Whilst still retaining the heritage of the Duckworth’s brand, this website, with its no frills approach is aimed at a busy commercial sector, where cost, service and reliability are key drivers in purchase decisions. The website aims to direct users to the right cleaning machine for their cleaning requirements – as quickly and efficiently as the machines do the job themselves.

Incorporating all the playfulness that is at the heart of everything the Nursery does, the website quickly conveys the creative atmosphere that pre-school children will enjoy when they attend. As a selling tool, it positions the Nursery as a place where parents can be confident that their children will not only be safe, but stimulated by an learning environment.

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Incorporating a multi-layered search function, the website has been designed to allow the client to easily update content in the fast-moving and highly competitive commercial property market. Simple, easy to understand and easy to navigate, the website underlines the core values of professionalism and approachability to which the company aspires.

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Designed to exploit the profitable market for dog clothes and accessories, the company wanted to bridge the gap between low and high end products, providing luxury dogwear at affordable prices. The site was developed to appeal equally to male and female owners and to move away from the market that has developed exclusively around toy and tea-cup breeds. Dynamic, bold and exciting, the design offers a very different look and feel from the largely female-oriented websites catering for a very niche market in this industry.

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Aimed at 18 to 24 year holds, the age group in which the infection is most prevalent, the website is themed around the cinema concept which forms the basis for the whole campaign. It allows users to order a home testing kit or download a smart phone app specifically developed by 2am to support the campaign. It also features information about a movie trailer competition being run in conjunction with local colleges.

Stylish, graphically switched on and easily navigable, the site has been created to appeal to the new media savvy target audience.

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Working closely with the client to develop a website which perfectly pitched their distinctive contemporary furniture to just the right audience, 2am has involved itself with all aspects of Black Orchid Interiors’ online brand management.

Very recently, we have been involved with the in-store launch of the brand at House of Fraser in the prestigious Deansgate store in Manchester, conceptualising the design and overseeing the fit-out for the entire concession to ensure brand integrity is maintained throughout.

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LATER ON ….

This cartoon is an embellishment of  a conversation I had with Simon about they guys calling him the Great Bellender, as the guys of the office often tease each other, all in good fun. Also it is not uncommon for Simon to walk around the office doing little tricks and practicing his juggling skills.

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Admittedly at the time I was looking to get some traffic for Auto SEO in an interesting way to generate some hits for people looking to automate their SEO process.

Today I noticed Google has rolled out Voice Search – this is a function that allows you to search in Google using a voice command. Check it out: http://www.google.com/insidesearch/voicesearch.html

Could it be that my vision of the day when we are completely hands free using voice commands and getting out info from ultra-accessible websites is not far round the corner? Time will tell.

Review my thoughts on the future of SEO and the internet when it becomes plugged into people’s cars.

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What does Google Panda 2.2 do?

Essentially Google Panda 2.2 represents Google’s latest leap forward in their war against nonsense. Speak to many a designer or developer and they’ll argue that we SEOs are nothing but hacks spouting and distributing drivel out there to get some rankings back. I’d like to say that I’ve always been squeaky clean, however I must be honest and say that I’ve produced content that’s all about getting more traffic back to the site.

The thing about the direction search engine optimisation has been going over the past couple of years is that there has been progressively less focus on the onsite content and rather a focus on the creation of offsite content that is found by the search engine crawlers, which then spider back through a link to the website they are pointing at, increasing the potency of the website and increasing the association of the website with that specific and related keywords.

It wouldn’t be too much of a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that just about everyone in the world seems to have got on that back of this and really flogged it as hard as they possibly can. The content I’ve always created to be distributed has always been unique content that reads well and is based on what I believe people want to read about, admittedly I’ve not been writing it with the thought that people might actually read it, and I’ve rewritten countless pages of content over and over again so there is enough content to get out there.

So Google have closed a loophole – as one loophole closes another will inevitably open, but I’m not here to just exploit loopholes, I’m all about marketing, I’m a search marketing specialist not just an SEO that’s looking to make some tweaks here and there to get traffic back to the site.

If you’re looking for an SEO to make those kind of changes, you either have a really old and badly built site or have completely the wrong perception about where SEO is at the moment and where it’s going. If you are talking to SEOs and they’re telling you about links and article marketing and not much else then I’d suggest you find get a second opinion.

For more information about the Panda update, about SEO and the position of your website in the search engines get in touch today!

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It’s Fancy Dress Time started its days a few years back as a purely eBay based business which has grown into a multi-channel business in its own rights.

Blackpool Fancy Dress

It’s Fancy Dress Time is the premier blackpool fancy dress business serving individuals not only in the Blackpool and wider Lancashire area but also throughout the UK.

