Blonde Ambition – Web Design Portfolio by Leanne Norris

I will be running the Sony Ericsson London Half Marathon on Sunday 26th September 2010 to raise funds for the Stoke Mandeville Hospital Cancer Care and Haematology Unit.

I ran the same half marathon last year but for Macmillan Cancer Care. This time, I have decided to run for a much smaller, local cancer charity and I am hoping that you will support me by making a donation via my “Just Giving” web page.

I am running in loving memory of my beautiful Nan, who sadly lost her fight against bowel cancer a few years ago. If you have been affected by cancer and live in the local area (I am from High Wycombe), then I would be very grateful if you could pledge your support.

Please make your donation here:
http://www.justgiving.com/Leanne-Norris

THANK YOU!

If you’re wondering what a website can do for your business, I have listed below 16 reasons why you should have one:

1. Your competitors already have their own website

2. Your customers and potential customers already search the web

3. Your web site will promote your business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

4. Your customers can buy your products online

5. Your web site can advertise your products and/or services in much more detail

You can have many pages of information about your company and your products and/or services in much more detail than you would ever be able to pay for in more traditional media, such as a printed advert.

6. You can change the information on your website instantly

7. Your website can reach potential customers locally, nationally or worldwide – at no extra cost

8. Your website can save you money

Lower printing costs because you need much less printed letters and brochures.

Lower postage costs for the same reason – email becomes a major (and much cheaper) distribution method.

Lower advertising costs because your web site lasts longer and produces greater results than adverts.

9. Your website can work like a robot

Sending information to customers, replying to emails and even making sales – day and night.

You can reply to your customers or potential customers automatically without you having to get involved at all. With simple automatic-emails you are able to set up specific targeted replies to different people at any time of day or night.

10. Your web site can convey a professional and-up-to date image

Your customers won’t be able to tell whether you employ 100 staff or none.

As a business person you have the opportunity to present yourself to the marketplace just as effectively and professionally as a multi-million pound company. You can establish credibility in a variety of ways, such as putting useful information on your website, or making files available to download.

11. Your web site can help you give improved customer service

There could be a list of ‘frequently asked questions’ about your service or product. This is an area that is often overlooked by web site owners. The simplest example of this is putting up a FAQ page (frequently asked questions) on your web site. Not only is this very helpful to customers because it provides instant answers to their “frequently asked” questions, but it also saves you and your employees considerable management time in not having to answer a string of e-mails/phone calls/faxes. What this usually means is when you do receive that e-mail/phone call/fax it is an actual order rather than an inquiry!

You can make information readily available to your customers. For example, new information has suddenly become available concerning your products. Put it on your website and communicate via e-mail to your customers.

12. You can test out new services or products instantly

This is made less expensive by sending emails to your list of current customers and contacts. They can then visit your web site for more detailed information. Simply put up a new web page setting out the relevant information, and send an e-mail to your database of existing (and relevant) customers, and ask for their views.

Market research – You can acquire very quick customer feedback from a large audience with an online form that could be filled out in seconds – providing valuable information to you, with minimal inconvenience to your customer.

13. You can send details of new offers by email to your current customers and contacts

Again referring readers to your web site!

You have some stock that is running out of date and you wish to sell it at a reduced price. Or you have received limited stock of a particular product that is of high appeal to a relatively small number of people. It really doesn’t matter what sort of “deal” you have, provided it is presented professionally you can e-mail your database of customers and past enquirers.

14. You can combine email marketing with your web site

With e-mail you can advertise your website. There is no quicker way of getting your sales messages in front of a prospective customer who can be looking at your web site within 2 seconds of opening your mail!

You can collect e-mail addresses of people who visit your site and have expressed an interest in your products. You can then use this list to send information on ‘deals’ you are running or to pass on any other useful information.

15. You can use your web site to provide information on a regular basis to your company employees

You can keep the information secret if you wish by making it accessible only to people who know the password.

