Archive for category Services
Trip to the frozen north (Scotland)
Posted by Phil Page in Thoughts & Opinions, Web Development on December 9th, 2009
Fresh fruit (melon, pineapple, kiwi, grapefruit, dates, figs, strawberries, grapes, bananas), several types of cereal, yogurts, homemade marmelades & jams, vegemite, honey, toast, orange juice, cranberry juice and fried breakfast (bacon, eggs, sausage, tomatoes and mushrooms)
I’ve just spent the past few days in the wonderful little village of Cromarty, Ross-Shire. I was visiting one of our clients Large Holiday Houses (LHH) who we are doing website re-development work for. It was great to touch base with them and start setting things in motion for the launch of their new site in the New Year. While in Cromarty I had the pleasure of staying in a little B&B run by one Marjorie Watson. The hospitality was outstanding with spacious rooms and very comfortable beds, but all that paled in comparison to the breakfast that was provided every morning.
As you can see from the photo every morning was a feast, and at the time I was the only one staying there, so it was all set out just for me. I look forward to the actual launch period because I’ll get to go back but this time I’ll get some elastic trousers just so I can benefit more from the breakfast.
Waypoint Systems clients to move to Severn Internet
Posted by David Harrison in Company News, New Contracts, Severn Internet News, Web Design, Web Development on November 16th, 2009
Further to the unfortunate voluntary liquidation announced last week by Waypoint Systems, Severn Internet are pleased to announce they have reached agreement with Waypoint to take over the management of Waypoint’s sites.
David Harrison, MD, said “It is always unfortunate when a company has to follow this course of action but our intention is to create as seamless a transfer as possible for clients of Waypoint. As a company we pride ourselves on our customer service and trust we will be able to build long term mutually beneficial relationships with our new clients. We will be contacting all the new clients over the next couple of days with the further intention of moving sites to our own servers as fast as possible. Any Waypoint clients we have not yet spoken to who have any questions should not hesitate to contact us on 01694 724899, where we are available to assist.”
The addition of Waypoint’s clients brings the total number of sites under our control to well in excess of 200. We are able to build and market a broad range of sites from basic content managed sites through to fully bespoke builds that integrate with your in house systems. If you would like to talk to us about developing your own site please do not hesitate to contact us.
Online Advertising continues to grow
Posted by David Harrison in Online Marketing, PPC Advertising, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions, Traditional Marketing on September 30th, 2009
It’s funny how coincidences occur on occasion. Yesterday I attended a useful course on the planning of digital marketing campaigns. As a company, we tend to focus on search and emails as the primary means of engaging with customers. We will suggest enhancing these more traditional routes through the use of social media when appropriate.
We tend not to suggest using online advertsising so much, as much as anything due to a lack of knowledge. I think we need to look at this again. The course, part of my MSc (nose to the grindstone now!), was largely about the use of various display advertising formats, CPMs, CPAs, CPCs and the like. It has to be said that for certain offerings, this channel should be used – in conjunction we would suggest with the more standard routes such as search and email marketing. That sentence in itself is contentious, as for some people their view of the world would be the opposite with displays being the primary focus. I will leave it up to you to decide on your own priorities.
The key point however is that online advertsing is continuing to grow http://bit.ly/2oqCxP. This is all good news for those suppliers involved in the digital arena. It is also good news for clients, as online promotion has one huge benefit over traditional media – MEASURABILITY! Whilst you will never know how many people see your ad in the paper you will certainly know the reach of your online promotions. If nothing else, we would recommend you review the allocations of your marketing budgets and check those pounds are working their hardest for you.
Web Site Launches
Posted by David Harrison in Severn Internet News, Social Media, Social Networking, Web Design, Web Development, Web Site Launches on September 24th, 2009
We have been rather busy on a couple of larger projects of late and have omitted to mention a few sites that have gone live in the recent past. As ever, we would like to thank all of these clients for their patronage and look forward to developing the sites as we move forward.
Our first full Magento based e-commerce site www.sportsgolfstores.co.uk went live recently and gives a good idea of how flexible this platform can be for e-commerce web sites. It is the home of Karl Kertess Golf and also a great place to buy golf trousers and associated products so do take a look.
The White Horse Inn at Clun have also had a new site launched. As regular readers will know, I take it upon myself to quality test any pub or restaurant we work with (!!) and I can certainly recommend Jack’s establisment. If you are looking to find a good real ale pub in Shropshire that also provides B&B and an ongoing events programme I’d give them a visit. The site also provides interaction with their various social media channels and we would recommend everyone in the same gane look at using these channels to promote their business.
In association with Hunter Bevan we also worked on the development of the new Leema Acoustics website. As a Hi-Fi buff to some extent I’d certainly suggest taking a look at some of their award winning products.
We have also launched a new site for Marc Beaumont. Marc is one of the world’s top downhill mountain bikers and the site should help his many fans keep up to date. Personally, I get frightened even hearing Mark talk about what he does! This site is built on the Wordpress platform.
Having developed the original Fabric Spray website on behalf of The Needham Group we have now set the Irish version live at www.fabricspray.ie. It’s a pretty amazing product so take a look!
We have also revamped www.fine-boxes.com for Andrew Crawford. Andrew is looking to teach more people – his work is really quite exceptional so please take a look.
Lastly, but not least, we set G Bryan Jones live. Locally based, in Bishops Castle, they are your port of call for all things farm machinery related.
I think that is it … working on a good few more at present so watch this space. The sites above give a fair idea of the range of work we do so if you need any help yourself, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
New partnerships to announce ….
Posted by David Harrison in Company News, New Contracts, Severn Internet News, Web Development on September 24th, 2009
Severn Internet are pleased to announce that we have been selected to perform web development work for two local design agencies, namely Carl Jones Design and Titanium Design.
