With the big upsurge in the use of mobile devices to browse and make purchases it is essential for any business to offer a good user experience to these devices. It is NOT sufficient to just show a website that has been designed for a large desktop or laptop screen on these devices. All too often these are just not usable as the text is scaled so small it is not readable and when you try and click a button you often click something else as they are too small.

Saying the above is easy for a web design company but becomes a big burden for small businesses that need to get on with the business rather than administering a website.

If you have a bespoke website designed and created for you then the year on year costs are going to be high as you will need to engage with the design company to make adjustments. By far the best way is to go with one of the many frameworks  available as these are maintained and updated for you as technologies move on, leaving you to focus on the content and not the technology.

By far the biggest framework is WordPress. WordPress has 1000′s of plugins and themes available of which some are free and some are commercial but in most cases are significantly cheaper than engaging a developer to create something. One of the big WordPress plugin and theme companies is WPMU Dev that offer well supported plugins and themes.

If you need any advice on your website and in particular WordPress please get in touch.

Our WordPress specialist hosting package includes:

• UK Linux hosting
• .com domain name
• WordPress installed
• 1,00MB of Storage
• 10,000MB of bandwidth
• 100 eMail accounts

GREAT value at just £8.50/month or £85/year

Praeparo are WordPress design, development, hosting and support specialists and can provide supported plugins to:

• create a membership website
• add Classifieds to your blog
• powerful ecommerce / shopping cart
• manage events
• accommodation booking form
• fundraising
• create your own blog network

Need some advice just give us a call 020 8123 8159.

There is a lot of confusion around the directive with many organisations sitting on the fence and waiting to see what competitors are doing. regardless of if you agree with the directive or not you need to understand it, plan how it impacts your own website(s) and plan a strategy to implement the directive.

What we at Praeparo recommend you do is:

They clearly show that the England receives a massive spend in the travel and tourism sector:

• £8.3bn is the amount spent on domestic holidays in England between Jan and Sept 2011.
• £225 is the average amount spent per overnight holiday trip in England between Jan and Sept 2011.

A number of surveys predict that as money gets tight more domestic holidays will be taken, add this to the focus of the Olympics and Diamond Jubilee celebrations, 2012 is a year of opportunities to UK travel and tourism businesses.

How can you as a small business help yourself get full occupancy, more visitors to your attraction, full teaching groups, or a greater number of visitors in through the door?

Well you can compete against the large corporations. In today’s online world a simple well thought out website can get you in front of the many potential clients searching around the World Wide Web. Unlike a few years ago people will book with small websites as long as the website obeys a few simple rules:

• Has a postal address and landline phone number.
• Has an email address the same as the domain name (www.praeparo.com, sales@praeparo.com)
• Has a privacy policy.
• Has clear, relevant terms and conditions.
• Has clear descriptions and pictures.

As well as the above you must be able to take online bookings and a deposit. If you force someone to pick up a phone or write then you may well loose out on the point-in-time purchase.

This all does not have to cost you a fortune but as more people start using mobile devices like smart phones and iPads then you need a website that works well on these devices. If you have not touched your website for a few years then you will more than likely look very outdated, why not compare it with some of your competitors to see how far you have fallen behind.

2012 is the year to get your website working as people expect it to work or risk loosing valuable business.

The website has been designed to be responsive to the device (PC, laptop, tablet, smart phone) being used.

Other key elements are a map that knows where you are, improved navigation system, improved performance, new business listing management area.

To coincide with the launch Coast Radar has launched a Social Media campaign making use of re-vamped facebook, twitter (@coastradar) and blog pages.

Coast Radar was faced with a problem that many other websites are also struggling with. The whole idea that visitors are using different sized devices and expect a tailored experience. At first we worked on a main website, mobile website and iphone application but this just became too expensive and complicated to keep in sync.

After listening to what the users were saying we decided on a completely new version of the website.

The beta is a mechanism where we can share our new vision and still have time to take on-board people’s comments.

