Almost every request for proposals we get these days asks us what we do with social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. Rather than seeing social marketing as another separate project we recommend integrating it fully with all the other aspects of digital.

As mentioned at the CMS event, Joomla is of course one of the big contenders in the Open Source CMS game.  If anyone would like to have a look into using Joomla here are some good pointers to get you started.

You may have heard about “Foursquare” – one of of the new names on the list of social media, but what is it, and more importantly has it got any potential for business?

Location: DMU, Leicester
Date: Tuesday 30th March, 2010

Great turnout last night at De Montfort University in Leicester, thank you very much to everyone who came, despite the rain. Great to see both lots of familiar faces and some brand new businesses as well.
Following lots of questions from businesses on the programme about CMS, we had Paul Shaw from E2Z and Jonathan Green to help us demystify all the different options available.

Some of the highlights...

Some of the big questions are “What is CMS”, “who needs one?”, “what is the difference between a bespoke solution and Open Source” and “is Open Source really free”?
 
What is a CMS
It is a web site where you are able to update the content via a user-friendly front end without needing to know anything about html coding or other programming. It means you don’t need to pay a developer every time you need to make a change to you can keep your content and site fresh and up-to-date.

Bespoke solution

This means the site is built to match exactly your needs and you will be able to speck out exactly how you wish the site to function. This is excellent if you have a more specialised product/service or if you are trying to tie the web site into other existing parts of your business, for example into your customer data based, email marketing, feedback system, quote systems etc.
The draw back of these solutions may be cost and you also need to check up front if there are any issues with moving the site to a different supplier later on. In general if you go for a bespoke option, you need to make sure you ask for all the right things up front!

Open Source

This means the code is free for anyone to use and lots of different people develop new modules for it all the time.
The most common solutions are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento.
Wordpress: Hugely popular. Easy to use. Best for blog or very small brochure type site.

Joomla: Very popular. Perhaps not so easy for everyday people to use, but lots of scope for upscaling with plugins…

Drupal: Similar to Joomla, but perhaps more used in America than over here.

Squiz: New Open Source currently entering the UK. Free small site option with scope for large e-Commerce that is at a cost.

Magento: Example of full e-Commerce solution. Open Source yes, but you pay for certain extensions. Probably not able to implement your self.

Good side of Open Source it that it is either free or low coast if you can do it your self, but of course there will be a cost is you need a developer to implement the site for you.
The downside of Open Source is that is can be less flexible, in the sense that there may not be a module available that does exactly what you are trying to achieve. If you product/solution is quite specialised it can be hard to try and force it to fit a ready made system, and it can also be very difficult to integrate with existing systems.
Another typical comment about Open Source is that it can be more prone to hacking as everyone has access to the code, and there can also be compatibility issues old/new modules.

Typical CMS catches

No matter which CMS option you go for, here are some of the typical catches to look out for. Make sure the system will allow you to do the following (or make sure is it included in your price to the developer that he does them for you):
:: Installing the Google Analytics code
:: Installing Google + Bing Web masters tools code
:: You should be able to set Title tags, meta tags individually on every page. (If you have 4000 products it is great if it can automatically generate them for you, but you still need to be able to tweak them individually.)
:: You should be able to use and create the right semantics, for example have one h1 on each page, followed by h2, h3, use <ul>, <strong> etc
:: You should be able to add new pages and name them sensibly for SEO purposes.
:: You should always ensure that you own your code! Aim to have the ftp details for your site, as chances are you will need them one day.

Points to take away

There were some good questions and good points made at this event. One point is “don’t choose free, just because it is free”, choose something that is in line with your corporate branding and cam deliver what your business needs!
Bespoke is a great solution for anyone with a slightly different product or solution and excellent for tying the site into the rest of your business. Very flexible!
Think long term, a 3 page site might be ok for you today, but will the site still meet your requirements in a year or two? Make sure you know what you need the site to do.

A good way to keep content fresh and up-to-date is to involve more staff, get them to take responsibility and participate with updating. If the sales people are depending on the product specs being correct on the web site put them in charge of updating those pages etc.