2am Media are proud to continue to support the business and wish them every success in the future – we’re sure the business will continue to go from strength to strength.

For more information bout It’s Fancy Dress Time review our Portfolio section or view their site at itsfancydresstime.co.uk

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Thanks for sticking around if you’re still with me…

Earlier last week the work of Eli Pariser was brought to my attention (he’s developed a theory very close to my arguments of Passive Media Individualism and The Personalisation Era) I liked how passionate he was on the subject of personalisation – something I feel quite strongly about too -the thing is he’s that interested in the subject that he’s even written a book about it! The topic of Google’s personalised search soon arose, when Cyrus spoke about how almost every result shown in a browser is altered in some way this means that it is very rare that any two people will see the same search results.

I’m not really sure what’s wrong with it, people now see results that are specific and even more relevant to their search requirements. Our computer experience will vastly improve because personalisation seems to be the future as relevancy is often always seen as a good thing. But this is objected by Eric Schmit as he explains how it will be hard for people to consume or watch things that haven’t been tailored specifically for them.

I find it hard to get to grips with why it would be hard for me to see things that haven’t been adapted especially for me. I thought search engines were going to show me the very best results?

In fact they are but ‘best’ can change according to other people’s point of view. “Increasingly online, it is becoming impossible to escape your own point of view”- Eli Pariser.

It’s good for me that I am always right, always. I love to be right all of the time as it means that my opinions are the only ones that matter and I tend to win a lot of arguments. It’s good to have a computer that can reflect your own opinions right back at you. However, what happens when I’m wrong, the web won’t expose me to a variety of opinions again.

Although I may not enjoy looking at some things on the internet, it doesn’t mean that I don’t think they’re important and i never want to look at them again. I like being able to be free to surf the web and look at things I am in the mood to see, which may change day to day. This is ‘the physiological equivalent to obesity’ Prasier says.

The personalisation filters are currently being used and may change what you are free to see on the web. So if you are one of those people who uses the internet for entertainment and just spends hours after hours on facebook then this now may be all you can do.

As people look at Google-news and see a one sided point of view which reflects their own view on the stories in the news they are not being going to be shown other opinions, which is not good as people are not able to become open minded. In the users perspective they may find this the ‘best’ result but in the long run is it really for the best?

Now here’s the question we have been waiting for, is it ethical for search engines to be personalised in this way?

The majority of people won’t even realise that they’re search engine is personalised because they will still be visiting the same sites but in my opinion it defiantly is not ethical. Although it may comfort people to have results which sit perfectly with their own politics, is it actually better for them? We are not providing a balanced mix of results, which I don’t think is good for people and I find it frightening that we are handing over control to a system that has been designed specifically not to provide us with a mixed set of results.

Plus, is it reasonable to expect a business entry to act for the greater good? But it has always been this way, people tend to look at news which sits most comfortably with them and even if there was a mix of results people would still look at what they think will sit best with them.

Finally we come to the questions, should we be afraid of personalisation? should there be more ‘balanced’ queries? should we be pushing for easier ways to turn it off? or should we all just abandon the internet and go into hiding?

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We sat down and discussed some ideas. The requirements were something fun and different to what other web agencies were doing, but wasn’t too time consuming or too complicated, because we have a lot of work on at the moment here in the office.

Our intern Laura came up with this idea, and we agreed that is was a good idea to try out. Laura found a website where she could create the cartoons, and set off from there. The comic is based on observations of life here at 2am, little in jokes and some over-exaggerated general humour that is applicable to aspects of our office antics.

We decided to post 2 cartoons a week for a few reasons. Firstly, we didn’t want to bombard you with too many tweets and posts about our blog, that can be overwhelming and we didn’t want you to feel discouraged about visiting our website. Secondly, we are extremely busy on a number of different projects and we wanted to make sure that we would have enough time to make the cartoons. Finally, all though the cartoons don’t look that complex, it takes time, effort and ideas to make them. We have aimed to use different jokes to keep it fresh and Laura really likes her little details in each cartoon, probably things you have overlooked or didn’t even notice in the backgrounds. She urges you to disregard the standard of the first cartoon though, she had only just discovered the website and wasn’t sure what she would be able to do with it yet. There was a lot of trial and error involved but we got there in the end.

We will continue with the cartoon for as long as Laura is with us, as she is an intern here for a few weeks over the summer, we aren’t sure just how long we will have her for.  When she does leave, she will leave us with all the passwords and login details and hopefully we will have the time to keep it up and create more cartoons for those who visit our blog.

