We’re very pleased to announce that Generate UK has just been awarded a coveted contract to design and build a new web site for NHS South Gloucestershire. The new site will be built on the award winning Sitekit content management system.

You can read the full press release below:

Generate UK wins NHS contract

• NEWBURY (July 21st, 2009)—Generate UK, a leading digital marketing agency, announces the signing of the NHS South Gloucestershire contract.  The project to design and build NHS South Gloucestershire’s new website is already well underway and scheduled to go live at the end of September 2009.

Michael Robinson Generate UK’s Commercial Director said “This is a time of extraordinary growth and progress for us as an organisation.  We are extremely excited at winning this contract and at Generate UK we believe in the importance of developing strong, long term relationships with all of our customers. Our new partnership with NHS South Gloucestershire is a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate our ability to be a part of delivering, measuring and improving business performance, Generate UK’s philosophy is all about ‘filling in the online marketing gaps for your business.”

Generate UK, a dynamic and commercial thinking digital marketing company based in Newbury, Berkshire offer professional web project services and a number of other exciting online marketing services that would add value to any commercial and public sector organisation.

“We chose Generate UK because of their obvious enthusiasm and commitment to service.  This project demonstrates a significant investment by NHS South Gloucestershire to help increase communications within the local community and it is imperative that we get it right.  After a rigorous tender process we believed that Generate UK’s partnership approach to their clients gave us the comfort we required to take that next step” said Sue Pratt, Communication Manager of NHS South Gloucestershire.

About Generate UK

Generate UK a next generation digital marketing agency in Berkshire. Our mission is simple; to help our clients generate more from their online marketing activities. We do this by helping our clients to leverage next generation Internet technology. This could mean anything from a well targeted email campaign to a long term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategy.  More information about Generate UK can be found on the Company’s Web site at www.generateuk.co.uk.

Press Contact

Joe Baily
01635 550431
joe.baily@generateuk.co.uk

Whilst data itself isn’t an activity, the collection of it is. Your Data is sacred and should be treated in this way. How you source and store your data is paramount to creating the base for your marketing activities and overall communication strategy.

There are many data companies/brokers within the market place offering clean data at exceptionally low prices. Having bought thousands upon thousands of data records from these companies, I would recommend that you: firstly know exactly where the list is sourced from; understand exactly what you are purchasing i.e. single use/multi use; what is the percentage bounce rate that they are offering, i.e. how clean are they stating the data is? And make sure you haggle over the price!

Other than buying data directly, we speak to many businesses who struggle to continually acquire new data; however there are many ways to address this.  Make sure your website is capturing data through downloads, newsfeeds, promotions and online forms. Incentivise your staff to find new data by making them aware of its importance.  Ensure that all of your marketing collateral gives the recipient the opportunity to respond with their details. The best form of data is the data you have collected yourself.

What do you think of our Digital Marketing Idea Top Tip number 20? Do you agree or disagree? Submit your comments below. What’s the worst that can happen?

During the course of the next month, we’re going to provide you with a countdown of what we think are the top 20 online marketing opportunities for companies in the UK. If you’re a regular reader of our blog, then you are most likely involved in Marketing in some shape or form? If so, I would imagine that you go through the daily rigors of trying to increase your brand and company’s visibility, through a multitude of different marketing channels, both Offline and Online. The Holy Grail is trying to figure out which one delivers the best results whilst tapping into the least amount of your marketing funds. 

Generate UK are an online marketing agency focused on finding the right environments to deliver targeted communications, using the best technologies to achieve maximum results. 

Why do we believe in online marketing?

• It’s measurable
• It’s quick
• It’s costs effective

The Top 20 Chart has been made up from our own commercial experiences, through our customers and partners’ knowing what has proven to be successful and what hasn’t.  We hope that our Top 20 Chart provides you with a number of useful ideas to put into practice and helps you strive towards an online strategy, which will take your online communication and website’s digital presence to that next level!  

We’re keen to hear from our readers, so please feel free to add your comments and own ideas below.

