the best use of your marketing budget.

10. Test the waters

If you haven’t advertised in the press before – give it a try, but be aware that you will need a sustained period of advertising to maximise your chance of success. For a daily publication you would need at least a month, for weekly 3 months and for monthly 6 months to ensure that enough of your target audience has seen your advert and/or can recall it.

Little Voice can help you with your advertising and marketing strategy, contact us today for a free consultation.