16. Your website can keep a track of how many people visit

With most adverts you will never know how many people read your offers. But your website can have tracking code inserted in to the pages so that you are able to tell exactly how many people have visited your web site, where those people came from, which search term they used in which search engine, which pages they visited on your web site, how long they spent on your web site. What other advertising medium issues this sort of valuable feedback on your selling and marketing material?

Do you have a website that is built entirely in Flash and concerned about how well your site is doing in search engines? Perhaps you are thinking of having a site built in Flash and would like to understand how SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can be affected? Here are my thoughts on this issue.

Not every search engine is able to crawl and index the content of all Flash websites. Even those that can often do it with errors. This is certainly the case with a website fully implemented in Flash as a single file.

You will notice that the URL never changes no matter where people navigate on the site. As a result, search engines are unable to direct visitors to the proper page within that file. As the site only has one potential entry page (the main URL), this cuts off all potential pages that could otherwise be indexed in search engines. Therefore, it is very difficult to target a wide assortment of keyphrases, potentially eliminating SEO results or rankings.

Search engines rank pages based upon a number of criteria, but one of the most important to SEO results is the text that they can “understand” on individual pages. At present, search engines read primarily HTML text. As all the text is included in the Flash file, the search engine will find it difficult to read the text and therefore will not know what the page is about, which could harm SEO results.

Full Flash websites often have the browser’s back button disabled. From a usability point of view, the back button is one of the most important navigation elements after hyperlinks. If you are going to promote a Flash site via pay-per-click advertising, you should know that Google AdWords doesn’t approve pages with a disabled back button.

Recommendations

If you would still prefer a full Flash site then at the very least, make sure that basic meta data has been added to the site code. Title, description and keywords will enable search engines to find and display your site under correct search terms.

An option would be to create an HTML version of your Flash site, and let users choose their preference. In that way, you get to keep your Flash site as it is and the HTML version is used for search engine spiders and users who either prefer HTML, do not like flash intros or simply do not have flash enabled on their PC.

My top recommendation would be to create your site in HTML, and then use Flash movies in place of images, buttons and banners. Therefore, you get to keep the moving elements of your site but the text is displayed as HTML to improve SEO performance.

Sunday was a hot day and the sun shone brightly as thousands of us ran through the streets of London, listening to the music coming from the DJ stands and live bands placed around the 13.2 mile course.

Before I had even passed the start line, I decided to stick to a pace of 5.6 miles an hour with the help of my new GPS watch, as this is a speed that I am comfortable with when running long distances. This tactic was quite unnerving at first, as everybody else seemed to be running past me but I just turned up the volume on my ipod and blocked everything else out of my mind. If I was going to make it through the course without stopping then I would have to go at my own pace and not follow the crowd.

As the miles increased, I gradually got in to a steady rhythm and started to take in the exciting atmosphere around me. People running in various charity t-shirts and others in a selection of fancy dress costumes including a group of giant bananas and men dressed as pink fairies for Breast Cancer Care. Macmillan teams were dotted around the course to support us and I was so happy to see my family at the 12 mile mark cheering me on! The last mile seemed to take forever but as soon as I saw the Sony Ericsson green arch, marking the finish line, I had enough energy to speed up and sprint to the end.

I made it! In a time of…. 2 hours and 21 minutes! Running the whole way without having to stop so I am very pleased with the result! I managed to raise  £655 for Macmillan Cancer Support and my Just Giving sponsorship page is still receiving donations.

I would like to say a big Thank You to everyone who made a donation – You’re all brilliant!

I can’t quite believe it but I am running in the Sony Ericsson London Half Marathon this Sunday!

It all started with an email I recieved back in January, advertising “Run to the Beat” – London’s Music Half Marathon. I only really started running about a year ago and have completed a few 5K charity runs for Cancer Research UK and High Wycombe 10K last July. A half marathon would be a huge challenge but the email grabbed my attention and I thought what an excellent idea, so I signed up. I decided early on that I would run to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support – A charity that means a lot to me personally and a great reason to get motivated for the long period of training that was about to begin.

Training started the very next day with a 2 mile run along local country roads. As I hadn’t been running on a regular basis for months, I started to feel out of breath during the first mile. This wasn’t going to be about finishing in a certain time, it was going to be about actually managing to get to the end in one piece!

