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.

How Imoprtant is a link ? to Motorparty

Here is a live Experiment on the importance of links.
I had a chat with Martin of Motorparty for whom I have done some SEO work in the last 2 years. Martin has a background in Mechanical Design, with major car manufactureres such as Rover, Porche and Aston Martin. He now runs a business restoring and hiring classic cars from his base in South West Scotland called Motorparty. Classic Car Hire
This experiment is related to one of his cars an E-Type Jaguar. Martin has just completed the renovation of a lovely E-Type Jaguar and now the car is ready for hire. He has created a webpage on his website for this car and the page is well optimised for the term E Type Jaguar Hire and it can be found on google if you search for "e type jaguar hire" however it is listed on page 6, and is not moving higher up the results, so I have just created a link to this page, and the test of this link is to see if it will push the page up to googles first page position for this search.

Now this blog is likely to be scanned by Google within 2 weeks, and the effect of the link will take perhaps 5 to 20 days after that. So hopefully one month should see Martins webpage on page 1 for the search E Type Jaguar Hire . So the experiment is the effect of 1 powerful link on a web page.
Why is this link powerful ? This blog has a pr of 2, the link text includes the phrase "E Type Jaguar Hire" and it is linked to the single page on Martins website which advertises an E Type Jaguar for Hire, also the text on this page around the link includes this search phrase. These things all make the link powerful. So ...... watch this space and see what happens.

The fastest booking in the West. (for a new self catering accommodation)

Donal Bell of Gelston Lodge Cottages asked me a question in an e-mail this morning.

Donald and Charlotte have 3 lovely self catering cottages located close to the coast between Gelston and Auchencairn in Dumfries and Galloway. I created a website for them early last year, and they have had a very successful first year. They finished their 4th cottage a few weeks ago and asked me to add this to the website. Long Barn self catering in Dumfries and Galloway

So the question ?

2 bookings within 12hrs on the site. Is that a new record for Site Web Design?

Well I put a new website online for Helensdale in Drummore - Luxury self catering Scotland - , and the owner, Elspeth told me that she had 2 bookings within a couple of days, which I thought was very fast.

I hadn't thought of a contest, but I will from now on. I believe Gelston Lodge is the record for now. But each website I create or change will be entered in this new competition.

My aim is now to get the fastest booking in the West.

How do you get 21,296 unique visitors to your website in one day ?

Black Clauchrie

I am currently working with Caroline Goodall to redesign her website and help with search engine optimising for black clauchrie holiday homes based in Ayrshire.

Caroline and her husband have been taking part in a documentary for channel 4 called "country house rescue" and as a graphic designer Caroline asked me to help her get her design converted to a website and uploaded on the net.

So we have had one personal meeting and lots of telephone tutorials together and we had the deadline of 6/1/09 as this is when the program was aired. It kind of worked, Caroline was happy with the results and is empowered in her new ability to design websites. The deadline was tight and I was still loading the email address and statcounter to the website as the program was running.

What a deluge !! the total for the evening was 21,296 unique visitors. So if you want to dramatically increase visitors to your website - its simple - just star in a TV documentary !