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	<title>Dan Harrison</title>
	
	<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk</link>
	<description>Simple tips and tricks to get the best from your website</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:08:40 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	
	<language>en</language>
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		<title>Optimising Buttons – did you benefit?</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/optimising-buttons-did-you-benefit/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/optimising-buttons-did-you-benefit/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:08:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Advice]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=592</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Did you benefit from my article on How to Quickly Triple your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR)? Have you seen increased sales as a direct result of trying out your own tests with different coloured buttons? If so, I want to know!
1. Tell me your success story
If you&#8217;ve seen increased sales and click-throughs as a direct result of [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Big-Red-Shop-Now-Button.png" alt="Big Red Shop Now Button" title="Big Red Shop Now Button" width="350" height="150" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-599" /></p>
<p>Did you benefit from my article on <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/how-to-quickly-triple-your-click-thru-rate-ctr/">How to Quickly Triple your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR)</a>? Have you seen increased sales as a direct result of trying out your own tests with different coloured buttons? <strong>If so, I want to know!</strong><span id="more-592"></span></p>
<h3>1. Tell me your success story</h3>
<p>If you&#8217;ve seen increased sales and click-throughs as a direct result of using my research, I&#8217;d love to publish that information. Please put some numbers on it, e.g. 43% increase in CTR, and 22% increase in sales. </p>
<p>I&#8217;m looking for about 50 to 150 words on what benefits you&#8217;ve seen. I&#8217;ll publish your story on this blog with a link to your website and a link to your twitter profile if you wish. <strong>Please send your story <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/contact-me/">via my contact form</a>.</strong></p>
<h3>2. Write me a testimonial</h3>
<p>This is optional, but it would be great if you could write me a short testimonial based on your results. This is to help illustrate that the advice I give achieves great results, and the testimonials will be used for my Streamlined Thinking <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk">website mentoring service</a>.</p>
<h3>Glassy Buttons</h3>
<p>I&#8217;ve been asked a couple of times how I created my buttons. I did so using the <a href="http://www.netdenizen.com/buttonmill/glassy.php">Glassy Button generator</a> tool. It&#8217;s so simple to use and I highly recommend it. </p>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Foptimising-buttons-did-you-benefit%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Foptimising-buttons-did-you-benefit%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/disabling-rss-feeds-in-wordpress/" title="Disabling RSS Feeds in Wordpress">Disabling RSS Feeds in Wordpress</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/recommended-articles-email-tutorials-entrepreneurs-wordpress-performance-seo-best-practice-and-blogging-tips/" title="Recommended Articles: Email Tutorials, Entrepreneurs, Wordpress Performance, SEO Best Practice and Blogging Tips">Recommended Articles: Email Tutorials, Entrepreneurs, Wordpress Performance, SEO Best Practice and Blogging Tips</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/challenges-faced-when-looking-for-a-business-partner/" title="Challenges faced when looking for a Business Partner">Challenges faced when looking for a Business Partner</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/10-great-benefits-of-guest-blogging/" title="10 great benefits of Guest Blogging">10 great benefits of Guest Blogging</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/free-event-thursday-22nd-october-the-basics-of-creating-and-running-a-website/" title="Free Event &#8211; Thursday 22nd October &#8211; The basics of Creating and Running a Website">Free Event &#8211; Thursday 22nd October &#8211; The basics of Creating and Running a Website</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/my-presentation-on-running-a-website-18th-june-2009/" title="My Presentation on &#8220;Running a Website&#8221; &#8211; 18th June 2009">My Presentation on &#8220;Running a Website&#8221; &#8211; 18th June 2009</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-10-tips-and-tweaks-for-tenbank-net/" title="Quick Website Review &#8211; 10 Tips and Tweaks for tenbank.net ">Quick Website Review &#8211; 10 Tips and Tweaks for tenbank.net </a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Top 25 Most Common Website Mistakes</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/top-25-most-common-website-mistakes/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/top-25-most-common-website-mistakes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:01:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business Advice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[popular]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website mistakes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=552</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
When I review people&#8217;s websites as part of my website mentoring service, I seem to come across certain problems time and time again. So I&#8217;ve compiled all of the commonly made mistakes into a single article. I bet that most of you are making at least 1 mistake on this list!
Initial Impact
These are issues relating [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Homer-Simpson-Doh-240x300.jpg" alt="Homer Simpson - Doh" title="Homer Simpson - Doh" width="240" height="300" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-553" /></p>
<p>When I <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/getting-a-review-of-your-website/">review people&#8217;s websites</a> as part of my <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">website mentoring service</a>, I seem to come across certain problems time and time again. So I&#8217;ve compiled all of the commonly made mistakes into a single article. I bet that most of you are making at least 1 mistake on this list!<span id="more-552"></span></p>
<h2>Initial Impact</h2>
<p>These are issues relating to a website when you visit a website for the first time.</p>
<h3>1. Purpose of website not obvious</h3>
<p>When you first see a webpage, you want visitors to know what the website is about in the first 10 seconds or so. If the website <em>appears irrelevant</em> (even though it is actually relevant) to the visitor, then they will leave. Give the user cues such as related images or <em>short</em> introductory paragraphs of text.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/UnderConstruction.jpg" alt="UnderConstruction" title="UnderConstruction" width="150" height="150" class="alignright size-full wp-image-579" /></p>
<h3>2. Website appears unfinished</h3>
<p>If a website looks as if it&#8217;s incomplete, you&#8217;re giving your visitors a negative impression, particularly if you run a service or business. An incomplete website can imply a lazy or poor service, as if you can&#8217;t look after your website, how can you be expected to look after your customers?</p>
<h3>3. Websites that take too long to load (if at all)</h3>
<p>You should aim to have your website loading within 6 seconds. The faster the better. However, if your website doesn&#8217;t load at all, or it takes far too long, you&#8217;ll probably lose visitors and they are unlikely to return. </p>
<h3>4. Shockwave Flash intro pages</h3>
<p>Flash intro pages are very old-fashioned now, where most users will click on the skip link or leave straight away. From a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) perspective, you want your home page to have your most important information, not a flash intro which has little benefit when it comes to search engines.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Web-Browsers.jpg" alt="Web Browsers" title="Web Browsers" width="150" height="97" class="alignright size-full wp-image-581" /></p>
<h3>5. Website breaks in major web browsers</h3>
<p>Make sure your website works in the major browsers, including IE (6, 7, 8), Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. Significant issues due to using one of those web browsers will typically not be tolerated by visitors (such as broken layouts, no navigation functionality, etc).</p>