Pine and Oak Furniture is a Berkshire based furniture specialist with over 17 years experience in wood manufacturing, sales and finishing. The company trades from their four extensive showrooms offering customers excellent quality furniture, at a fair price, coupled with great service.

Pine and Oak recently decided to grow their business further by harnessing the power of the internet and launching a new ecommerce website. As a company, the operational structure was already in place to support an ecommerce site with good stock holding – offering customers immediate product availability, and a dedicated team of delivery staff and vehicles.

The challenge with the new site was to provide a system that was both customer friendly yet simple for Pine and Oak to administer. From a customer point of view, the site needed to have a design that was engaging, displayed the products clearly and offered a zoom facility. The ordering method needed to be swift, without a lengthily account sign-up procedure, ensuring that the whole process was as simple as possible.

And, for the Pine and Oak team, it was important to provide a system that was easy for non-technical staff to update the product catalogue, allow for seasonal promotions and track the order process.

The Generate Shopping Cart was the perfect solution to meet the needs of both the customer and Pine and Oak. The menu navigation and page structure are simple to use and the powerful search function allows customer to find exactly the product match they are looking for.

The website delivers advanced order and checkout features including single-page checkout, guest checkout and support for multiply payment types. The web-based control panel allows Pine and Oak to easily manage their product catalogue from any PC and allows the team to react quickly to market changes and promotions. The back-end features also provide all the tools necessary for the team to manage the website, delivering a professional ecommerce site.

The results are clear: a well designed and thought-out ecommerce website that allows customers to shop with complete confidence from the comfort of their own homes.

What Pine & Oak Furniture had to say; Daniel Hulett, Managing Director stated “The new site was an important way to grow my business particularly with lots of people now shopping online. We were also finding that customers visiting our showrooms were asking for our website details so they could browse our products at home.

Generate UK were immediately very friendly and approachable. Their relaxed attitude was in contrast to other agencies I had considered – they made conversations about technical aspects of the site easy to understand. I am extremely happy with the site design and the ecommerce system - Generate UK have delivered painlessly exactly what I needed!”

Please click here to visit the Pine and Oak Furniture Website.

If you would like to discuss how an ecommerce website could help your business please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. If you’re already selling products via the Internet, why not let Generate UK provide a free of charge Website Health Check.

As a typical male, I have never really seen the appeal of fighting with the rest of the world to get to the shops on a Saturday morning. The parking is always a nightmare, the shopping centres are crowded and by the time I actually find the men’s section, the last thing I want to do is rummage through rails and rails of clothing… This is the point at which I usually decide to hit the closest ‘watering hole’, feeling far less inclined to part with my shopping money.

Thank goodness for Internet shopping. It has changed all this for me. I can now shop from the comfort of my own home, choosing from thousands of retailers who are all trying to get me to spend my money on their site. The complete experience is one of ease and convenience (assuming the retailer has a decent ecommerce website!) and allows me to shop with speed, sitting back to await my delivery.

The growth of the online shopping sector has been impressive; in 2007 total sales grew by 35 per cent, and in 2008 growth was 25 per cent. Despite the current trading climate, this year we will see estimated web sales grow by 13 per cent exceeding the £20bn mark for the first time. Internet shopping will substantially outperform the high street, with an estimated sales decline of 0.6 per cent for 2009.

I’m sure not everyone suffers from my dislike of the ‘bricks and mortar’ shopping experience, so why else is internet shopping so popular?

The most commonly cited factor is that the Internet offers better value for money. The opportunity to buy low priced products from a huge choice of retailers is obviously appealing. Add to this the option to use comparison websites, cash back sites, discount codes and you can bring the item cost down to well below the price on the high street.

The shopping experience is also getting better and better. Ecommerce websites are advancing every day with new ideas and technologies. We’ve seen the introduction of 3D imagery, video content and even software that uses a series of interactive reality animations to provide realistic sensations for touch – one of the biggest limitations to buying on the internet.

The issue of trust has always been an interesting debate with concerns over personal security topping the list. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) recently reported that for 2009 among those people who shop online, 54 per cent now feel it is as safe as shopping in store compared to 26 per cent in 2006. This improvement in trust will only grow, as more and more consumers improve their knowledge of the security in place and the protection that is available when shopping online.