Nevertheless, as time went on and training got tougher, I became more and more motivated to complete the 13.1 mile course in good time and without stopping to catch my breath. Soon, Macmillan were sending me my runners vest and regular updates on training tips and sponsorship advice. My online sponsorship form has recieved regular donations after promoting my charity run via email and Facebook.

Training has been enjoyable but tough. Training periods have gradually increased over time and my diet has had to change in order for me to sustain my energy levels and run greater distances. I have completed a couple of 10 mile runs in preperation for the race and regularly run 6-8 miles now with my breathing finally under control.

13,000 people will be taking part in this Sunday’s London Half Marathon. 200 of us will be running for Macmillan Cancer Support. We are hoping to reach our target of £80,000 – enough to fund a Macmillan nurse for 2 years.

It’s nearly time and I think I’m ready for the challenge!

If you would like to sponsor me and help raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, please visit: http://www.justgiving.com/leannenorrisfundraising

For more information on the ‘Run to the Beat’ London Half Marathon, please visit: http://www.runtothebeat.co.uk/

I am sometimes asked by work colleagues and clients for comparisons between different web analytics products – Which product should be used and how do they differ in the way that they compile data? As a result, I discuss below the differences between dynamic tracking and log file analysis and the pros and cons of implementing each method.

Dynamic tracking products, such as Google Analytics, may produce different traffic statistics compared to a log file analysis tool. This is because Google Analytics uses client-side code to gather information, whereas most log file analysis products contain only server-side information. By gathering data directly from user browsers rather than log files generated from web servers, the results can differ dramatically.

Below is only a basic summary of the two methods as there are many more features of web analytics that could be discussed in more detail but this will give you a general understanding as to how different methods are used.

Tracking Code

Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) is pasted in to each HTML page within a website. This code is a combination of HTML and JavaScript which is used to track page views and other traffic data. GATC is usually placed at the bottom of each pages code (directly before the closing </body> tag) but it is recommended that the code is placed within the header to avoid any possible issues with a page loading at a slower rate, therefore ensuring that the code is executed correctly. Discrepancies in results may arise at this early stage of implementation as the site owner may not paste the tracking code in to all site pages, but log-file analysis tools usually provide statistics for all pages unless configured otherwise.

JavaScript, Cookies and Cached Pages

Google Analytics uses cookies in order to track visitor activity. These cookies hold a unique visitor ID and are considered safe and non-intrusive by most internet users today, but many people block cookies from being set by their web browsers to prevent personal data from being captured or reported on. A user who deletes their cookies will still be tracked by Google Analytics, but they will be identified as a new visitor to the site leading to inaccurate session results.

Alternatively, log file analysis products use a visitor’s IP address to track user sessions. This can be very unreliable since two or more visitors can share an IP address and it also makes it more difficult to determine whether a user has previously visited the site.

If JavaScript has been disabled on a users’ browser, Google Analytics will be unable to track activity because the GATC cannot be executed. However, log file analysis products are unable to report on cached pages correctly, leading to a significant undercounting of page views. This is because cached pages are saved on a users’ local machine and so are not served by the web server. Google Analytics detects all displayed pages regardless of the source (as long as the visitor is connected to the Internet) resulting in more accurate page-view counts.

Robots

Internet bots, also known as web robots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the internet and scan site content. Since robots are not actual users, their activities need to be excluded from web analytics results. Log file analysis products find this difficult as they need to know about the robot in order to detect it, but there are thousands of robots and new ones appear on a daily basis. Google Analytics does not have this problem as robots do not execute JavaScript and therefore, their activity is not included in its reporting.

Summary

It is important to understand that any web analytics report should be considered like a survey as all statistical products are rarely able to track 100% of site visitors. The reasons for this conclusion range from browsers that block JavaScript to deleted cookies, cached pages and robot tracking. Log file analysis products record every time a file is requested, regardless of who requests it, whereas Google Analytics is a more accurate solution as it handles sessions more reliably and consistently even though it may miss some visits.