<h3>6. Lack of a domain name</h3>
<p>Don&#8217;t rely on free web hosting for your website address. e.g. mysite.freehosting.com looks very unprofessional. Buy a domain name, they start at around &pound;7 for 2 years for a .co.uk domain.</p>
<h3>7. Audio that plays when you visit a website</h3>
<p>Any kind of audio that plays when you visit a website I feel is tacky. I don&#8217;t like surprises, and that counts as a surprise. It&#8217;s annoying at any rate.</p>
<h2>Bad design</h2>
<p>What constitutes a good or bad design is highly subjective, however, there are a few things that will definitely annoy users. Here are some of the worst offenders.</p>
<h3>8. Poor choice of colours</h3>
<p>Eye-bleeding bright colours or unreadable text makes using your website particularly difficult to read. Make life easy for your readers by giving your colour scheme a contrasting, yet pleasant feel.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Compass.jpg" alt="Compass" title="Compass" width="150" height="150" class="alignright size-full wp-image-583" /></p>
<h3>9. Poor site navigation</h3>
<p>If a visitor cannot find what they are looking for, they will leave. Make it as simple as possible to find different pages on the website, using a sensible menu and navigation layout. </p>
<h3>10. Using Frames</h3>
<p>Using HTML frames is an old-fashioned and troublesome website technique. They can damage a user&#8217;s experience, and additionally can cause havoc with a web browser&#8217;s next/previous navigation buttons.</p>
<h3>11. Images that are too small</h3>
<p>If you have images that contain vital information or that demonstrate your product (or services), then users should be able to zoom in or view a larger version of an image. I&#8217;ve seen far too many online shops where the product image is 125px x 125px where you can&#8217;t even see the product. How can you convince your customers to buy something if they can&#8217;t even see what they are buying?</p>
<h3>12. Popup Adverts</h3>
<p><em>Just say no!</em> Popup adverts annoy users and are associated with spyware. Avoid at all costs.</p>
<h3>13. No about page</h3>
<p>Visitors these days often like to read about a company or a website to get an idea of what the website is all about. The about page is a great way to explain the origins of a business or a website. You can go a little further by having photos of people involve with a company or website. This helps remind visitors that there are real people behind a website, which also helps with trust.</p>
<h3>14. No contact page</h3>
<p>You want visitors to get in touch, so add a postal address, email contact form, email address, telephone number, etc. Make it as easy as possible for people to contact you. Adding a registered business address adds a degree of trust for online shops too.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Buy-Tickets-Now.jpg" alt="Buy Tickets Now" title="Buy Tickets Now" width="150" height="150" class="alignright size-full wp-image-577" /></p>
<h3>15. No calls to action</h3>
<p>You want visitors to do something, such as register for an account, buy something, sign up to a newsletter, call you, etc. Therefore tell them! Have <a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/13/call-to-action-buttons-examples-and-best-practices/">strong calls to action</a> to encourage your visitors to do what you want. </p>
<h3>16. Over-reliance on Javascript or Flash</h3>
<p>Javascript and Flash should only be used on a website to improve the user experience, not to replace basic functionality such as links or site navigation. Additionally, some users disable Javascript or block Flash, so your website should gracefully degrade so that those visitors can still use your website.</p>
<h3>17. Visible script errors</h3>
<p>Script errors do occur on occasion, however script error messages that are visible to the user do give your visitors a negative impression.</p>
<h2>Website content</h2>
<p>The information and &#8217;stuff&#8217; on a website is what you want your visitors to see and engage with. So here are a few common issues relating to the content on websites.</p>
<h3>18. Broken links and images</h3>
<p>Checking images is pretty quick for a website, as it&#8217;s pretty obvious if something is missing. Therefore there is no excuse. Broken links are harder to find, but there are plenty of free tools to help you. The last thing any visitor wants to see is a <em>404 &#8211; Page Not Found</em> message. Check your most important links manually, e.g. Twitter, Newsletter Signups and RSS feed links.</p>
<h3>19. Lack of text on the website</h3>
<p>Whatever you offer, you need to have some text on your website that describes your product/service/club, etc. Lots of relevant and useful textual content on your website will also help with search engine rankings. This is because potential visitors will type a range of generic and long-tail keyword phrases into search engines to find websites like yours. Lots of useful text-based content increases the chance that potential visitors will find you via the search engines.</p>
<h3>20. Sign up before you can read anything</h3>
<p>I&#8217;ve noticed a few websites now that require you to register before you read anything. Getting a visitor to create an account is a significant request compared to just reading your website. I would never sign up to a website unless I knew what I was going to get, so you should have at least some content on your website that doesn&#8217;t require users to create an account first.</p>
<h3>21. Advertising &#8211; too much or unrelated</h3>
<p>Advertising on a website is absolutely fine if done correctly. Beware of having irrelevant adverts on your website, particularly adverts that are known to be annoying or have a bad reputation. Also, don&#8217;t plaster your website with adverts, keep it balanced.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Welcome.gif" alt="Welcome" title="Welcome" width="150" height="100" class="alignright size-full wp-image-575" /></p>
<h3>22. Avoid animated GIFS</h3>
<p>Animated GIFs are so 1990s. Avoid them where possible. They do look tacky, and they can distract your users from looking at the good parts of your website.</p>
<h2>Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)</h2>
<p>SEO is a very large topic, however, here are a few obvious mistakes that I frequently see on websites I review.</p>
<h3>23. Not using the &lt;title&gt; tags correctly</h3>
<p>Make sure you use the HTML &lt;title&gt; tags on every page to describe what&#8217;s on that page. Don&#8217;t keyword stuff, but the title should describe what that page is about. What&#8217;s in the &lt;title&gt; tags is very important from an SEO perspective because they have a strong weighting in the rankings. Additionally, if someone bookmarks one of your web pages, it reminds them of what is in that web page.</p>
<h3>24. No search engine friendly URLs</h3>
<p>Important keywords in your URL structure can help benefit your search engine rankings. Additionally, page titles that appear in URLs give prospective visitors a hint to what the article contains just from the URL alone. e.g. <strong>www.mywebsite.com/?p=344</strong> is not descriptive, however, <strong>www.mywebsite.com/how-to-grow-your-business</strong> is much more descriptive and gives users an idea what to expect if they click on that link.</p>
<h3>25. Click HERE links</h3>
<p>The text that is used for text links is a small but still an important ranking factor for search engines. Therefore avoid having links that look like &#8220;Click <a href="/" rel="nofollow">here</a> for the download&#8221;. Try using something like &#8220;Please sign up to download the <a href="/" rel="nofollow">free business worksheet</a>&#8220;. (Please note, those links just go to my home page and are for illustration only).</p>
<h2>Your pet hates?</h2>
<p>I hope that you found those tips useful. Please let me know what your pet hates are in the comments below!</p>
<h2>Thank You</h2>
<p>The following people helped me write this article by giving me a few more ideas, so I&#8217;d like to say thank you to them all.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.twitter.com/wonder_lander">http://www.twitter.com/wonder_lander</a> (Jon Cook)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.twitter.com/Tintop">http://www.twitter.com/Tintop</a> (John Edwards)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.twitter.com/Noidontdrinktea">http://www.twitter.com/Noidontdrinktea</a> (Fee Fee)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.twitter.com/The_Landlord">http://www.twitter.com/The_Landlord</a> (The Landlord)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.twitter.com/chimpdonk">http://www.twitter.com/chimpdonk</a> (Crispin Read)</li>