At a high level the changes of the new website are:

• Clearer navigation outside of maps.
      We have provided a new text link navigation system where you start at a continent, then look at countries, then states, then actual listings.
• People who enter at a beach listing from the search engine said it is long winded to see other elements close by.
      We have added a breadcrumb at the top of a page labelled “You are at :: ” where the green parts are links to allow you to easily move backwards and forwards. This means you can easily move up from an entry to the region, from a region to the country, etc.
• People only want to be told about the area they are looking at rather than maps of the world with 1000′s of markers.
      We have changed the whole site to show information based on the context. For example, if you are looking at The United Kingdom you will see the regions/states, where as if you are looking at a state you will see the listings within it.
• People want a mechanism whereas they can ask businesses and other people for advice on a coastal area.
      We have expanded the community to provide a full social environment where people can freely ask questions and share experiences.
• People wanted a mechanism to plan plan and record a trip.
  We have allowed FREE travel Blogs within the community to plan, record and share a trip.
• People want a single website to map to the device they are using, a laptop, tablet or mobile phone and don’t want to have to swap between mobile, desktop and mobile application versions.
      This was a complete re-design to provide a responsive website that adapts to the screen size being used. We will discontinue our iphone and mobile website versions.
• Businesses wanted a mechanism to communicate with other businesses and people interested in the coast.
  The new community website allows people to discuss topics within what we calls groups. Groups can be PUBLIC – open to everyone, PRIVATE – people have to request membership of the group Admin or HIDDEN where people have top be invited. Anyone can start a group.
  
• People wanted a faster site.
  Although the beta does not use it, when the new website goes live it will use an international Content Delivery Network (CDN) to provide faster access to content.

Why not go and have a play at beta.coastradar.com

Technology wise, the main website is a custom HTML 5 fluid design and the community makes use of WordPress and Buddypress.

Any questions then just drop us an email or give us a call at +44 (0)20 8123 8159

In the last 12 months mobile devices have become the norm and now more people spend time researching using mobile devices. They now expect websites to be optimized for such devices.

This means if you designed your website 12-18 months ago you need to be thinking if it fits this model.

At Praeparo we point a lot of our customers towards WordPress nowadays for a number of reasons:

1) It is easy to keep up with trends. WordPress has lots of plugins to do all the latest things and provides upgrades that mean you don’t loose anything previously done.
2) You have full control and not your web design agency or web development team. For example, I am typing this on my FREE iPhone WordPress application whilst on the train. This used to be wasted time.
3) WordPress has mobile plugins that just detect a mobile device and then change automatically.
4) Want a new design just change the theme and don’t worry about the content.
5) Want a social media site, membership site, online shop; WordPress plugins exist for all.

These are just some reasons that enables organizations big or small to get a website to meet needs at a cost suitable to business size. The website then keeps with all the latest trends at a very cheap cost.

Speak to Praeparo today for ideas on how WordPress can eliminate the expensive task of a website rewrite every few years.

Get your website in front of all your customers.

We will sit down with you in front of your website and generally walk through it and answer any of your concerns.

So if your business is local in towns like Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Tring, Aylesbury, Chesham, Amersham, St. Albans, Watford, Wendover or even as far as Milton Keynes just send a message on our contact us form or give us a call.

If you are further afield or you represent a trading body or business group then by all means contact us and we will see what we can do.

Some of the questions already asked include:
- my website looks dated, any ideas?
- how can I get more control over my website content and not always have to pay for changes?
- what does SEO mean to me?
- website review please?
- keyword selection tips?
- am I spending enough or too much on pay per click advertising?
- should I concentrate on local search?

As you can see we have covered and helped a lot of businesses. Again, no obligation to purchase anything.

If you’d like to know more, call us today on 020 8123 8159.

You see an expensive website with all the current trends that shows a wonderful image. You like what you see so click on a contact-us form and you get a nice page that says thank-you for your enquiry and that a representative will get back to you in a few hours. You then see an email from business@hotmail.com, or you may not see it as it is in your spam. Would you then go and spend your good earned money with this company when all your communication is to a FREE email account.

I don’t think you would as it does not instill confidence that the organisation is here for the long term.

The biggest industry I see this in is the travel trade and hotels, self catering, B&B, holiday cottage establishments.

It only takes a few pounds a year to close this gap and I am sure will drive a lot more business and reduce the bounce rate of visitors to your website.

Praeparo are offering a 50% reduction on our strategy workshop was £995 now £495.

For this you get an expert on site for a day to discuss your website and internet marketing strategy and help you validate the current plan and discuss improvements and way forwards.

This is not a formal report generation meeting but a real person sitting down with yourselves and talking through ideas. We admit that we may not have all the answers but will either point you at a relevant resource to get an answer or we will take away the question and get back to you.

The agenda can be anything you want but we typically think a discussion around:

• Where you currently think you are?
• Where you think you are going?
• Gap analysis between you current and future state.
• Start to discuss how the gaps can be addresses.

Use our contact form or give us a call on 020 8123 8159 to start the ball rolling.

Remember, visitors hitting your website and thus purchasing don’t come by accident, as the internet gets more competitive you need to be on top of what your competitors are doing.

Note: onsite visit for UK customer within 150 miles of postcode HP22. Other will be considered but travel may incur a small charge.