Chocolate Lime

Client Support / Enquiries
Tel:
(08454) 638 108
Mob:
(07917) 366 035
E-Mail
enquiries@chocolatelime.co.uk


Low Cost Websites for Small Businesses

Chocolate Lime provide aOne Page Website Designffordable web sites, ecommerce / online shops, content management / database websites, chat forums, web hosting, design and development. While our prices may be cheap, the quality of our design, hosting and customer service is second to none. We provide exceptional value for money when compared to our competitors.

We are currently offering businesses a simple 1 page website for just £150 including free hosting for 1 year and site submission to the major search engines fully optimised. So, whether your looking to simply get your contact details online, advertise your services or just let the world know who you are – let Chocolate Lime create you a professional website design that’ll help market and promote your business or organisation.

Improving Site Performance with Analytics

SEO is a web pages’ key strength. Any website requires search engine optimisation keyword research to reach its full potential. As a first step, you must work hard to identify the most appropriate wording to meet your business objectives and ensure better web coverage in comparison to your competitiors. It is necessary to do extensive research on keywords, don’t just try to make a guess at what keywords might work and what won’t.

Although SEO is very much a process of trial and error, there are ways you can reduce the risk of having a stab in the dark and come up with a successfully optimised site. By doing the homework in defining your keywords, implementing them correctly throughout your site along with building a strong linking infrastructure, you stand every chance of featuring highly in search rankings.

Once you are obtain high rankings for your chosen keywords, the next thing is keep yourself there. Too many companies sit back and think the hard work is done. Search engine rankings are highly competitive, with competitors looking to out rank each other. The important thing is to understand where your site is succeeding and areas for improvement. How can this be done? The only way to truly keep on top of the competition is through Analytics.

Google Analytics is a tool to analyse the performance of your websites through a real time data stream of statisical data. This allows the immediate determination of the drop in traffic, words people use search to find your site and where they navigate to after landing on your start page. This information can then be used to hep refine and adapt the your website.

Google Analytics can help you identify areas of sites that are in need of development. It may be that the website receives a large amount of traffic, but has a high bounce rate of 80% for example. This is where you can go to search and find exactly what it is that is causing your visitors to leave. Sometimes it is something as simple as a bad link, while in other cases, there may be copy or design problems. Google Anayltics can help you identify such problems and get you back on track.

Basically, use your SEO Analytics problems as the troubleshooter. Starting search engine optimisation can be good, but will become obsolete in no time if you do not seek to develop and improve through time. Analytics’ job is to ensure that minor errors are found and resolved to ensure your website performs as it should.

Just like updates to SEO, the analysis must be regular and potential issues resolved. A few days worth of missed traffic can cause serious problems even for small sites. Take advantage of analytics to ensure your site is fully optimised throughout.

Chocolate Lime provide Google Analytic Reporting with all website design packages.

Microsoft and Yahoo Sign Search Deal

Microsoft’s Bing search engine will now power the Yahoo website and Yahoo will in turn become the advertising sales team for Microsoft’s online offering.

The deal ends years of back-and-forth negotiations between the two companies. Microsoft originally offered to buy Yahoo in January 2008 – with an offer worth about $47.5bn. Yahoo instead opted for an online advertising partnership with rival Google. But that tie-up was later abandoned because of the risk of a protracted battle with regulators over competition issues.

While Microsoft receives access to Yahoo’s search technology, Yahoo receives a big bump in annual revenues, 88% of the search-generated ad revenues from its own sites for the first 5 years of the 10-year deal, much higher than is standard in the industry.

What is good news for SEO is that with Microsoft and Yahoo using just one engine, there is now one less engine to keep track of. Additionally, the combined market share of these giants of the Internet cannot be overlooked either. The tie-up will give Microsoft and Yahoo a combined market share in the US search ad market of about 30%.

Let’s see what unfolds…

Mozilla reveals Firefox 3.7 Mockups

It only seems like yesterday that Mozilla released version 3.5 there increasingly popular browser Firefox. Mozilla have released some Windows themed mockups of Firefox 3.7

The mockups, from an earlier release cycle, look like Mozilla are going back to a simpler look, whilst tapping into the features embed in Microsoft Windows Vista and 7.

Firefox 3.7 Windows themed mockups

3 noticeable changes:

1. A translucent / glossy look that blends into the toolbar
2. A new ‘Page’ button which will provide further on-page functionality
3. Tools for customising the browser UI

The Importance of a Good ‘Design Brief’

In order to achieve the best results for any given project, it’s imperative that a well structured ‘Design Brief’ is supplied, proving beneficial to both the client and designer.

Give any designer free reign to create you an image, a logo, a corporate identity, a company website and you are overlooking the importance of the output reflecting your needs and wants as a client. An effective design brief is the first and single most critical factor in ensuring that any design project is successful.

What is a Design Brief?

A well structured, informative design brief ensures that both parties are of an understanding as to what is required, eliminating any confusion throughout the whole design process. However, through experience, even those clients who would much rather prefer leaving everything up to the designer with very limited background information other than ie. “I’m not sure what I want, can you not just create something and we’ll see if I like it at the end” or my favourite” I just want it to look nice”, really ‘DO’ have a subconscious vision as to what they want – whether they know it or not. Perhaps it’s the thought of tackling something they’re unsure about. Listed below are some pointers to think about prior to designers starting a project.

  • The background of the company, what you do and more importantly, what you are trying to achieve with the project
  • Who is the target audience?
  • Are there any specific guidelines, for example, fonts and colours to be used
  • What sort of look they want – traditional, contemporary, artistic, fun and such like
  • What’s the budget?

From a design perspective, a little thought at the outset goes a long way….ensuring the resulting design reflects the conscious (or subconscious!) vision.

In order to achieve the best results for any given project, it’s imperative that a well structured ‘Design Brief’ is supplied, proving beneficial to both the client and designer.

Give any designer free reign to create you an image, a logo, a corporate identity, a company website and you are overlooking the importance of the output reflecting your needs and wants as a client. An effective design brief is the first and single most critical factor in ensuring that any design project is successful.