</ul>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Ftop-25-most-common-website-mistakes%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Ftop-25-most-common-website-mistakes%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/how-to-quickly-triple-your-click-thru-rate-ctr/" title="How to Quickly Triple your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) ">How to Quickly Triple your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) </a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/10-great-benefits-of-guest-blogging/" title="10 great benefits of Guest Blogging">10 great benefits of Guest Blogging</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/why-i-use-artisteer-for-creating-wordpress-themes/" title="Why I use Artisteer for creating Wordpress Themes">Why I use Artisteer for creating Wordpress Themes</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/20-pre-new-website-questions-to-ask-yourself/" title="20+ Questions to ask yourself before creating a new Website">20+ Questions to ask yourself before creating a new Website</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Free Event – Thursday 22nd October – The basics of Creating and Running a Website</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/free-event-thursday-22nd-october-the-basics-of-creating-and-running-a-website/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/free-event-thursday-22nd-october-the-basics-of-creating-and-running-a-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:05:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Events]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BCS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[presentations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=546</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
I&#8217;m speaking on behalf of BCS Dorset on Thursday 22nd October, I&#8217;m talking about The basics of Creating and Running a Website. The event is completely free, but you need you book a place as there are limited spaces available. The event is open to all, regardless if you&#8217;re a BCS member or not.
Location: Wessex [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/presentation-196x300.png" alt="Presentation" title="Presentation" width="196" height="300" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-158" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;m speaking on behalf of <a href="http://www.dorset.bcs.org">BCS Dorset</a> on Thursday 22nd October, I&#8217;m talking about <a href="http://www.dorset.bcs.org/events/091022website.htm">The basics of Creating and Running a Website</a>. The event is completely free, but you need you book a place as there are limited spaces available. The event is open to all, regardless if you&#8217;re a BCS member or not.<span id="more-546"></span></p>
<p><strong>Location:</strong> Wessex Hotel, West Cliff Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH2 5EU, UK.<br />
<strong>When:</strong> Thursday 22nd Oct 2009 &#8211; 7pm for start at 7:30pm</p>
<p>In the presentation, I will be covering the following topics.</p>
<ul>
<li>Starting a blog, discussion board, online shop or general website (and what tools to use)</li>
<li>How to track and understand your visitors </li>
<li>Useful free or cheap tools you can use to run your website</li>
<li>Some golden rules to stick to when running a website.</li>
<li>Read the <a href="http://www.dorset.bcs.org/events/091022website.htm">BCS Dorset event details for the full brief</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>There will also be an opportunity to ask me plenty of questions too!</p>
<p>My presentations on the basics of running a website have proven to be very popular, and I&#8217;m frequently asked to run similar presentations again and again.  This is some recent feedback that I had on a presentation I gave on website basics.</p>
<blockquote><p>Excellent presentation, very useful and informative; brilliant knowledgeable speaker. Best thing I’ve been to for years!</p></blockquote>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Ffree-event-thursday-22nd-october-the-basics-of-creating-and-running-a-website%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Ffree-event-thursday-22nd-october-the-basics-of-creating-and-running-a-website%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/running-a-website-all-full-up/" title="Running a website &#8211; All full up!">Running a website &#8211; All full up!</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/my-presentation-on-running-a-website-18th-june-2009/" title="My Presentation on &#8220;Running a Website&#8221; &#8211; 18th June 2009">My Presentation on &#8220;Running a Website&#8221; &#8211; 18th June 2009</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/my-presentation-on-running-a-website-21st-may-2009/" title="My Presentation on &#8220;Running a Website&#8221; &#8211; 21st May 2009">My Presentation on &#8220;Running a Website&#8221; &#8211; 21st May 2009</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>How to Quickly Triple your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR)</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/how-to-quickly-triple-your-click-thru-rate-ctr/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/how-to-quickly-triple-your-click-thru-rate-ctr/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:31:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Personal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[affiliates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[call-to-action]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commissions]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CTR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[popular]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[statistics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=510</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
In an attempt to boost my commissions via affiliates on my eco-gadget review site EnviroGadget, I wanted to see if I could improve the number of visitors clicking through to the merchant website. I don&#8217;t get a commission for all of the products I review on EnviroGadget. However, for the products I do earn a [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Example-Buttons.png" alt="Example Buttons" title="Example Buttons" width="300" height="300" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-515" /></p>
<p>In an attempt to boost my commissions via affiliates on my eco-gadget review site <a href="http://www.envirogadget.com">EnviroGadget</a>, I wanted to see if I could improve the number of visitors clicking through to the merchant website. I don&#8217;t get a commission for all of the products I review on EnviroGadget. However, for the products I do earn a commission, I wanted to make sure that I was getting as many people clicking through my affiliate links as possible.</p>
<p>Therefore I decided to run some experiments with different types of button. Just by changing the colour of a button and changing its text a little, I found a way to <strong>triple my click-through rates (CTRs)</strong>! Yep, you read that right, <strong>triple</strong>! Read on to find out how.<span id="more-510"></span></p>
<h3>The Technology</h3>
<p>I have some relatively complex code that I&#8217;ve written to handle the affiliate tracking, and it&#8217;s beyond the scope of this article to explain it in detail. However, I&#8217;ll cover the basics. My affiliate tracking code allows me to create a URL like this:</p>
<p><strong>http://www.envirogadget.com/recommends/a-solar-powered-gadget/g_bn</strong></p>
<p>When that URL is clicked, it redirects the user to the product page on the merchants website, dropping a cookie to ensure that if the user makes a purchase on that website, I get a commission. </p>
<p>The &#8216;<strong>a-solar-powered-gadget</strong>&#8216; part of the URL is the code for a particular product. The &#8216;<strong>recommends</strong>&#8216; part of the URL tells a script on EnviroGadget to redirect a user to a product page using the product code I just mentioned. </p>
<p>The &#8216;<strong>g_bn</strong>&#8216; part of the URL is an example of a special tag that I can use for additional tracking. So I could link to a product using the URL above using many different coloured buttons. If I used a different tag for each different button, it means I can track how many times each button can get clicked. This is what I used to test the different buttons in the experiments below.</p>
<h3>Experiment 1 &#8211; The Hypothesis</h3>