Both agencies produce high quality work in the areas of graphic design, branding and corporate communications and we are proud to be associated with these companies. We look forward to developing the relationships over the coming months and years.
If you are a design, marketing or PR agency who feels you could benefit from a reliable and effective development partner, please do not hesitate to get in touch – we use open source platforms including Wordpress, Drupal and Magento in addition to any bespoke system development that is required such as integration with in house platforms.
Twitter vs Facebook … who will win? ….
Posted by David Harrison in Facebook, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions, Useful Stuff on August 17th, 2009
One of the best sources for ongoing discussions and useful opinions relating to the whole social media space is Mashable in our humble opinion.
This is a really good article and we would recommend you give it the once over … http://bit.ly/100gn
Server upgrade commences next week …
Posted by David Harrison in Company News, Facebook, Managed Hosting, Twitter on August 5th, 2009
It is easy to forget that if your website crashes, your business is also affected. You probably won’t receive any emails either unless you run your own Exchange server.
At Severn Internet we recognise this and that is why we have always hosted our client sites on a quality dedicated server. For those of you who wonder why hosting costs can vary so much it is more than likely that you are not comparing like with like. When we say a “dedicated” server we mean exactly that – our server only has our sites on it. This means that you are not potentially sharing your site with some dodgy porn site that could end up getting your own site blacklisted by Google through no fault of your own!
As a company, Severn Internet uses Rackspace to look after our server. They are by no means the cheapest, but as with most things in life you get what you pay for. A server is just like any other computer – it will occasionally develop some sort of glitch – what one needs is a company that fixes those glitches quickly – that is why we use Rackspace and also recommend them to those clients who need their own server too.
After a couple of years happily living in one box, we are going to be moving our sites to a new server over the next few weeks. For those of a technical nature, this is the spec of the new machine:
Dell 2970
OS : Red Hat 5 (64 bit)
PLESK 8 (unlimited domains with Spam Assassin and Dr Web)
Processor: Single Quad Core AMD Opteron 2347 processor
RAM: 4 GB RAM
Hard drive: 4 x 146 GB SAS Hard drives
RAID: – Hardware RAID 5
Hot swappable drives
Dual power supplies, Nics, Fans
Fanatical support,
Rackwatch Platinum
Managed Backup Agent + MySQL Agent
It is rather a good machine and has all the usual security, firewalls and back up you would expect. We look forward to improving our client’s hosting environment over the next few weeks.
If you are unhappy with your current hosts, please give us a call and we will be more than happy to give you a quote on our managed hosting services.
Newspaper digests on your desktop …. and track your competition
Posted by David Harrison in Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions, Useful Stuff on July 15th, 2009
Paul wrote a good article on newspapers and their imminent demise yesterday … here is a slightly different take on the printed word …
I quite like my newspaper! Reading The Sunday Times over breakfast and through a lazy Sunday is one of life’s true pleasures in my opinion, but through the working week it is harder to achieve this due to lack of time – in my case I also live in the middle of nowhere so can’t have it delivered to read over breakfast anyway!
What to do?
I am a bit of a news addict – I listen to it on the radio, watch the TV news and also still read the papers. What I am doing now however is using technology to improve my news gathering and better satisfy my craving. I am doing this without any effort and also for free. I am focussing on the topics that interest me and can scan stories related to those subjects from a number of sources quickly and easily.
How?
I use Feedly which in my opinion is the best way to aggregate your news and any other data that you want to follow. It essentially provides me with my own personalised newspaper and it is free – rather than paying for The Times, Financial Times and Telegraph I now get all their stories, or at least the ones that interest me, in one place. I think it is great and would strongly recommend it!
In a business sense, as part of our research setting up social media campaigns and any online marketing campaigns we will research not only what our client is up to but what their competitors are doing. We do this through Google Alerts, which then feeds into Feedly. We obviously use this to see what our competitors are up to aswell! If you don’t have a Google account this is one good reason to have one for sure! Every time your competitor is mentioned in a new article or post you will know about it – which has got to be of some value, even if you are just a nosey parker!
Try out Feedly!
Newspapers face a problem..a big one.
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Facebook, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions on July 14th, 2009
Newspapers are dying out..there is no doubt about it. Competition from online media sources has meant they have had to adapt.But they have hitherto not found the answer. Especially amongst the teenage readership where numbers are ever depleting. If this continues, we will have no newspapers in 20 years..Old habits die hard and teenagers are already used to getting all the information they need online via their PC or mobile phone. Moreover, 24 hour televised news channels and online news sources are free. Newspapers need to grab the interest of teenagers; for older generations they have an enjoyed an unconditional relationship. (old habits again)
Radio is suffering the same fate. Ipods allow teenagers to choose what they listen to and when without the endless radio chat and adverts..Radio faces similar challenges..their future customers are turning away from them. The Ipod is by far the most favoured listening device among teenagers.
But their main source of entertainment are social networking sites such as Facebook. They need to be seen to be on the latest crazes and feel under pressure to do so. Facebook enables them to create an achieveable illusion of themselves through the constant updating and refining of their profiles. Furthermore, they can engage in conversation with others..Facebook and My Space users continue to increase.
So what for newspapers..if they are going to attract any teenagers, my suggestion would be they need to target them first and foremost. What are teenagers into? Reality TV, Hollyoaks and the like; fashion, celebrity gossip.. So with that in mind, political expenses, interest rate predictions, inter alia. won’t cut it with these teenagers..A newspaper that focuses on teenagers will sell..but you can’t just throw out a generic product and hope it will fit all shapes and sizes..newspapers need to realise this.
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