Design Communication Blog

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) has taken a battering over the years from web developers due to it not supporting key web standards. The added work to get a website displaying correctly in IE6 can prove a real headache and one of the main reasons why we want it banished.

In recent weeks Google has criticised its' lack of security and blamed the loophole that allowed China based hackers to attack them squarely at the foot of IE6. Subsequent to this even the German and French governments have requested their citizens should switch from using the browser.

As of the first of this month Google started phasing out support for IE6 as stated in their modern browsers for modern applications blog post.

Starting a blog can be difficult, especially if you're still unsure exactly what a blog is or how to use it for your business!

I want to first allay any fears that you have to spend hours every day blogging or tweeting on Twitter (micro blogging) in order to make it worthwhile. This isn't the case, a good blog doesn't need to be updated daily but rather when you do blog, make a concerted effort, no one wants to read a hash of a post!

So let's get started and by the end of this post I guarantee you'll be wanting to start blogging for your business straight away!

Blogging for Business Basics

What is a blog?
A blog is an online journal which many use to share personal information but in this instance we're using it for business. You've probably read a blog without even realising it, whether it be a journalist on the BBC News website or clothing retailer, personal opinion or experience has the ability to grab interest.

The picture to the left is of our latest recruit, Toffee, a deaf Jack Russell, from the Last Chance rescue centre in Edenbridge, Kent. She's a funny thing, preferring company and someone's lap to chasing a ball in the park!

Having had her 3 weeks now and getting used to her needs we've adapted our style of communication to compensate for her lack of hearing, although sometimes I get the feeling she's only playing deaf so she can ignore us!

This got me thinking about how your website should not just be designed to help the visually impaired, by for instance making sure your images have alternative or ALT text to describe the image to be read by screen readers. But also for those people who think in a different way. What do I mean by this?

Bia Brazil and Margarita fitness wear are two of the top designer ladies gym wear specialists from Brazil. We have been lucky enough to work with one of an exclusive number of retailers in the UK, Daisy Fitness, to produce a website to show their range of stylish workout wear.

The fitness wear from both Bia Brazil and Margarita are made form Supplex® by DuPont, the latest technical fabric to be used in workout wear. Daisy Fitness were eager to have an ecommerce website that displayed the quality and style of these designers, we hope you enjoy the result.

Commemorating those who fought and died in battle for our freedom is something close to my heart and so when I read this article in the local paper, Fundraising drive begins to replace rotting gate guardians, I thought I'd do my bit to help promote it.

The St George's RAF Chapel of Rememberance at Biggin Hill airport in Kent has two planes, one a Spitfire the other a Hurricane (saved from a film set), as gate guardians. These act as a memorial for those who flew from Biggin Hill and those pilots who died during the war.

I read a great article over the weekend in The Guardian, Are probiotics really that good for your health?, which went on to detail the rise and rise in probiotic drink sales.

It struck me as a prime example of how marketing a lifestyle can bypass any benefits the product claims to have (in this case, benefits yet to be verified by the European Food Standards Agency) !

Why wait for confirmation that your product actually improves people's health when you can persuade them with adverts and brain wash them in to thinking so.

Yakult is widely known in the UK and was the first to market with their probiotic drink in 1996.

When building a Drupal website it's important to get the basic site configuration right to help in everything from SEO to Usability.

Putting these basics in place will make your site load faster and avoid a potential increase in your bounce rate. A well oiled machine will make for a smooth running site and a good experience for visitors.

Drupal is a very powerful CMS with many core and contributed modules, these are just some of the things your should do, if you think there are others do add a comment ;o)

How important is service to you? Even if you don't work in the service industry you have to deal with customers and suppliers, so being approachable and contactable is important.

Now I'm not going to name the company I'm referring to, I can see a few frowns on your faces, but safe to say the system of customer support this relates to is a common one.

If you deal with a large company there are usually many different channels to contact support, most common being telephone, email, support ticket or live online chat. Now if you provide these methods it's normally good practice to actually be on the other end to respond!

When supplying a phone number it's good that someone, especially between the hours of 9 and 5, picks up the darn thing or you have the ability to leave a voicemail! What's the point of a support number if there's no support?!

Naturally your next port of call is live online chat, except when you go to use it there's never anyone there to chat to! Live offline chat would be more appropriate!

If you ever needed inspiration to start a blog and tips to keep people returning to read it then the video below, titled How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself by Tim Ferriss, is a great place to start.

Having viewed it the other day I felt I had to share with you, it was that good, I hope you get something from it even if you have an established blog.

There's background to where and why he started blogging, including an embarressing telephone call to a blogging idol!

If you're thinking about starting a blog or have doubts as to where to start then watch this presentation:

Blog comments are a hot topic at the moment and something we're constantly reviewing. Since Matt Cutts, at SMX Advanced, announced the 'nofollow tag' no longer passes pagerank, the blogging and more importantly the SEO community has been discussing the merits of page rank sculpting.

Barry Welford's post, Blog Comments and Google, gives a great run down of the situation and the merits of allowing comments on your blog.

We, at Makak Media, are interested in how a blog aids your SEO efforts and attracts visitors to the site but at the same time we're also mindful that this blog is primarily there for the reader. It's not all about getting visitors and gaining page ranking if your content isn't of quality and your readers can't interact.

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