<p>All my affiliate buttons started off being a green Buy Now button. However, I wondered if a contrasting button colour would out-perform my green button (especially as the rest of the site is themed with green). I also wanted to test different button texts too, just too see if the wording had any effect.</p>
<p><strong>Hypothesis 1:</strong><br />
<blockquote>&#8220;I expect contrasting blue buttons to outperform the more subtle orange buttons on click through rates&#8221;.</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>Hypothesis 2:</strong><br />
<blockquote>&#8220;I expect that the less imperative More Info buttons would outperform the stronger Buy Now buttons&#8221;.</p></blockquote>
<h3>Experiment 1 &#8211; The Results Data</h3>
<table class="statistics">
<tr>
<th>Button</th>
<th>Clicks</th>
<th>Percentage of Clicks</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Orange – Shop Now</td>
<td>141</td>
<td>30%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Orange – Buy Now</td>
<td>135</td>
<td>28%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blue – Shop Now</td>
<td>62</td>
<td>13%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blue – Buy Now</td>
<td>58</td>
<td>12%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Orange – More Info</td>
<td>53</td>
<td>11%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Blue – More Info</td>
<td>26</td>
<td>5%</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div id="attachment_513" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Button-Test-001-Graph.jpg"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Button-Test-001-Graph-300x190.jpg" alt="Button Test 1 - Orange and Blue" title="Improving conversion rates with different coloured buttons" width="300" height="190" class="size-medium wp-image-513" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Button Experiment 1 - Orange and Blue</p></div>
<p><strong>Notes:</strong> I was told that &#8220;Shop Now&#8221; was a good button text to use, so I wanted to test that. For some reason, I didn&#8217;t use green in the first experiment. Can&#8217;t remember why!</p>
<h3>Experiment 1 &#8211; Conclusion</h3>
<p>From the results, it&#8217;s clear that my initial theories were completely wrong! </p>
<p>So the results show that the <strong>orange</strong> buttons <strong>considerably outperformed</strong> the <strong>blue</strong> buttons. <strong>The orange Shop Now button more than doubles the CTR compared to the blue button</strong>. Perhaps this has something to do with the emotive effect of colours, e.g. warm v.s. cold colours. Even still, the orange buttons are harder to see with a green background, and blue is more of a contrast to green.</p>
<p>The results show that <strong>More Info</strong> is a waste of time, performing the worst overall. However, <strong>Shop Now</strong> is the strongest performing text, with <strong>Buy Now being a close second</strong>.</p>
<p>Based on these results, I realised I needed to test some more combinations as my assumptions were very wrong.</p>
<h3>Experiment 2 &#8211; The Hypothesis</h3>
<p>Following on from the first experiment, I thought it would be wise to compare the performance of my existing green Buy Now button against orange buttons. I also wanted to test red against orange and green to see if it had any significant impact.</p>
<p><strong>Hypothesis 3:</strong><br />
<blockquote>&#8220;I expect that the brighter red buttons will outperform the green and orange buttons, with the red Shop Now button being the best button for the highest CTR &#8220;.</p></blockquote>
<h3>Experiment 2 &#8211; The Results Data</h3>
<table class="statistics">
<tr>
<th>Button</th>
<th>Clicks</th>
<th>Percentage of Clicks</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Red – Shop Now</td>
<td>81</td>
<td>21%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Red – Buy Now</td>
<td>78</td>
<td>20%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Orange – Buy Now</td>
<td>50</td>
<td>13%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Orange – Shop Now</td>
<td>50</td>
<td>13%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Red – Buy This</td>
<td>37</td>
<td>10%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Green – Shop Now</td>
<td>28</td>
<td>7%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Green – Buy Now</td>
<td>27</td>
<td>7%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Orange – Buy This</td>
<td>25</td>
<td>7%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Green – Buy This</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>2%</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div id="attachment_517" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Button-Test-002-Graph.jpg"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Button-Test-002-Graph-300x206.jpg" alt="Button Test 2 - Red, Orange and Green" title="Improving CTR by using Red" width="300" height="206" class="size-medium wp-image-517" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Button Test 2 - Red, Orange and Green</p></div>
<h3>Experiment 2 &#8211; Conclusion</h3>
<p>I had clearly learnt something from the first experiment, and my theory was spot on correct in the second experiment. However, the range of values I obtained was very interesting. </p>
<p>The results showed that using a <strong>red Shop Now button (21% of clicks)</strong>, rather than a <strong>green Buy Now button (7% of clicks)</strong>, there&#8217;s a <strong>3-fold increase in clicks</strong> through to the merchant website!</p>
<p>In general, <strong>red outperforms orange and green</strong>. The <strong>Buy Now</strong> and <strong>Shop Now</strong> are strong call-to-actions, which resulted in a high CTR compared to <strong>Buy This</strong>. I&#8217;ve not been able to come up with a reasonable explanation for the poor performance of the <strong>Buy This</strong> button text.</p>
<h3>Overall Conclusion</h3>
<p>From running these experiments, I learnt 3 things. These 3 lessons are:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Check your assumptions</strong> &#8211; I was making incorrect assumptions, so testing my assumptions really paid off. I spotted my mistakes.</li>
<li><strong>Experiment and track everything</strong> &#8211; When you do test something, collect as much data as possible so you can analyse it.</li>
<li><strong>No-one will do it for you</strong> &#8211; I had to run my own experiments to learn my own lessons.  Don&#8217;t rely on my data either, test your sites yourself too!</li>
</ul>
<p>I hope you enjoyed the article and that it motivated you to run your own tests. If you like the pretty graphs, please leave a nice comment, as they took me ages to create! </p>
<h3>Update &#8211; 30th Sept 2009</h3>
<p>John Andrews wrote a great complement to this article on <a href="http://www.johnon.com/704/alwaysbelinkbuilding.html">Always Be Link Building</a>. John quite rightly emphasises the point that button colours, and therefore their respective click-through rates, are very specific to a website and its design. So just to re-iterate, <strong>test different button combinations</strong> yourself, don&#8217;t rely on my data alone!</p>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fhow-to-quickly-triple-your-click-thru-rate-ctr%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fhow-to-quickly-triple-your-click-thru-rate-ctr%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/top-25-most-common-website-mistakes/" title="Top 25 Most Common Website Mistakes">Top 25 Most Common Website Mistakes</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/10-great-benefits-of-guest-blogging/" title="10 great benefits of Guest Blogging">10 great benefits of Guest Blogging</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/why-i-use-artisteer-for-creating-wordpress-themes/" title="Why I use Artisteer for creating Wordpress Themes">Why I use Artisteer for creating Wordpress Themes</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/20-pre-new-website-questions-to-ask-yourself/" title="20+ Questions to ask yourself before creating a new Website">20+ Questions to ask yourself before creating a new Website</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>10 great benefits of Guest Blogging</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/10-great-benefits-of-guest-blogging/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/10-great-benefits-of-guest-blogging/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:36:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Guest Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BlogSynergy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[popular]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=488</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