So what next for the online retailer? The new challenge will be how to differentiate your business from the rest of the online market place as ecommerce sites become more and more prevalent. A well designed site, with an easy to use order and trusted checkout system may not be enough to keep your site outperforming your competitors!

Can Generate UK deliver your strategy? If you would like to talk about our services and how we can help your business, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. Please feel free to post your comments.

Donnington Grove Country Club is one of Newbury’s ‘best kept secrets’; as well as offering a first-class golf course the venue also offers fantastic conference facilities, an intimate wedding venue, a beautiful hotel and a newly opened restaurant. 

The existing website did not do justice to the growing Donnington Grove business and therefore, Generate UK were tasked with delivering a fresh yet functional new site. 

It was important to Donnington Grove to have the flexibility to make regular changes to the site content to reflect new promotional activity, special offers and specific event information. These changes needed to be managed in-house whilst still maintaining the professionalism of the rest of the site and therefore the Generate UK Content Management System (CMS) was utilised. 

One of the biggest challenges with the Donnington Grove site was to deliver a design that show-cased each of the different business areas but was also easy to navigate. Equally, Donnington Grove had to manage the conflict between promoting their core golf business over and above the other areas of the company. 

The website has been launched and very well received by both customers and staff alike. The CMS has given Donnington Grove a very simple and user friendly interface that enables the team to make changes to any aspect of the content without the worry of inadvertently changing the site’s main structure. 

The CMS system provides a great platform for search engine optimisation through search engine friendly URLs, keywords, descriptions and page titles. This has enabled Donnington Grove to compete with other businesses for keywords that they were previously not listed for. 

The website analytics have shown an increase of 130% in the daily number of unique visitors to the site alongside an increase of 420% in the number of ‘sign-ups’ for the Donnington Grove Newsletter and special offers. In particular, new membership enquiries have increased and are25% of the number of new ‘sign-ups’. This has meant that Donnington Grove have been able to reduce their marketing spends in other areas. 

Oscar Inaraja, Deputy General Manager of Donnington Grove Country Club stated “The main challenge the new management team faced when they took over Donnington Grove was to make people aware that Donnington Grove existed and was open to the public. We are not just a golf venue, we have conference facilities, a wedding venue, a great restaurant; all of these services have a different set of target customers, which means that we had to adopt a flexible approach to marketing to ensure we were able to deliver the right messages to the right people.  

Generate UK have proven to be a great partner to work with, they have delivered more than what we agreed and are proactive and flexible in terms of helping us to identify new opportunities to increase the awareness of Donnington Grove. The new content managed website is the platform we needed to help promote our fantastic Golf Club.” 

Click here to visit the Donnington Grove website

If you would like to discuss how the Generate UK CMS could drive your website please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431.

Newbury Flooring Centre is an independent flooring solutions provider who specialise in supplying quality flooring products from leading manufacturers.

Until very recently, Newbury Flooring Centre had a limited web presence.  They were keen to change this and invest in a new platform that would enable them to reach a wider target market, whilst allowing them the flexibility to introduce e-commerce to their site in the future.

The brief was simple; to provide a web site platform that encouraged more conversations with potential customers. Due to the size of the investment, the platform also had to support the future needs of Newbury Flooring Centre, such as the ability to take orders via the web site.

Newbury Flooring’s new web site has been built using the Generate Shopping Cart System; a powerful e-commerce platform that is designed for non technical users. Simplistic and effective, it offers complete search engine optimisation support, one page check out, full integration with payment engines, delivery agencies and Google.

One month after the launch of the new web site, Newbury Flooring had received search engine traffic for over 200 different keywords and phrases. The site was also quickly indexed by Google, creating an Internet Footprint of over 100 pages in the first month. These factors have enabled Newbury Flooring Centre to quickly compete with more established web sites in their market.

The project was delivered on schedule and is a great example of a local business driving sales by using the Internet effectively. Generate UK are delighted to be working with Newbury Flooring Centre as they build their online reputation.

