And this perhaps is the crux of the situation with regard to IT projects which are widely regarded as difficult to manage and commonly exceed budgets or fail to achieve the expected objective. The importance of ensuring that the whole project is nailed down to an actual detailed specification may well be the reason why so many IT projects fail.

The fact is that no one has a crystal ball and no end user, project sponsor or stakeholders are actually capable of detailing the project from start to finish in enough detail to ensure that the project actually delivers what it is hoped to achieve. If you were building a house from the ground up, would you be able to know exactly which shades of paint are required in every room, on every door and on every window, before you actually stand inside the room and get a feel for how much light is entering the room and the other colours that you see looking out through the windows? The choice of furniture and carpets all affect the final decision to choose the best colour so how can someone prescribe a detailed specification of absolutely every part of every house before its built? Possibly, although it’s quite a task to expect any non-expert.

IT projects where the end result is relatively abstract, unlike houses, the ability of anyone to accurately predict and specify in absolute detail simply is not possible. This is well recognised by Agile methodology practitioners who break projects down into bite size chunks and allow project sponsors to have choices throughout the project as to exactly what details are required after each iteration. This approach creates freedoms to choose what is and is not needed at various stages of a project importantly allowing budgets to be kept closer to what is needed and not what was predicted to be needed.

At UKNetWeb we have followed both PRINCE2 and Agile Methodologies. During this time we have found it’s quite simple: Agile as a system works and is the right solution for IT projects and those that try and keep everything in control using PRINCE2 end up with less control as the project system prevents any real ability to achieve detailed requirements.

We welcome discussion on such project management issues and are happy to explain more to both current and future clients.

After several years of development and implementation UKNetWeb are pleased to announce the launch of their Augeo Ecommerce System.

“No it can’t do that. No it can’t do that. No it can’t do that” is too often heard when discussion about how to improve a website. Augeo is a framework allowing customized functionality to be incorporated into sites according to exact requirements.

A one size fits all approach to displaying products, presenting navigation, optimizing pages for organic search or optimizing Google product feeds simply does not work. To gain greater market share requires businesses to innovate and create bespoke websites designed specifically around their customers needs.

“There are lots of off-the-shelf ecommerce systems available for online shops and many are very suitable for basic shops or start up businesses. Augeo is designed for online businesses that aspire to grow or have already out grown their existing ecommerce shopping systems.”

The launch will occur on 20^th July 2010 at 5000ft above Cornwall in a chartered aeroplane.

“Cornwall is a great place to launch this solution because of its expected European investment in next generation fibre-optic broadband allowing speeds up to 100Mbps. This development is seen as vital for businesses who are aiming as high as we are.” said Toby Parkins, Director of UKNetWeb.

During the course of the first 2 week period traffic from Facebook.com has increased by around 250% over the previous 2 week period, fan numbers exceeded 800 and Facebook.com has risen to become the second highest (non search engine) referring website.

Facebook currently have in excess of 400million active users and in any 24hr period over 200million users will login. Whilst we would often encourage use of a number of different social media channels, the share of the population and the sheer numbers and that Facebook represents means that it will, for the foreseeable future, be quite a force to be reckoned with.

It is available below for reference.

You can skip sections by using the slider control at the bottom of the video clip.

For all those who could not get a place on the first course, please get in touch, as we are hoping to run another event on Thursday May 7th.

Social Media Taster Course

All the resources used to prepare the presenation have been added to our Delicious Social Bookmarks under the tag ‘smtc’ – you can access these by going to http://www.delicious.com/galileorm/smtc

More details on the presenters can be found below:

Aren Grimshaw
Social Media Consultant (UKNetWeb Limited)
Aren is an experienced marketer with a good knowledge of social media tools, trends and emerging technology. He has worked with a range of small to medium enterprises in identifying routes to market their business on and offline. In 2008 he was awarded the Hub Innovator of the Year Award for his work on virtual conferences and the new Business Cornwall website.

Rob Edlin
Internet Marketing Consultant (Niddocks Limited)
Rob works with small, medium and large businesses throughout the UK, delivering training and consultancy on how to improve paid search results, natural search marketing, SEO and other forms of online marketing. His company, Niddocks, is a Google Adwords Qualified Company. Clients include: Fifteen Cornwall, Eden Project and Frugi.

Toby Parkins
Web and Ecommerce Consultant (UKNetWeb Limited)
Toby has worked with a range of small, medium and large businesses to identify routes to maximise their revenue online. His work with UKNetWeb has seen him deliver a number of world firsts on behalf of clients. In 2007 he was responsible for generating a mobile application for Nokia, forming part of a multi-channel campaign across numerous countries.

