Category Archives: businesses

Marketing strategies

There are several ways small and large businesses can  entice prospective clients. One of the simplest and most effective is by running a competition. Here is an example below:

Veronica Henry

To celebrate Valentine’s Day and the publication of Tweetie Pie – a little book of romantic tweets – I thought I would set you a little literary challenge. For the chance to win a box of sublime Prestat chocolates and a selection of Valentine reads – including Postcards from the Heart by the divine Ella Griffin – send me a Valentine story in 140 words. The best one wins – it’s that simple.
Whizz your entry off to competitions@orionbooks.co.uk with the subject line ‘Tweetie Pie’.
Here is a link to the terms and conditions

SEO = business growth?

What Is Search Engine Optimisation?
In simple terms, Search Engine Optimization, often referred to as SEO, is the process of increasing the amount of traffic (visitors) to a web site from search engines via intuitive or natural search word matches. These ‘matches’ are referred to as ‘keywords’. The basic aim is to create a website that contains enough ‘keywords’ in it to allow a search term to match the words within a web site, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more likely it is to get more visitors. Optimisation is not only aimed exclusively at words, targeting different possible types of searches include: searches for images, local services and business searches, or industry, product services with in specific search engines is also an important strategy.
To be effective, you must be able to find your web site based on keywords or search terms – which prospective clients may enter into a search box on a Search Engine when looking for your product or service. It is vital Search Engines direct traffic to your website’s content.

Our team at  North Devon Web can provide a full range of services that will help you achieve your goals. We can repair and add new exciting features and functionality to your site. Whether your project will take minutes or  hours,  we are available to help you each step of the way. ‘Green’ web site – hosting is available from us.

  • Ensure good search engine optimization is employed
  • Help to get your business into search engines 
  • We can host websites on 100% wind energy servers
  • We offer very affordable hosting and design packages
  • Get your project delivered within a specific time frame
  • Perform regular maintenance on your website
  • Send out professional HTML newsletters
  • Reduce your project costs
  • Build forms, databases, blogs and forums
  • Design images and logos
  • Test your site’s navigation

Business – where to begin?

There are lots of things that are important when creating a business website……but where to start? Each bit needs another bit….but which bit first?
Placing your idea or product on the Internet involves several complicated, interwoven elements, each one is dependent and relies on another. This ‘spaghetti’, which can be an utter tangled mess, is vital for online success. You need a strategy that can combine the skills of the participants (key company members) which can deliver your final product, convey your style, in an easily digestible manner  – your clients need to be able to access and purchase your products with ease. This structure has to be created using a system that both creators and users can understand.
This conundrum is similar to the problem artists have when creating a work of art – the final image  requires a parallel set of decision making processes.

Read more…

Site Maps = business

Success is that knife-edge that teeters between effectiveness and catastrophe. Too many unimportant pages or non relevant pages can harm your site. Excluding some pages from a site map can be advantageous. The trick is to tempt catastrophe and not create it.

Sitemaps organise information on a site into a logical order – you can confuse or overwhelm the user with to much information. A successful website (and its sitemap) relies on the principles of efficiency.


It is important to survive and once your site is accepted by the search engines, with time, maturity will make you more successful. Being around on the web for a few years is better than being the new kid on the block – just hang in there and create your own history.

Where do you place a link to a site map on a site? The most common place is in the footer navigation.

Free everyting has to be free!

This%20WindowQuantcast

People are constantly looking for free promotions from businesses and are no longer prepared to pay a fare price for things. We have appeared to embraced the ‘something for nothing’ culture  and are consequently (probably) destroying the fundamental laws of capitalism. If you can get everything for free then how do we make money?
Something for nothing is a part of marketing, a way to trap your client into a product, a culture or a brand, to entice them or convince them to buy your related products. Read more…
The music industry has been destroyed by this something for nothing culture, with albums being given away free. It can be argued that this has made the music industry more democratic, enabling individual musicians and artist to compete in the free download market. However, this surge for free content has diluted the industry, the purse is getting empty so artists are not getting paid a fair return for their efforts. It gets worse – websites that delivered free content (and some paid) are now disappearing as the general public now only downloaded the free stuff and not the paid tracks.  With the demise of the 7digital indiestore service shutting down on in September 2010 an avenue for the democratic production of paid for and free downloads by independent artists has closed. There are dozens of  other viable alternatives for free mp3 downloads out there but for how long?

Try this one out M4tr Productions. Fill in your email address into the form and you will receive ‘A Moment Longer‘ by This Window.
If you can recommend another free download site we will give it a try – leave your comment and recommendations below.