After spending the last couple of years in Milton Keynes we’ve decided to return to our roots and move the few miles back down the road to Cranfield to an office 4 times the size.

But without 4 times the number of people, what do we do with the extra space? Pool table? Hot tub?

The team has been pretty much flat-out, so in a burst of new recruitment this year we welcome Jamie, our new member of the SOtech development team.

Jamie is pretty handy with PHP and will be ensuring all of our projects are code friendly, looking the business and using the most up-to-date technologies.

As well as being pretty savvy with code, he also does a bit of running, a bit of cycling, and a bit of swimming.

Welcome aboard Jamie, you are going to be busy!!!

We started in 2007 which has turned out to be a vintage year for technology.

- Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone to the world. Say no more.
- Google pays $1.65 billion for YouTube. Seems like a bargain now.
- The blog becomes king as the most trusted source of information for consumers.
- SO technology is born.

A lot can happen in six years, but in the digital world that’s an understatement. We have been designing and developing websites during this time and a lot’s happened; today, we’re using this experience to help businesses like yours succeed online.

There an exciting brand that we’re proud to be part of. We’ve created a series of campaigns, brochures, POS and some exciting digital projects in the pipeline all of which will be revealed shortly.

Meantime, here’s a pic of the Manhattan Store displaying it’s latest window graphics.

It’s going to be a very exciting year for SOtech and VIVOBAREFOOT

With the growth in high speed Internet access and the wide use of smartphones and tablets means the convenience of the web has become the bricks and mortar of high street brands, some have quoted nearly 40% of their annual revenue from online sales.

Our retail clients reported sales of more than triple there weekly sales.

With all the hype and hysteria surrounding Cyber Monday and the upcoming holiday season, we have compiled our top tips for generating greater online sales.

Keep your products close to home.
When it comes to SEO, your homepage is one of the most important assets you have. Your homepage is the first page a search engine will look at, and it is the homepage that is your main source of PageRank.

Your goal should be to have every product no more than three clicks away from your homepage. Use SEO-friendly rollovers or increase the number of products listed on each page.

Write effective title tags.
The title tags on a page are a crucial part of your SEO. When crafting a title tag, create a tag that is a typical search term for your product.

For example, if you sell different types of snowmobiles, your title tags should reflect the different types of snowmobiles your business has for sale. You might have a title tag that says “used snowmobiles”, another that says “Yamaha snowmobiles”, and a third that “youth snowmobiles”.

Use Google AdWords keyword tool to help you find the right phrases.
To improve your title tags and overall e-commerce SEO, start with researching keyword phrases with the free Google AdWords keyword tool.

Improve page file names.
Some ecommerce platforms automatically gave your page files strange, automated names, such as “www.yoursite.com/?ID=productnumber”. Change your settings to create links that include your keyword-rich title tag.

Tag your products.
For every product, add relevant tags that link back to similar products.

Start a blog.
In the same vein as offering free articles about snowmobiles, you could also create a company blog in which you offer reviews, snowmobile maintenance tips, snowmobile vacation ideas, and everything else snowmobile related.

A blog offers you an opportunity to write custom content on your targeted keywords, thus increasing traffic to your site.

Utilize Facebook.
Did you know Americans visit Facebook more than any other website – even more (on some days) than Google? Your Facebook fan page is another way to keep your products on the minds of your customers, while also providing one more way to improve your ecommerce SEO results.

Utilize Twitter.
After Facebook, Twitter is the second-biggest name in social media. You can set up a month’s worth of timely tweets in a matter of a half hour with a service such as Tweet-U-Later.

Utilize YouTube.
Here’s another interesting social media fact: after Google, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.

Optimize every product image for search.
By adding a keyword-rich phrase in the “alternate text” field of an image, the images themselves can draw additional traffic to your ecommerce websites.

Use H1 and H2 tags.
Including your keywords in heading and subheading tags is a must on each page.

Watch what people search for internally.
If people search keywords from within your site, what are they looking for? The most frequently searched products should be featured prominently on your homepage.

Monitor your progress with Google Analytics.
You can’t improve your site if you don’t know how people are responding to it.

Finally, If you don’t know how, ask an expert.
Were here to help you. Give us a call or drop us an email to see how we can help.

Felix then set three further records, the highest jump from a platform, the longest distance freefall, and the first person to break the sound barrier (833.9mph) without a vehicle.

We loved all the facts and figures but what interested us most was YouTube setting a new record of 8 million simultaneous live streams of the event. Wow!!!!

What we like most about this story is how Red Bull have set the benchmark for brand exposure. They instantly became the centre of attention and by using social channels like YouTube means they became an instant trend.

So what’s next Felix?

Sources: Digital Spy, The Guardian, YouTube

At the end of each program, they run a graduation event called ‘Pitch Fest‘ where the best-of-the-best of their participants pitch their businesses to an esteemed panel of investors, mentors and business judges.

We’d like to congratulate Chiki Tea and Posture Videos for coming First and Second at the ‘Pitch Fest‘.

We are really proud to have worked on both the Chiki Tea and Posture Videos new websites and are looking forward to working with them in the coming years. Well done guys.

We’d like to give you the job straight-away but first we need to see if your up for it. We’d like you to have experience of the usual stuff XHTML/HTML5, CSS/3, Javascript, jQuery and all that… and oh yeah Photoshop. Steve’s just barked at me that you need some knowledge of WordPress and eCommerce platforms too, but if not we can sort a bit of training out.

So the big test. Download the PSD here, and pretty much we want you to show us that you can slice, dice and all that HTML gubbins. There’s a few notes on the PSD for you to follow, so build away, make it look pretty and better still add some flair. (NO Flash please)

The next thing to do is simply ZIP up the HTML source files, send it back to us and we’ll be in touch.

Good Luck.

PLEASE NO RECRUITMENT AGENCIES.

As a mentally keen cyclist i’m always looking out for innovative and exciting bike gear, gadgets and apps, but this really caught my eye, and honestly I’m hooked.

STRAVA lets you track your rides and runs via your iPhone, Android or dedicated GPS device to analyze and quantify your performance. The results are then shown on STRAVA.com in their intuitive UI.

What I love most about STRAVA compared to other GPS apps is that it makes your usual ride a social experience. I can race against my friends, even if their not riding next to me.

By using Facebook connect it’s easy to get started too, you then go for ride with a GPS device (or download the app for your phone) – upload to STRAVA.com – See how you did!!!

As a designer I like a good UI and I love designing sites that give great user experiences, its the backbone of what I do. For me STRAVA definitely sets the benchmark for data presentation it’s simplistic and technically cool!!!

STRAVA, well done, you keep me very happy

Do you think you are the next King of the Mountains?. Follow me on STRAVA.