Craigadam

I really enjoy working on websites for nice hotels, it makes my inner aesthetic self happy to take the necessary photographs and then work with them on a new website. The website for Craigaam is no exception, although I had underestimated the ammount of work in creating the website I thoroughly enjoyed the process and I hope the resulting site shows the benefit of this enjoyment. The website can be found by clicking on this link dumfries hotels which is the primary search term that I have researched in Google stats. It is by no means the only term, infact the site is optimised for over 20 search terms and has already moved from an average of 30 unique visitors per day to about 150, which should mean plenty of new customers for Celia and Richard who both run Cariagadam.

Whitecairn

My last website is for holiday park whitecairn, it is a site developed to gain business from two markets, the first is transoprt of static caravans and timber lodges the other is the sale and hire of static caravans and timber lodges. The site has only just gone live and staright away we are getting results. This site with the url http://www.staticscaravanslodgesaleshiretransportation.com is optimised for a collection of good terms and it is already No 1 in Google for
used timber lodges for sale
and
used timber lodge sales
and has achieved no 2 listing for
static caravan transport scotland no doubt no 1 shortly.
Optimising for Google is happening faster and faster now and results can be working in a timescale unheard of a year ago.

Moffat Town Hall Trust Initiative

I first met Martin Brown while I was working as a business advisor for Visit Scotland, and helped him gain internet prominance for his bed and breakfast accommodation close to Moffat. Martin is very active in his local community and asked if I would give him tutorials using Dreamweaver so he could develop a website for a new proposal to regenerate Moffat Town Hall. So I have had a few sessions with Martin now, and he has really grasped the fundamental aspects of the construction and together we have developed the new website. Have a look at it and see what you think.
Moffat Town Hall Development
check out the "artists impression" page where we developed a simple flash projection for the hall regeneration.

House "Style"

There are many styles and types of website design, and any trawl through the internet will reveal styles, shapes colours and techniques. When a customer first asks me to work on a new website I ask them to provide me with 3 examples of websites that they have found which they like. In this way I get a feeling for what they like and I try to create a unique design that will have some common features of the sites they suggest. I try not to compromise my own design and it has been said that I have a "house style" that I wasn't aware of, I try to make unique designs for my clients but in retrospect it does appear that there are 2 predominant styles in my design. The first is the straight table based design exemplified by Glenturk Self Catering the second house style is shown by Craigells Self Catering in Dumfries and Galloway. There are exceptions to this like Gelston Lodge. Of course there is a great deal of logic to this, I don't have to redesign the wheel each time I design a website, and as my latest customers said that when I asked her to give me her 3 examples she gave three of my own sites as her examples. I thought she had misunderstood my request but she said no, her favoiurite 3 websites were mine which is why she wanted me to design the website for her business.
I suppose then that we do have a "house style" but I hope that it doesn't control me and that I am open up to any progressions in design and I love integrating new technologies in my websites. Proof of this is one of my latest websites (which is not yet live) which is a complete departure for me. I will post on this later.

It's not all about getting visitors to your website

I spend all my time getting new visitors to my customers websites.

With a newly designed website there are no problems. However much in the way of the cobblers children not having any shoes I have been aware that my own website for my property The Old Exchange had not been updated for about 4 years, and it was looking a bit tired. I put it off for a while but my statistics were showing me that something had to be done. How were the statistics showing me that ? well I am getting lots of people to my website, and a few years ago each visitor would look around the site, looking at many pages, but recently they were arriving at my website (for good terms like self catering scotland ) but the bounce rate was high. (they would arrive and leave again without looking at many pages) So it was time for a change, I have now completed the site and in a way of speaking my children now have shoes. Within the first week the stats show a dramatic change, by bounce rate is now down from 55% to 30% and my visitors look at 3x the number of pages. This should lead to increased bookings.

Getting web sites onto google maps

I have had some success in getting websites prominantly displayed in a short time by creating google map entries. At first it was very simple, especially for local searches. However it is getting harder. Some of my original successes have gone and I am now researching how to get them back. One of them is for Royal Mile Apartments in Edinburgh. I created a google map entry for the term Edinburgh Accommodation and the entry initially was the only business listed in the google map listings. Howver, by creating a google map beside this phrase, the listing has now been filled with other edinburgh based accommodations, mainly hotels. So this entry is to see if this link Edinburgh Accommodation will have an effect, we will see the results in due course.
a similar map might be for an accommodation in st ives cornwall. 8 Bellair Terrace, I have just created a google map listing, it is currently on page 5 of the google map listing for "self catering in cornwall" So hopefully this will push the listing up to the page 1 listing.

10 days to get a new product to page 1 on Google

My previous post describes the way a link works to promote a particular web page, in this instance it was a page on motorparty's classic car hire website regarding a page devoted to an e-type jaguar. Well you can read that post to find out more, but the result was faster than expected.
10 days was all it took to make this link push this web page onto the page 1 Google search for "e type jaguar hire" the power of an effective link is dramatic and can make a real difference to the profitability of your business.