We have to say that, we have seen some response to the comics in the number of visits, likes and retweets and we hope that you continue visiting us. Who knows, you might actually find we have some interesting information to share.

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Also featured in this cartoon is John Graham (designer), Kieran Grorman (designer/photographer) and Peter Stubbs (MD).

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The guys played sneezing tennis, there were some powerful serves and some alarmingly fast returns.

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The life for marketers and media planners has been made difficult by the accelerating fragmentation of the media market, due to consumers having more control over how they view, filter and interact within multi-channels and multi-mediums.

Because of this, media fragmentation makes it much more difficult to target consumers as with the vast amount of media consumption choices no two consumers are exactly alike. Consumers have a greater choice of what media they can interact with, technology has made it possible for consumers to ad-skip and ad-block and so agencies have to create a long term strategy for consumer engagement that will encourage consumers to interact and not annoy them, or make them feel like their privacy has been invaded. This means that advertising has to spread further, covering multitude of channels to gain the same exposure, which is dividing the audiences up further.

In this time that we live in most things that used to involve a trip out of the house, such as shopping and going to the cinema. In this “digital age” these things are just mere clicks away. Almost every household has a computer and access to the internet. With the average person spending approximately 13 hours online, the way things are viewed and accessed have evolved greatly.

Companies that do not advertise online are missing out on a huge opportunity as information sharing online can reach a wider audience. During 2009 the internet overtook TV in spending and the trend has continued into 2011 because it is cost effective and can provide a huge reach. The current state of the economic climate has seen a decline in certain media use, more companies want digital and social media campaigns, those not adopting these types of campaigns are at a competitive disadvantage.

Social media sites such as facebook and twitter are a good place to start with online advertising. There is no other low-cost promotional method out there yet that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to visit websites again and again. If a company is selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time. Advertising using social media offers low cost, high reach and low wastage as ads can be targeted to the consumers from the data they share on the social media sites.

Two benenfits of online advertising

Online advertising has two primary benefits, traffic and lead generation being one and secondly promotion and branding. Even if people are not visiting websites, the fact that the site ads exist, is marketing and advertising the company’s website and its products.

We live in a fast paced world. People want information instantaneously at all hours of the day. Online advertising offers this. A potential customer can log onto the internet at any given second of the day and access almost any information they wish to have, and they also unintentionally view masses of information that they merely just happened to stubble across. Or did they? The internet is a spectacular place and online advertising can set up links all over the internet and easily track and target potential customers using the information that is shared by them, even if they do not know that they are sharing it.

Digital and social media is an integral part of modern advertising because with this medium it is easy to track consumer behaviour and know for certain whether an individual is viewing their site at a certain time. As online media can show the almost instant results of reach and effectiveness, those who are diversifying and embracing this current change in media consumption are more likely to gain and keep their clients based on the clients current requirement.

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First of all it’s probably important to recognize and appreciate that Google and other search engines are a way of finding content, the media we refer to is this content as presented on the internet.

Personalisation in the search sphere exists to make your life easier – in that the search engines can show you things they think you want (so you get the right results faster) asnd they get the added benefit of better click through rates on their ads which can be much more targeted to your requirements.

The thing about all this is, your media consumption is left to the discretion of annonymous algorithms to determine, this is turn shapes the content that you are presented with.

Are search engines biased?

YES! Search Engine’s are biased in so many different ways, not only are they the face of corporations determined to make you click on their advertisements they are also software that is specifically designed to suit your preferences, you would think tis means better suiting your biases, however this is not necessarily the case.

By searching for a piece of information, or even lingering on a page of information for too long you could change the media you engage with on a day to day basis.

It’s important to realise that what you’re seeing in the Google search results isn’t objective unbiased results – keep that at the forefront of your mind (like most people understand when they are reading a newspaper) and you should be ok. If you don’t, and it’s likely most people won’t, there will be social consequences.

Personalised Search Creates an Insular Society

One of the best things about society is it allows people from all over the place to get in touch and interact with each other on a personal level, but imagine now if personalisation factors come into play that means you will never get to meet people that dislike things you like – and this is the way it’s going. In this world we have a group of individuals that live in their own insular little bubbles, gently bumping into like minded people in equally insular little bubbles. Never challenged. Where your views of the world get distilled into the perfect inward looking parody of your original views.

Personalisation is the future of web development

In the not too distant future websites with no elements of personalization are going to seem a bit quaint, people want the technology to help find find what they are looking. This could be the end of formal navigation, this could be the end of formal static design, this could be the fabled web3.0.

Get in touch with 2am today to find out more about how you can benefit from personalization of your visitors’ experience of your web solution.

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