Michael Robinson, Managing Director of Newbury Flooring Centre stated

“If it’s been on your mind to launch a new web site for your business, now is the time to act. In this day and age, I don’t think a company can survive without a site - it’s an integral part to every business. I would also recommend using a professional agency such as Generate UK who will deliver a site that provides commercial results. If you’re worried about your business, you can’t afford to sit back. Get your new site today.”

Click to view the Newbury Flooring Centre web site

If you would like to discuss how an ecommerce shopping cart could help your business please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. If you’re already selling products via the Internet, why not let Generate UK provide a free of charge web site health check.

OPISAS is one of the fastest growing international investment companies specialising in providing the latest overseas investments in the most profitable regions throughout the world.

OPISAS are a new business and as a result were keen to stand out in their market and differentiate themselves against their competitors. They were also determined that the web site should contribute to their growth in terms of new sales and marketing opportunities.

A major area of focus was the usability and navigation of the site; early on in the scoping exercise a “three click” rule was introduced, which meant that it should not take the visitor any more than three clicks before landing on a property page. It was also very important that there were plenty of opportunities for the visitor to engage directly with OPISAS, by way of call to actions.

Another important aspect of this project was that OPISAS wanted to make their own updates and add their own content to the web site. This was vital because the quicker a new development could be added, the quicker the details would be available to potential customers. The ability to update and make changes in accordance with their market conditions gives OPISAS a huge advantage in this competitive industry.

Generate CMS provides OPISAS with the ability to amend every page within their web site, and supports search engine friendly URLS. It also has the advantage of being able to provide up to date visitor information on the fly, as well as incorporating the latest Social Media icons to encourage visitor interaction.

Tom Berry, Senior Partner of OPISAS stated “The challenge for Generate UK was to build a brand new website that needed to meet a number of objectives, those were; a great design, easy to navigate, encourage call back and ultimately sell property. The website is fantastic and it meets all of our objectives and more highlighted during the initial project scoping meeting. Now it’s built we’ve entered into the second phase of marketing the website and Generate UK are doing an amazing job of increasing our presence in all the search engines to help drive targeted traffic to our site, we’re really happy with how things are progressing”

Click to view the OPISAS web site.

If you would like a demonstration of the Generate UK CMS or would like us to quote on your design requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. If you’ve already launched your site, why not talk to us about growing your Internet Footprint.

So now we’re all being told we’re in a deep recession, come on people…..it’s now time to start understanding how to make your budget work harder! 

Gone are the days when you threw as much as you could at the wall hoping for something to stick or you position your meta data and keywords in their rightful places and hope for the best, let’s start thinking a little bit beyond the stale old marketing techniques and start embracing the new online world. The quicker you do it and understand it the quicker you’ll get to where you need to be. Some might say you’ve already missed the boat? Personally I completely disagree, I speak to many companies daily and 70% of these companies are still nowhere near where they need to be in terms of technology, skills and knowledge so you still have time. 

We’ve reported in past blogs that online marketing is set to increase dramatically over during 2009 and the reason is ‘The Stats Don’t Lie!’ 

Let’s look at things in a simplistic manner, would you go out and buy a new Mini without test driving it first? Read a review or two? Listen to a mate who raves about how good his Mini is? No of course not, because you want to know that you’re not wasting your money and let’s be honest there’s obviously a few spare Minis out there at the moment so you’re bound to pick up a bargain. 

Thinking about the above scenario within the marketing spectrum any sensible business owner, marketing manager/director will want to be able test, track, analyse and basically understand the metrics. This will enable them to see if the activities they’re looking to invest into are going to provide them with the desired return which inevitably is sales, or switching back to the above scenario an enjoyable and reliable drive that’s not going to be a waste of your hard earned cash. 

I used to sell advertising and while I still love magazines and buy into the whole print media industry from a marketer’s perspective it’s a gamble. You can place numerous promotional codes on the advertisement however you can never really understand the full mechanics and your exact returns.  When I used to sell advertising I always dreaded the renewal process. Having to present to an advertiser, who the year before spent £30k with me on a repeat half page colour ad on page 7, why they should sign up for another year without any hard core facts and figures, barring the fact that our circulation had increased by 3000 was always a challenge. 

