Last week Realnet changed a couple of categories on the Prizma Graphics website, after some new keyword research found some better phrases to target.

We redirected the old category page to the new one to preserve the old page authority.

Within 2 days the new page was cached by Google, and for “Plotter paper” it’s already on page 2 of Google from somewhere below page 5. Now a bit more work needed to get them up to page one.

At the same time we renamed another page, and “Design Supplies” now brings up a page one result, again from a previous ranking of lower than page 5! All within 2 days of the change.

It’s amazing how Google does it!

http://www.prizmagraphics.co.uk/

Cachet Cars provide more than a taxi – a spacious executive BMW with a professional chauffeur to look after you. Perfect for business travel, airport transfers or special occasions.

Cachet Cars have been a customer of Realnet for a number of years. After discussions recently it was decided the website needed to be refreshed, and they also wanted a greater level of content management capability.

Realnet proposed a solution, which involved redesigning the site, and building it within our complete content management system.

The new version went live this week, and we look forward to your comments!

http://www.cachetcars.com/

Google have started to release a new system which allows web pages to load faster from your search results.

The idea is that while your browsing the search results and deciding which pages to click, it can start to load up the pages you’re most likely to click in the background ready to use!

This quote is particularly interesting and helps to explain why Google Instant Searching and this new variation (Google Instant Pages) are guiding the way Google provide search:

“What we have observed is that every time we shave 15 milliseconds from the speed, users search more and more, said Mr Singhal – Google fellow.

I wonder how this will impact websites. Presumably it will cause their pages to be downloaded more often. Will that cause Analytics to register a site visit, or only if the visitor then goes to the page? Plenty of interesting questions coming up – any comments appreciated.

Designing a web page that quickly grabs the visitors attention and immediately offers them to exactly what they’re after will be even more important. Otherwise it will take the visitor very little time to find another website that will!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13775562

If you are considering creating a new e-Commerce website or re-launching an existing one, you should start planning at least 6 months before you want your new website to go live.

Why?

1. Planning is crucial for success on-line. The more planning you do now – the less work you will have to do later and also you will have a more accurate idea of time and cost required.
2. Have you considered how orders and stock control will integrate with your back office systems? It can sometimes take a long time to ensure you have the right systems in place to cope with an increase in sales.
3. Marketing Campaign. A website will not make you any money if you do not invest time and money in marketing.There are various ways that you can market your business using your website as central focus;
   • Keyword Research & Search Engine Optimisation
   • Social Media Marketing – Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin
   • Pay-Per-Click (Google Adwords) Campaign
   • Off-line Marketing – Business Cards, Leaflets, Advertising, Networking etc
4. It takes time to get good natural Google positioning. It can take some time for the search engines to list you in their natural listings, there are various things that can be done to improve how quickly your site is indexed and improve your positions in the search engines such as Google.However, you do not want to be making all these changes in the peak of your sales season – this should be done in advance to ensure you make the most of the busy season.Having the site go live way before your peak season will ensure you are fully prepared for an increase in sales and also it will give you the best fighting chance of being found by large numbers of perspective clients.
5. Well designed and engineered websites take time to build. A well planned, designed and optimised website takes time to build, ensure that you have plenty of time to get together images, copy, spreadsheets and any other material which you need to be on the website.Expect the whole process to take between 2-4 months depending upon the complexity of the site and also the number of items in stock.

Realnet offer a full planning service to help with your online success –

To take advantage of a free 2 hour consultation please call on 01223 550800 or email: info@realnet.co.uk

Paul Goalen approached Realnet at the start of May 2011, to design and build an ecommerce solution to sell his music online.

Solutions such as selling through established vendors were considered, and in the end Paul chose a custom build website to keep a greater percentage of the proceeds.

Realnet worked closely with Paul and a complete bespoke ecommerce solution was launched within 5 weeks!

Have a look, and if you like your Emotive Folk Music buy one or two of the tracks!

http://www.paulgoalensdownloads.co.uk/

Older web browsers are a bane for Web Developers. For years now Internet Explorer 6 has caused many an expletive from a hard working developer, when it just doesn’t follow the rules and creates hours of extra work.

Google has lead the way in abandoning the older browsers, encouraging people to upgrade. The more advanced websites get, the more difficult (and in many cases now impossible) it is to make then work in the older browsers.

The latest browsers to be phased out by Google are Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5. According to StatCounter, 17% of people will need to change their browser in the light of Google’s decision.

BBC Article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/technology-13639875

Are you looking for a great high tech job? Then ecm selection, Cambridge, are the leaders in their field.

ecm’s website had been running for a number of years. Calling on Realnet, ecm selection wanted a new site building on the good SEO ranking. The site has been redesigned and improvements have been made to increase the websites performance in the short and long term.

The new site features:

• integrated social networking (facebook & twitter) – automating the process of posting jobs (providing strong incoming, and free, source of traffic, improving the sites SEO rankings).
• a fully featured job alert emailing system – providing relevant jobs to the sites users via email.
• HTML 5 /Javascript admin area dashboard – allowing quick visualisation of key performance indicators.
• intelligent determination of relativity between vacancies – improving the usability of the site, by providing the user similar jobs on each vacancy.
• and a slick redesign – updated to reflect the clients current branding, and give a clean cut/fresh look to a site that was previously showing its age.

… with ongoing SEO and Performance/Usability analysis (and development), we expect to see this site take the top position, in the high tech jobs industry.

http://www.ecmselection.co.uk

Excellent Design: Check
Perfect functionality: Check
Fully equipped CMS: Check

Must be another Realnet Website!

We’ve just finished the BforB Cambs website to help local business network.

The networking group B for B has taken off so well that the old website was starting to look out of date, both in it’s design and features.

The new design produced by Realnet incorporates the Business for Breakfast branding, a comprehensive member directory and plenty of extras to keep the site current and relevant for years to come.

Why not visit the site and browse members and testimonials to see how attending BforB networking can help your business?

http://www.bforbcambs.co.uk/

Our most recent website was completed to a very tight deadline in order to make the most of the busy spring season that the industry enjoys.

Natural Talents is a specialist property recruitment and market research company that needed a new site facelift to reflect the new branding and improve the professional image that Natural Talents portrayed.

The site structure was kept very simple and features some stunning HDR photographs throughout. The journey has been designed to be very straight forward and calls to action are clear and visually appealing and allow easy navigation to each distinctly separate site section.

This clean, sharp and stylish site will make an excellent addition to our portfolio and the Realnet team did an excellent job finishing the site within the very tight deadline that was set.

“If you thought everyone was spent out after Christmas – think again, they window shop and place their orders in January, which is ToyTidy’s busiest month of trading. This pattern has been repeated year on year its just getting bigger thanks to Realnet.”
Helen Coppen, Owner of Toytidy.com

We always anticipate a big January for toytidy traffic, but this year was huge, a 1222% increase on visitor numbers, coupled with a drop in bounces and increase in e-commerce conversion has meant that it’s been a great January for Toytidy, well done Helen!