Customer engagement is all about engaging your customers with your company or brand and it can lead to increased order values, customer loyalty and word of mouth recommendation.

Given that a recession is around the corner or already upon us, keeping customers is something that any well minded company should be focusing a lot of attention on.

Yet, in a survey reported in Brand Republic last week it was revealed that just 51% of companies have placed greater emphasis on customer engagement as a result of the economic crisis. 

The survey uncovered that those planning investment in new customer engagement strategies planned to spend their organisations’ money on a range of techniques, including many so called ‘Web 2.0’ areas such as blogging, user generated content and feedback and review systems to name a few. 

These services offer great ways to engage your customers. Blogs give you the opportunity to share wisdom or advice with your audience. User generated content allows your customers to create value with your organisation. And feedback / reviews offer that word of mouth recommendation to your goods or services.

Implementing these types of strategies can vary in cost and other resources; however, the investment can be more than worth it if it results in better relationships with your customers.  

So where do you start?

Have a look around at what the competition are doing. Start with the market leaders and work your way down to your own level (presuming you’re not one of the market leaders). What do you see as innovative? What would your customers react well to? How can you see their ideas working for you? 

Once you have the basic research sit down and brainstorm some of your own ideas. Put it all together and look at the resources you have to hand; money, time, personnel and skills. 

Perform a basic cost to return analysis – run each customer engagement idea through this process, determining whether the benefits to be had, match or exceed the investment required. 

This may sound difficult to ascertain when looking at customer engagement but there are ways to get a basic idea. Here are some questions you should ask yourself when evaluating any potential changes:

What is the average order value? – Can you make changes that will lead to greater order values? How much greater would you expect order values to be after making any change?

How long do you usually retain a client for? How valuable is the average client over that period? If you retain a customer what value would you be retaining in the business? 

How many customers do you normally lose? What target would you set on retaining customers after any changes? How much value would the retained clients bring you?

What does it cost to gain each new client in the first place? How much is your marketing, advertising and PR spend compared to the number of customers acquired? What would the value of keeping clients be over acquiring new ones?

Armed with the information you can make informed choices on the customer engagement strategy that is best for your business. However, remember this is an evolutionary process and should not stop there. Record your progress and ensure that you tweak your strategy regularly to ensure the best results. 

If you would like help or advice on preparing your customer engagement strategy or implementing and integrating blogging, user content or feedback systems please call and speak to Aren on 01872 555933 or send an email using the contact form provided.

With countries around the world falling into technical recessions and consumers struggling to obtain credit, ecommerce website owners need to be clever with their websites to ensure continuing growth.

In recent years website developers may have hidden any lack of ability behind a buoyant market which has seen double digit growth for a number of years; however, with times changing they will now be forced to demonstrate their expertise.

At the time of writing this piece, UK expectations for the 2008 Christmas shopping period look good for ecommerce websites, albeit they are not set to grow at quite such a large percentage as seen in previous years.

Findings taken from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index, and reported in ZDNet, show that UK shoppers will spend £13.16bn on ecommerce websites in the last quarter of 2008. This rise is equivalent to a healthy year on year increase of 15%; however, represents a drop from the 54% year on year growth reported in the year before.

In the US, things are not looking so healthy but again the figures have not entered a decline. According to comScore’s monthly retail ecommerce sales estimates, October saw the lowest monthly growth rate since they began tracking results in 2001 with just 1% year on year growth.

All told it will be the more savvy ecommerce website owners who reap the rewards this Christmas, while others who have not made sufficient plans for their ecommerce website will pay the price.

In the coming months, pressures on the economy will only serve to push things further so what advice can we give on getting the most from your ecommerce website?

Start by getting the right developer for your ecommerce website.

When selecting a web developer you need to ensure you are selecting one that is focused on the fundamental idea of ‘return on investment’. You need a developer who understands the market and can identify areas of development that will lead to sales growth.

It is easy to get carried away with statistics. Many web developers will talk about visitor numbers and rankings. These are important to your overall success but can be used to mask the real areas of importance such as bounce rates, cart abandonment and purchase levels.

Don’t rely on rankings alone. These figures often have more to do with other areas such as search engine optimisation (SEO) or marketing than they do web design or development.

Once you believe you have found a suitable developer for your new or existing ecommerce website you should take time at the outset to research your online competition, brainstorm functionality and define potential functionality.

