Red Evolution Opinions & Musings

Alto is a staple of the local business community here in Aberdeen; offering managed IT support and security services to companies all over the city. 

To the uninitiated, the difference between “web content” and “brochure copy” is probably academic. It’s all just words, right? 

We spend a lot of time encouraging our clients to write in plain English. To drop the obfuscating buzzwords and infuriatingly complex businessese that plagues their landing pages in favour of simpler, cleaner language that's easy to read and understand.

Site speed (sometimes called page speed or website performance) is a measure of how quickly your website can load content - and make it available for user interaction.

To understand the context of this post, it would also help to understand what SEO or search engine optimisation is. If you prefer a more visual approach here’s SEO explained in pictures.

Last Friday, I had a great conversation with a business owner in Manchester. He was crystal clear about his businesses strategy and how many new customers a month he needed to grow his business.

This probably seems like a dumb question, especially coming from the owner of a successful digital marketing agency, but bear with me while I share some thoughts and experiences.

I recently attended a Chamber of Commerce networking event. Despite generating most of our business online, naturally, I felt it was essential to making the most of our new membership. I enjoyed it. I met some lovely people and who knows, it may lead to some useful contacts and opportunities. Plus, I met some people whose services we can use.

We recently received an invitation to tender to deliver some digital workshops to businesses in and around the area where one of our offices is located. In the document, there was a phrase that went something like, "You will help businesses source new suppliers for the delivery of a website." As I've said before in other blog posts, referring to digital agencies as suppliers doesn't sit very well with me.

I'm an engineer, a problem solver, although I now work in the field of marketing. Digital marketing to be precise. That includes web design, inbound marketing, Search Engine Optimisation or SEO, paid search such as Google Ads, social media marketing, and so on. In this post, I'm thinking about branding.

Just like you have to keep tending to your garden to get the most benefit from it, you need to keep looking after your website if you want it to work for your business. 

I recently watched a video where a designer explained why he charges what he does for creating a logo. He used two examples, one a logo for a micro business and the other for Nike. His point was, the value of the logo to the micro business was probably only a few hundred pounds, whereas the value of Nike's logo ran into the millions. Incidentally the designer who created their logo, Carolyn Davidson, was only paid a $35.

If your website isn't working hard enough for your business and bringing in new enquiries, it's time to call in the experts to diagnose the problem and recommend the best solution.

I'm walking down a street in Windsor. It's Tuesday the 11th of December, and I'm here to see a new client to do a workshop with them so I can get a deeper understanding of their business. Importantly, I need to establish what they want to achieve from inbound marketing, search marketing, paid search, and so on.

Pay Per Click or PPC advertising and specifically Google Ads is a potent tool for generating visitors to your website and from there business leads or enquiries. But people often get it completely wrong and finish up deciding to stop doing it. By following these THREE tips you'll fast track to PPC success.

Are you worried about your website? Do you think it's not performing? Before you say that it isn't working, you need to know what it was built to do. Do your expectations now match its original objectives?