I&#8217;ve recently launched a platform called BlogSynergy which allows you to find host blogs who are looking for guest bloggers, in addition to allowing you to advertise your blog to look for guest writers. I was a fan of guest blogging long before I created BlogSynergy, and the platform is designed to make it as [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/guest-blogging.jpg"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/guest-blogging.jpg" alt="guest blogging" title="guest blogging" width="400" height="267" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-489" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve recently launched a platform called <a href="http://www.blogsynergy.com">BlogSynergy</a> which allows you to find host blogs who are looking for guest bloggers, in addition to allowing you to advertise your blog to look for guest writers. I was a fan of guest blogging long before I created <a href="http://www.blogsynergy.com">BlogSynergy</a>, and the platform is designed to make it as easy as possible to get involved with guest blogging.</p>
<p>In this article, I give a concrete example of what guest blogging is about, followed by 10 great reasons why you should be guest blogging.<span id="more-488"></span></p>
<h3>Example &#8211; Home Renovation and DIY Blog </h3>
<p>You run a blog about <strong>home renovations and do-it-yourself (DIY) tips</strong>. You write great articles, but sometimes you just can&#8217;t think of something to write about. To ensure you don&#8217;t lose any visitors, you look to find a <strong>guest writer</strong> in an area related to your own.</p>
<p>You find a writer who writes a detailed article about something related to <strong>DIY solar-panel installation</strong>. Because they&#8217;re an expert in solar-panels and plumbing, you get a <strong>very informative article</strong> for your readers. So your regular <strong>readers get some variety</strong>, you get a break from writing fresh and interesting content, and the writer gets to <strong>build their reputation</strong>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s pretty common for the writer to get a couple of links back to their website in return. The writer&#8217;s website might be their company website, or it might be a blog. Therefore the writer gets a few visitors and a backlink to their website. <strong>No money changes hands, and everyone benefits.</strong></p>
<p>Now on to a few more great reasons why guest blogging is so great. </p>
<h3>1. Free, fresh and interesting content</h3>
<p>The primary benefit for the host blog is that they get fresh content for their website. Anyone who runs a blog knows that its hard work coming up with unique and interesting content on a regular basis. Therefore guest blogging helps you reduce your workload a little.</p>
<h3>2. It&#8217;s a great link building technique</h3>
<p>One of the core ways of improving your rankings in the search engines is with relevant links from quality websites. Since links, quality and relevance are fundamental to guest blogging, you cover all of those requirements at the outset.</p>
<h3>3. You find others in your community</h3>
<p>Since you&#8217;re engaging with other readers and blog owners, you can expand your community of friends and contacts around your subject matter. This can lead to support, ideas and potentially further guest blogging opportunities.</p>
<h3>4. Writers can tackle a different topic or writing style </h3>
<p>With any blog, your readers will be used to a certain style of writing, and therefore expect articles in a certain way. By guest blogging, you can write about slightly different topics you wouldn&#8217;t usually cover on your own blog, or adopt a style you wouldn&#8217;t usually take. This can be a great opportunity to experiment with a new technique or give yourself some variety.</p>
<h3>5. Build your reputation</h3>
<p>When you pay for someone&#8217;s services or products, you usually do so because you trust that business or person. By guest blogging, you can build your reputation in that community, boosting the profile of your own personal brand and/or that of your business. If you or your company is well known, it&#8217;s usually the case that its more trusted.</p>
<h3>6. Increased visitor traffic</h3>
<p>Since the writer get a couple of links back to their website, they&#8217;re usually gain some extra visitors too, particularly if the article was really interesting. Additionally, I encourage the writer to advertise the article they wrote on social media, so that the host blog gets some extra visitors too.</p>
<h3>7. Future potential reciprocation</h3>
<p>Once you&#8217;ve written for a guest blog, you might want to offer people the opportunity to write a guest article for you too. You can ask the owner of the blog you wrote for, as well as other readers of that host blog. Either way, it&#8217;s pretty simple to advertise that you&#8217;re after guest articles too.</p>
<h3>8. Engage with new people</h3>
<p>Once you&#8217;ve written your article, respond to the comments and feedback you get on the guest article. Very few people actually leave comments and feedback, so appreciate them. You can get involved in interesting conversations, do more networking and possibly earn some business from it. People are more likely to visit the website of someone they engage with, as they want to learn more about you or what you do.</p>
<h3>9. Build your reputation without a blog</h3>
<p>Guest blogging allows you to engage with a community without needing a blog or website. Sure, having a website or blog may help, but you can just as easily promote your LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter profile instead of a website. Running a blog is hard work, but that doesn&#8217;t mean you need to run one to take advantage of guest blogging opportunities.</p>
<h3>10. Grow your résumé or CV</h3>
<p>If you&#8217;re applying for a job that involves writing, editing or similar work, then you can build some relevant experience by writing guest articles. You can then add examples of your work to your résumé (Curriculum Vitae in the UK). Your prospective boss can then also gauge the quality of your work by looking at the feedback that the article has generated.</p>
<h3>Any more?</h3>
<p>Those are my 10 great reasons for guest blogging. Have anything else to add? </p>
<p>If you want to get started with guest blogging, please sign up to <a href="http://www.blogsynergy.com">BlogSynergy</a>. BlogSynergy is currently free whilst its in beta (and there will be a free basic account in the future too). </p>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2F10-great-benefits-of-guest-blogging%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2F10-great-benefits-of-guest-blogging%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/top-25-most-common-website-mistakes/" title="Top 25 Most Common Website Mistakes">Top 25 Most Common Website Mistakes</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/how-to-quickly-triple-your-click-thru-rate-ctr/" title="How to Quickly Triple your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) ">How to Quickly Triple your Click-Thru-Rate (CTR) </a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/why-i-use-artisteer-for-creating-wordpress-themes/" title="Why I use Artisteer for creating Wordpress Themes">Why I use Artisteer for creating Wordpress Themes</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/20-pre-new-website-questions-to-ask-yourself/" title="20+ Questions to ask yourself before creating a new Website">20+ Questions to ask yourself before creating a new Website</a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/guest-blogging-green-blogs-that-want-eco-friendly-guest-posts/" title="Guest Blogging &#8211; Green Blogs that Want Eco-Friendly Guest Posts">Guest Blogging &#8211; Green Blogs that Want Eco-Friendly Guest Posts</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Recent Hack Attempt on my Blog</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/recent-hack-attempt-on-my-blog/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/recent-hack-attempt-on-my-blog/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:58:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Personal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[backups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hack attempt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[passwords]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress security]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=476</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Yup, at the weekend, the DanHarrison.co.uk site was compromised by an Algerian &#8216;hacking&#8217; team. However, despite good security practices, the site still got hacked. I followed the most basic rules, such as keeping all plugins and the main Wordpress install up-to-date, as well as strong passwords. And I still got hacked.