Using the notes from this session you and your developer should perform a cost to benefit analysis on each function. The simple question you need to ask yourself is ‘Will this make me money*?’. It might sound harsh, but if you don’t take your website development seriously and pay for functionality that does not lead to increased profitability you are wasting money that could be used to generate a profit somewhere else.

*When we say ‘Will this make me money?’ you should keep in mind that customer retention is very important. If a particular function will help you keep customers coming back then you are developing potential repeat business which can be very valuable.

Wish Lists and Ongoing Development

Sometimes you will find that some areas of development are great ideas for the future. They could provide a decent return on the investment required, just not until user levels reach a higher level. Don’t discard these ideas – keep a note of them on a ‘Wish List’ and add them to an ongoing development agreement or plan to review them at a later date.

Other times you will notice that there are small improvements which could yield higher sales. It may be that you could add hurdle or bulk discounts, offer promotional codes or inform customers when items return to stock. Good ideas should be built into an ongoing development plan to spread the cost and allow for continued growth to be achieved.

Track Performance and Tweak

On launching your site ensure you have Google Analytics installed with Goals and Funnels established. Review the data regularly with your developer to establish fresh areas for development keeping in mind the simple rule – ‘Will this make me money?’.

If you can see that you are suffering from high levels of web cart abandonment deal with it early. If you were running a bricks and mortar store where customers where literally dropping out at the till you’d do something about it – why should the web be any different?

Map how your customers use your site. Are there opportunities to maximise the sales value? Are you losing customers on any particular page or product? If so, make changes and monitor the results.

Providing you follow the rules of ‘return on investment’ with your ecommerce website there is no reason why you shouldn’t fare well through tougher economic times. Get the right developer at the start and the investment will more than pay for itself.

If you would like to receive personal advice on how we help you grow your ecommerce revenues year after year, call Aren on 01872 555933 or use the contact form provided.

In making this move there will be many website owners, particularly those with ecommerce websites, who may need to have changes made to their website to bring the new VAT rate into action.

This change should be simple in the case of many sites; however, there will be sites where this is not the case.

VAT has stood at the present rate of 17.5% since before the first ecommerce websites were built and as such it is very likely that some website developers may have coded the VAT rate in a way that makes it difficult to change.

In the case of non ecommerce sites it may be that you reference prices on your site with VAT included or shown. Like ecommerce sites, these prices may need to be changed and should you not be able to make these changes within your website content management system (CMS) you will need your developer to help.

Where you are unsure of what changes need to be made we can perform a full site assessment and report back on what needs to be changed. Should you know the changes required we can take the details and perform the changes required.

At UKNetWeb, we have a technically focused web design and development team who can perform all the necessary VAT changes to your site.

Please give us a call to see how we can help you ensure you are prepared for the Monday VAT change. Call and speak to Aren on 01872 555933 or email info@uknetweb.com for more information. Prices start from £75.

Sound familiar? Well if so, you need to get acquainted with goals and funnels within Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to your website. Aimed towards marketers, rather than geeks and techies, it generates a host of useful reports on the behaviour of visitors to your site.

Most important to many businesses is the goal and funnel elements included within the package. These detailed reporting systems allow you to track which pages result in lost conversions and where your would-be customers go.

However good your site, you will find that a percentage of would-be customers disappear during the buying process. Understanding where they go, and why, can be fundamentally important in making your site more successful.

Referred to as ‘Web Cart Abandonment’ on ecommerce websites, the average percentage of customers lost during 2007 was 52.1%. These customers leave for a variety of reasons ranging from matters completely out of your hands such as wrong credit card details to those well within your control, such as technical glitches or difficult processes.

So what are goals and funnels?

The term goal is used to refer to an outcome that you see as a positive result from your customer’s visit. This may be a successful purchase, viewing a particular page of your website or using the contact form. Whatever the goal you are looking to achieve, you can use the Google Analytics system to set the goal and track its success.

Monitoring the results is made easier through the Funnel Visualisation provided within the options. This visualisation shows how your would-be customers proceed down a particular path, predefined by yourself, towards the desired outcome or goal.

A typical Funnel Visualisation

This allows you to accurately monitor where and why your customers are leaving your site, abandoning their purchase or potential interest in your services.

Armed with this information, you and your sales or marketing team (in smaller businesses you and the cat) can look for reasons within the data and make changes or tweaks as necessary to reduce the losses and increase business.

If you would like to find out more about setting up goals and funnels you can visit the Google help pages here or speak to a member of our team about our range of support packages on 01872 555933 or by emailing info@uknetweb.com.