Spending money on marketing always represents a gamble however marketing online represents far less of a gamble as you can test and measure. I love that ability, test and measure! It makes everything a lot clearer and my decisions a lot easier. 

Online Marketing needs to be embraced and if you haven’t yet fear not, there is still the window of opportunity.  I spoke to a company the other day who basically was bragging that they had x amount of traffic to their site and x amount of back links which was true, however where this company failed in the online spectrum was the analytics and measuring part of equation. As, when we looked into the traffic 80% of it came from America and Google.com not Google.co.uk and the fact that they only sold to the UK was quite concerning and in relation to their links 60% came from one source which isn’t bad but isn’t really helping their SEO cause. 

Whatever online activity you feel is going to help your business, take a step and trial it as the Stats Don’t Lie! Good luck and if you need any advice call 01635 550 431 and speak to the Generate UK Team.

Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009.

There are a number of reasons contributing to this continued rise:

• The economic doom and gloom is putting pressure on everyone’s marketing budgets, however at the same time there is a need for an increase in retention marketing, which email marketing is perfect for.
• There is an increased number of email service providers, which is bringing down the cost and adding value to the marketing department (in most cases anyway).
• We’re all beginning to see the benefit of email marketing from a return on investment perspective. This is certainly the case when measuring the cost of the campaign; however it is fair to say that many businesses need to go one step further in terms of measuring their campaigns with the amount of business it produces.
• Most businesses recognise that they have to work harder for their slice of the cake; as a result there is a greater focus on building email lists and encouraging email sign ups from webmasters and marketing managers.
• Email marketing offers businesses the opportunity to send highly targeted and very relevant email correspondence.
• Businesses in the UK are beginning to understand the benefits of autoresponders and trigger emails.

In general this is good news; companies recognise the benefit of email marketing and are using it for sales purposes as well as retention purposes. However there is a cautionary element of this blog; the more businesses that adopt email marketing, the more email competition there is out there. This means there will be an impact on your open rates and click throughs as people start to screen their mails more. A recent survey from MarketingSherpa highlighted the following 5 reasons for email recipients to hit the spam button:

• 52% hit their spam button after receiving emails they had not signed up to
• 41% said they hit the spam or junk option because the email was not of interest
• 25% said they went spam crazy because they receive too much email from the sender
• 20% of recipients hit their spam button because they receive too much email in general
• A final 15% of respondents to the survey hit their spam or junk button because they found the email offensive

This was quite an interesting survey and one that most marketers would find beneficial. Consider the case of over 50% of recipients who hit the spam because they had not signed up to receive an email. This is a huge figure and the more people who spam block your emails, the greater chance of a flag being raised about your email sending habits. In my opinion, this adds weight to the arguement that you should be doing everything possible to grow your marketing lists and encouraging people to sign up.

Once you have people signed up, it is all about sending them the right information. Think about your list, what their interests might be and send them emails that will appeal to them. These figures show that if you don’t take the relevancy factor into consideration, then as many as 41% will hit the spam button.  This is a huge waste as we all know how difficult it is to grow our lists.

Another thing to think about is how often you send emails to the same contacts; a daily email with a tip is very different to a daily email trying to sell something. It is important to get the balance with your list right, otherwise you could lose up to 20% of your subscribers.

So in summary, the marketing trend for email marketing is positive. The industry is continuing to grow, UK businesses are starting to realise the benefit from a cost and ROI perspective. However, like all forms of marketing, you have to enter it with your eyes open and be prepared to test and tweak your campaigns. Have a look at our 9 Steps to Enterprise Email Marketing for some ideas.

Also, don’t forget traditional postal mail campaigns. Going against the norm can often be an effective marketing strategy, and besides, when was the last time someone sent you a nice letter or flyer at your office?

This blog post was created with the help of E-consultancy.com and based on a roundtable discussion with some of the leading names in the industry. If you would like to talk about email marketing and what it could do for your business, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01635 550431. Please feel free to post your comments.