Just to be clear, these [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/padlock.jpg"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/padlock.jpg" alt="padlock" title="padlock" width="400" height="267" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-477" /></a></p>
<p>Yup, at the weekend, the DanHarrison.co.uk site was compromised by an Algerian &#8216;hacking&#8217; team. However, despite good security practices, the site still got hacked. I followed the most basic rules, such as keeping all plugins and the main Wordpress install up-to-date, as well as strong passwords. And I <strong>still</strong> got hacked.<span id="more-476"></span></p>
<p>Just to be clear, these are the basic security principles I always abide by:</p>
<ul>
<li>Wordpress installation is always up to date.</li>
<li>All plugins are updated pretty much as soon as they are updated.</li>
<li>All database, ftp and account passwords are long and random (digits, characters, symbols, etc). </li>
<li>No password is used for any other site I own</li>
<li>File permissions are set at the most strict &#8211; depending on what&#8217;s required.</li>
<li>I keep regular file and database backups. All automated to backup every single day.</li>
</ul>
<p>However, despite all of that, I was still hacked. I am working my way through <a href="http://www.jtpratt.com/series/wordpress-security-guide/">JT Pratt&#8217;s security guide</a> as a basis for making the site more secure. Essentially I&#8217;m locking down everything I can. However, with having many websites, I want to automate it as much as possible to save me time. <em>Just before you ask, someone I know with 0 plugins still got hacked.</em></p>
<p>There&#8217;s a high chance of getting hacked at some point because you&#8217;re running a dynamic website. However, doing everything you can to make it too much effort for a hacker is a very good idea. And if nothing else, make sure you <strong>regularly backup your website</strong>! </p>
<h3>Updates</h3>
<p>Here are some more useful security articles I&#8217;ve since discovered:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/wordpress-seo-security/">Wordpress Security Tips</a> (more plugin ideas and advice)</li>
</ul>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Frecent-hack-attempt-on-my-blog%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Frecent-hack-attempt-on-my-blog%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/good-habits-backups-and-version-control/" title="Good Habits &#8211; Backups and Version Control">Good Habits &#8211; Backups and Version Control</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Quick Website Review – 12 Tips and Tweaks for AboutLoftConversions.co.uk</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-12-tips-and-tweaks-for-about-loft-conversions/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-12-tips-and-tweaks-for-about-loft-conversions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:00:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Website Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[quick reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=447</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
This week I&#8217;m doing a quick review of About Loft Conversions by John Essex. John approached me having seen the review I did for Tenbank.net. Here&#8217;s what John had to say:

If you get the time I would really appreciate you taking a look at http://www.aboutloftconversions.co.uk &#8211; I&#8217;m running out of ideas and its been stuck [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Front-Page.png"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Front-Page-300x224.png" alt="About Loft Conversions - Front Page" title="About Loft Conversions - Front Page" width="300" height="224" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-456" /></a></p>
<p>This week I&#8217;m doing a quick review of <a href="http://www.aboutloftconversions.co.uk">About Loft Conversions</a> by John Essex. John approached me having seen the <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-10-tips-and-tweaks-for-tenbank-net/">review I did for Tenbank.net</a>. Here&#8217;s what John had to say:</p>
<blockquote><p>
If you get the time I would really appreciate you taking a look at <a href="http://www.aboutloftconversions.co.uk">http://www.aboutloftconversions.co.uk</a> &#8211; I&#8217;m running out of ideas and its been stuck in the same position on google for ages (keyword is <em>loft conversions</em>).</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve varied the KW on the anchor text, but mainly use &#8220;loft conversions&#8221; .</p>
<p>Do you think the site is good enough to try putting a link in wikipedia? I&#8217;ve submitted to DMOZ, but wether it will get accepted, your guess is as good as mine!</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve run out of ideas for on site stuff (other than adding more content) and all I can think of now is to work on getting some more backlinks, ideally from loft conversion websites, but these are hard to come by as most of these loft conversion companies have little interest in web based stuff.</p>
<p>&#8211; John Essex</p></blockquote>
<p><span id="more-447"></span></p>
<div id="attachment_456" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Front-Page.png"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Front-Page-300x224.png" alt="About Loft Conversions" title="About Loft Conversions - Front Page" width="300" height="224" class="size-medium wp-image-456" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">About Loft Conversions - Home Page</p></div>
<h3>Things you&#8217;ve done well</h3>
<ul>
<li>Clean looking website, easy to navigate.</li>
<li>You&#8217;ve hidden items in the sidebar, avoiding overloading the user with menu choices.</li>
<li>Your keywords appear in the domain name.</li>
</ul>
<h3>SEO Tweaks</h3>
<div id="attachment_457" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Keywords.png"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Keywords-300x198.png" alt="Keyword Ideas on Google" title="About Loft Conversions - Keywords" width="300" height="198" class="size-medium wp-image-457" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Keyword Ideas on Google</p></div>
<ul>
<li>1) You mention that you&#8217;re targeting &#8220;<em>Loft Conversions</em>&#8221; which is a very highly competitive search term. This means you&#8217;ll be spending a lot of time competing with people who have massive budgets. I suggest you target &#8220;long tail&#8221; keywords, which are much less competitive and easier to rank for. If you can get a number of these bringing in visitors, then you&#8217;ll grow your traffic. Sources of keywords to use:
<ul>
<li>Google Analytics &#8211; look at the different keywords used to find your site</li>
<li>Use the predictive part of search engines by starting to type &#8220;loft conversion &#8221; (without quotes)&#8230; notice the space at the end. This will give you more ideas of what people are looking for.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>2) Given these longtail search terms, use these in navigation titles and headers so people find exactly what they are looking for.</li>
<li>3) Don&#8217;t hold your breath with DMOZ, nice if you get it, but you don&#8217;t need it.</li>
<li>4) Forget Wikipedia, they no-follow all links since it was being abused. Your time can be better spent on writing content and getting backlinks elsewhere.</li>
<li>5) You&#8217;re not using the HTML &lt;title&gt; tags to their full effect.