Presentation slides

Location: Cape Bar, Hockley, Nottingham
Date: Thursday 25th March, 2010

The day after our March event in Nottingham, once again thank you everyone who turned up! Good turnout despite “competition” from other events going on at the same time. Some of you even managed to multi task and span two events in one evening, well done!
Following lots of questions from businesses on the programme about CMS, we had Paul Shaw from E2Z and Alistair Kent with Dave Southey from Tineke  to help us demystify all the different options.

Some of the highlights...

Some of the big questions are “What is CMS”, “who needs one?”, “what is the difference between a bespoke solution and Open Source” and “is Open Source really free”?
 
What is a CMS
It is a web site where you are able to update the content via a user-friendly front end without needing to know anything about html coding or other programming. It means you don’t need to pay a developer every time you need to make a change to you can keep your content and site fresh and up-to-date.

Bespoke solution

This means the site is built to match exactly your needs and you will be able to speck out exactly how you wish the site to function. This is excellent if you have a more specialised product/service or if you are trying to tie the web site into other existing parts of your business, for example into your customer data based, email marketing, feedback system, quote systems etc.
The draw back of these solutions may be cost and you also need to check up front if there are any issues with moving the site to a different supplier later on. In general if you go for a bespoke option, you need to make sure you ask for all the right things up front!

Open Source

This means the code is free for anyone to use and lots of different people develop new modules for it all the time.
The most common solutions are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and Magento.
Wordpress: Hugely popular. Easy to use. Best for blog or very small brochure type site.

Joomla: Very popular. Perhaps not so easy for everyday people to use, but lots of scope for upscaling with plugins…

Drupal: Similar to Joomla, but perhaps more used in America than over here.

Squiz: New Open Source currently entering the UK. Free small site option with scope for large e-Commerce that is at a cost.

Magento: Example of full e-Commerce solution. Open Source yes, but you pay for certain extensions. Probably not able to implement your self.

Good side of Open Source it that it is either free or low coast if you can do it your self, but of course there will be a cost is you need a developer to implement the site for you.
The downside of Open Source is that is can be less flexible, in the sense that there may not be a module available that does exactly what you are trying to achieve. If you product/solution is quite specialised it can be hard to try and force it to fit a ready made system, and it can also be very difficult to integrate with existing systems.
Another typical comment about Open Source is that it can be more prone to hacking as everyone has access to the code, and there can also be compatibility issues old/new modules.

Typical CMS catches

No matter which CMS option you go for, here are some of the typical catches to look out for. Make sure the system will allow you to do the following (or make sure is it included in your price to the developer that he does them for you):
:: Installing the Google Analytics code
:: Installing Google + Bing Web masters tools code
:: You should be able to set Title tags, meta tags individually on every page. (If you have 4000 products it is great if it can automatically generate them for you, but you still need to be able to tweak them individually.)
:: You should be able to use and create the right semantics, for example have one h1 on each page, followed by h2, h3, use <ul>, <strong> etc
:: You should be able to add new pages and name them sensibly for SEO purposes.
:: You should always ensure that you own your code! Aim to have the ftp details for your site, as chances are you will need them one day.

Discussions

There were some good questions and good points made at this event. One point is “don’t choose free, just because it is free”, choose something that is in line with your corporate branding and cam deliver what your business needs!
Bespoke is a great solution for anyone with a slightly different product or solution and excellent for tying the site into the rest of your business. Very flexible!
Think long term, a 3 page site might be ok for you today, but will the site still meet your requirements in a year or two? Make sure you know what you need the site to do.

Presentation slides

We saw this on the Webcredible’s site and think it is both very true and very funny. Something for all business owners to keep in mind when they hire a designer or agency to re-do the web site! http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell 

Following our Google Analytic event in January we had requests to run an additional workshop on this topic. We put on this extra analytics workshop at the Axis Centre on March 11^th 2010 and ended up running a double session due to the high number of people who signed up.

We had some really good feedback so here is the video from the session so even more people can benefit from it.

 This is just a quick up to date with has been happenings on the programme. Lots of exciting work is going on in some of the business onboard, here are some examples of the good work so far…