<ul>
<li>Consider adding more keywords to the titles. Make sure the keywords are relevant to the page though, don&#8217;t stuff the titles with keywords for the sake of it. </li>
<li>Consider adding your website name to the end of each title too. e.g. <strong>Finding Builders and Loft Conversions Specialists | About Loft Conversions</strong></li>
</li>
</ul>
<li>6) Getting backlinks is always difficult. I suggest writing articles as guest posts for home improvement blogs. BlogCatalog is a great source of blogs, particularly in the <a href="http://www.blogcatalog.com/topic/home+improvement/">home improvement niche</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Design Tweaks</h3>
<div id="attachment_458" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Books.png"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/About-Loft-Conversions-Books-300x265.png" alt="Books Section" title="About Loft Conversions - Books" width="300" height="265" class="size-medium wp-image-458" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Books Section</p></div>
<ul>
<li>7) There is a lack of images within text. If you added them, it would make the site more appealing to look at. See my <a href="http://www.spygadgets.org.uk">Spy Gadgets</a> to see what I mean.</li>
<li>8) The loft conversion books look nice, but thumbnails are too small. Make them around 125 x 125px</li>
<li>9) Break up FAQ section into individual mini articles. This gives you an opportunity for more keywords in the title tags (&lt;title&gt;&lt;/title&gt;), header tags (&lt;h1&gt;, &lt;h2&gt;, &lt;h3&gt;, etc) and in the menu.</li>
<li>10) Blog (as a page name) is misleading, it&#8217;s really more about news. The articles look old though, I suggest re-vamping the pages to newer dates, or turn them into pages without dates at all.</li>
<li>11) Most of the pages feel quite light on content, so definitely add more content. Add a table of contents at the top too.</li>
<li>12) The placement of the adverts are discrete (i.e. not in the way), which is great from a usability point of view. You might want to consider testing different placements and colours using <a href="http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer">Google&#8217;s Website Optimiser</a> to see what combination can boost your earnings.
</ul>
<h3>Feedback from John</h3>
<p>This is what John had to say about this review:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;I have a fairly good knowledge of website design and SEO but my Loft Conversions website needed improvements in both design and SEO. I felt like I was stuck in a bit of a rut and desperately needed some ideas to improve the site. </p>
<p>The review that Dan provided was excellent, I liked that Dan had a good balance between making the site user friendly and search engine friendly. Not only has Dan provided fresh ideas for the site, his review has given me renewed enthusiasm and I look forward to getting the improvements live!&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8211; John Essex</p></blockquote>
<p> I hope that you enjoyed this website review. Want a <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/getting-a-review-of-your-website/">review of your website?</a> </p>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fquick-website-review-12-tips-and-tweaks-for-about-loft-conversions%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fquick-website-review-12-tips-and-tweaks-for-about-loft-conversions%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-10-tips-and-tweaks-for-tenbank-net/" title="Quick Website Review &#8211; 10 Tips and Tweaks for tenbank.net ">Quick Website Review &#8211; 10 Tips and Tweaks for tenbank.net </a></li><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/getting-a-review-of-your-website/" title="Getting a Review of your Website">Getting a Review of your Website</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Quick Website Review – 10 Tips and Tweaks for tenbank.net</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-10-tips-and-tweaks-for-tenbank-net/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-10-tips-and-tweaks-for-tenbank-net/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:01:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Website Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[quick reviews]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=412</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[This is the first in a series of quick website reviews that contain between 5 and 10 design and search engine optimisation (SEO) tips to improve a website. These quick reviews are designed to help identify tweaks and adjustments that you can make to your website to improve the experience for your visitors, and consequently [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This is the first in a series of quick website reviews that contain between 5 and 10 design and search engine optimisation (SEO) tips to improve a website. These quick reviews are designed to help identify tweaks and adjustments that you can make to your website to improve the experience for your visitors, and consequently boost sales via your website.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tenbank-Review-Homepage.png"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tenbank-Review-Homepage-300x207.png" alt="tenbank Review - Homepage" title="tenbank Review - Homepage" width="300" height="207" class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-422" /></a></p>
<p>Today I&#8217;m reviewing <a href="http://www.tenbank.net">tenbank</a>, which is a website for a consultancy and business advisory service. <span id="more-412"></span></p>
<h3>Some good aspects of the website</h3>
<ul>
<li>Very useful to have contact details on every page (in footer), with bold Contact Us link at site navigation.</li>
<li>Simple but useful selection of 5 to 7 menu items in navigation area (more than 7 typically overloads the user with too much information). Good choice of information to show.</li>
<li>Design is clean and easy to navigate.</li>
<li>You&#8217;ve mentioned some previous work that you&#8217;ve done, which helps visitors understand what you can do.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Home Page</h3>
<ul>
<li>1) Create a link to the homepage in the navigation, currently one doesn&#8217;t exist.</li>
<li>2) With the home page, having read it, I still wasn&#8217;t sure what you chaps did. Consider adding diagrams or bullet points (between 5 to 10 points) with examples of the things that you can do for people. If you are essentially consultants, make sure that the word &#8220;consultant&#8221; and similar words appears there somewhere. Visitors look for certain words they recognise to determine what you do, even if its not your specific job title.</li>
<li>3) The background graphic doesn&#8217;t stretch to the whole page, and therefore it looks a little odd just behind the main page. Consider making the image larger or framing (such as adding a discrete border) to the site in same way.</li>
<li>4) Consider getting a logo designed to create a brand for your business, and then put it on the site.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Advisory Page</h3>
<div id="attachment_424" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tenbank-Review-Advisory.png"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tenbank-Review-Advisory-300x186.png" alt="The Advisory page" title="tenbank Review - Advisory" width="300" height="186" class="size-medium wp-image-424" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">The Advisory page</p></div>
<ul>
<li>5) The diagram text is a little small, consider making it a vertical diagram so that you can enlarge the text.</li>
<li>6) For the diagram, you&#8217;ve created it as an image. Try to create the diagram in HTML so that the text within the flow diagram forms part of the text content of your site, adding some more keywords that can be searched for in the search engines.</li>
<li>7) Consider adding testimonials from previous clients to your website. You could use <a href="http://www.linkedin.com">LinkedIn</a> to get recommendations too, and link to your profiles from the Team page.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Team Page</h3>
<div id="attachment_425" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 310px"><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tenbank-Review-About-Us.png"><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/tenbank-Review-About-Us-300x207.png" alt="Team page" title="tenbank Review - About Us" width="300" height="207" class="size-medium wp-image-425" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Team page</p></div>
<ul>
<li>8) Add photos for both individuals as it inspires trust. Make sure the photo is a smiling one too!</li>
</ul>
<h3>SEO Tips</h3>
<ul>
<li>9) You&#8217;re not using the html &lt;title&gt;&lt;/title&gt; tag to insert some descriptive keywords about your business. e.g. &#8220;tenbank | Business Advisory, Risk Management and Creative Problem Solving&#8221;. Adding these keywords here will help you rank for those keywords on the search engines.</li>
<li>10) You&#8217;re not using structural HTML such as &lt;h1&gt;, &lt;h2&gt; heading tags. If you use these, they can also help with rankings in search engines as well as giving your informational pages structure for your visitors.</li>
</ul>
<p> I hope that you enjoyed this website review. Want a <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/getting-a-review-of-your-website/">review of your website?</a> </p>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fquick-website-review-10-tips-and-tweaks-for-tenbank-net%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fquick-website-review-10-tips-and-tweaks-for-tenbank-net%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-12-tips-and-tweaks-for-about-loft-conversions/" title="Quick Website Review – 12 Tips and Tweaks for AboutLoftConversions.co.uk">Quick Website Review – 12 Tips and Tweaks for AboutLoftConversions.co.uk</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Getting a Review of your Website</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/getting-a-review-of-your-website/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/getting-a-review-of-your-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:58:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Website Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website review]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=414</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Free Reviews &#8211; Quick Reviews
If you would like me to review your website, please contact me. I don&#8217;t charge for giving for the quick reviews, but they are time consuming, so I am not always able to do a free review. My main job as a website mentor does come first. All free reviews are [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3>Free Reviews &#8211; Quick Reviews</h3>
<p>If you would like me to review your website, please <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/contact-me">contact me</a>. I don&#8217;t charge for giving for the quick reviews, but they are time consuming, so I am not always able to do a free review. My main job as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk"><strong>website mentor</strong></a> does come first. All free reviews are published on my blog for others to read.</p>
<h3>Paid Reviews &#8211; Full Website Healthcheck Service</h3>
<p>If you would prefer to pay for a very detailed review, please take a look at my <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/"><strong>Full Website Healthcheck Service</strong></a> for just £50. The healthcheck includes:</p>
<ul>
<li>At least 20 different tips and tricks for improving your website.</li>
<li>Feedback on design, usability, search engine optimisations, layout, linking structure, and more.</li>
<li>Advice and ideas on new features you wish to implement.</li>
<li>A full written report with suggestions and resources to use.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Previous Website Reviews</h3>
<p>All previous free website reviews that I&#8217;ve done are available in the <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/category/website-reviews"><strong>website reviews</strong></a> category.</p>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin: 0 0 10px 10px;"><a href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fgetting-a-review-of-your-website%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.danharrison.co.uk%2Fgetting-a-review-of-your-website%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div><h3  class="related_post_title">Top Related Articles</h3><ul class="related_post"><li><a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/quick-website-review-12-tips-and-tweaks-for-about-loft-conversions/" title="Quick Website Review – 12 Tips and Tweaks for AboutLoftConversions.co.uk">Quick Website Review – 12 Tips and Tweaks for AboutLoftConversions.co.uk</a></li></ul>]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Think Visibility – Decent Webby/SEO Conference Sep 09</title>
		<link>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/think-visibility-decent-webbyseo-conference-sep-09/</link>
		<comments>http://www.danharrison.co.uk/think-visibility-decent-webbyseo-conference-sep-09/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:31:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan Harrison</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conferences]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Think Visibility]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.danharrison.co.uk/?p=384</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
I&#8217;m a big fan of networking, although I&#8217;m still learning how to get the best from it. I went to a new webmaster/affiliate/SEO/web stuff conference called Think Visibility in March 2009. I got to meet some people I had heard of online, such as @AlCarlton from Self Made Minds. I had a great time, and [...]<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/thinkvisibility.jpg" alt="Think Visiblity" title="Think Visiblity" width="378" height="112" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-385" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;m a big fan of networking, although I&#8217;m still learning how to get the best from it. I went to a new webmaster/affiliate/SEO/web stuff conference called <a href="http://www.thinkvisibility.com">Think Visibility</a> in March 2009. I got to meet some people I had heard of online, such as <a href="http://twitter.com/AlCarlton">@AlCarlton</a> from <a href="http://www.selfmademinds.com">Self Made Minds</a>. I had a great time, and I learnt a great deal about how I could improve my earnings with affiliate marketing (my affiliate earnings have increased around 300% as a <strong>direct result</strong> of the advice I received at the conference). </p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the good news, <a href="http://www.thinkvisibility.com">Think Visibility</a> is back on 12th September 2009! In case you wondered, it is in Leeds, but its well worth the trip. I&#8217;m personally staying at a hotel that weekend as I&#8217;m traveling from Southampton. There are <a href="http://thinkvisibility.buildevents.com/">still some tickets available</a> at the moment, so I recommend you sign up!<span id="more-384"></span></p>
<p>(In case you wondered, I wasn&#8217;t paid to write this post, nor are there any affiliate links. I genuinely enjoyed the last conference, and I am really looking forward to the next conference!)</p>
<h3>Networking Tips</h3>
<p>To ensure you get the best from networking at the Think Visibility event and other networking events, here are a few great articles to read.</p>
<ul>
<li> <a href="http://networkingandreferrals.blogspot.com/2009/08/connecting-is-not-enough-top-ten-ways.html">The Top Ten Ways to Ensure Your Networks are More Effective and Produce Results</a> by <a href="http://twitter.com/andylopata">@AndyLopata</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.wealthjunkies.com/personal-development/conference-tips/">13 Tips To Get The Most Out of Conferences</a> by Alexander Barbara (<a href="http://twitter.com/ayb">@ayb</a>)</li>
<li>Got any more networking/conference articles you think should be here? Let me know in the comments form or <a href="http://www.danharrison.co.uk/contact-me/">contact me</a>.
</ul>
<h3>Going to Think Visibility?</h3>
<p>If you are going to the Think Visibility conference, please let me know! I&#8217;d love to say hello!</p>
<p>&copy; 2009 Daniel J. Harrison. Not getting the results you want from your Website? Hire Dan as a <a href="http://www.streamlinedthinking.co.uk/services/website-mentoring-for-existing-websites/">Website Mentor</a>.</p>
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