Appointed Website Developer - Starting March 2012!

Here at Shrewsbury's Design Agency Verve - we are very proud to announce that we have appointed an incredibly experienced, hard working and knowledgeable Developer who specialises in e-Commerce to join our growing team.

Being such a strong, dedicated and talented team, we knew it was crucial to find the right person for this role. We may not have found such a golden egg without the fantastic work of our friendly and reliable neighbour, C2 Recruitment. In their hard working and professional approach they have managed to find us the perfect candidate to fit all of our requirements - we can't have second best here at Verve!! :-)

With such an incredible year coming up, we are really looking forward March - come back soon and we will be revealing more!

Junior/Graduate Website Developer

At Verve Graphic Design & Marketing, Shropshire, we pride ourselves in having such a strong, dedicated and talented team, and with many exciting plans for 2012 we are on the hunt to recruit another outstanding Website Developer to complement our Shrewsbury based Web Design team.

Responsibilities will include doing the back end and front end development of our websites. Skills required include:

• PHP/My SQL

• Apache Web Server

• Unix Administration

• XHTML, CSS, Javascript, J Query, Ajax

• XLM

• Experience with CMS, such as Wordpress, Drupel, Joomla, etc

• Experience with CMS, such as Magento, Open Cert, Prestashop, etc

• Database administration (majorly MySQL)

The successful candidate must be able to display creativity and flair within strict deadlines and take projects from concept to completion. This is an excellent opportunity to get heavily involved in some very exciting and groundbreaking website builds using the latest technologies.

Experience should include:

• Previous experience in a web design related field/subject

• Experience of working in a target driven environment

• Excellent understanding of the internet and web based applications

A portfolio of existing websites you have been involved in producing would be distinct advantage.

Qualifications and Skills:

• Degree in related field

If this is the perfect role for you or someone you know - please contact us straight away, we'd love to hear from you!

Boosting your Social Media Literacy

We have found the below 5 steps targeting business owners to boost their social media literacy - and boost their business!

1. Understand that relationships with customers, staff, suppliers, distributors and other business contacts extend beyond the four walls of your office. Whether you agree with the idea of social media or not, millions of people around the world use social networks every day and if you own a business, social media literacy is a must.

2. Engage with customers on social media. Accept customers as friends, followers and connections. You can always set privacy options to limit what you share with customers, but keep the engagement flowing by connecting with them on social media.

3. Have a Facebook Fan Page for your business. Invite customers to “like” your page and offer an incentive to do so. Include content-rich articles. Have contents. Create an online culture that will help customers get to know and love you, your products, services and business.

4. Connect with your team online. There are differing opinions out there among human resources professionals about whether managers should connect with staff on social networks, but the point is to create, then cultivate, healthy relationships with your staff that will build trust on and off line amongst you all.

5. Develop a Social Media Policy with your staff. Notice that did not read “for your staff”. Engage and empower your staff in conversations about social media. If you are not entirely convinced of why social media is useful for a business, ask your staff to help you. Rather than imposing rules on them about what they can and can not post and how they must or must not interact with others, engage them in conversations about what makes sense for them, for you and for the business.

Social Media Strategy - Increase Social Engagement

Engagement with your audience is one of the great advantages of social media marketing, but creating meaningful conversations is as much an art as it is a science. Engagement increases brand loyalty and public conversations can serve as free advertising.

Contests and Promotions
It is crucial to know your audience and provide content that is valuable, useful or interesting to that audience. One of the best ways to get the social customer engaged with your brand is to give something they want through contests, promotions or vouchers. Apparently, 65% of people who follow brands on Facebook are looking to score a deal. The business is out there, you just need to be there with a promotion and get the business - simple.

Ongoing Social Engagement
Contests and promotions are likely to serve your social engagement well, but as always, a variety is essential for a successful campaign. Therefore special promotions need to be balanced with interesting and useful content. Asking questions, doing the unexpected, and empowering your most passionate followers are three ways that businesses can enhance ongoing social engagement and loyalty, which eventually leads to more customers and increased sales.

Elaborating on the three ways to enhance ongoing social engagement…

Keep Asking Questions
This may seem obvious, but many businesses continue to post about their products and services without asking their followers or fans for feedback. Asking your audience questions not only shows you value customer feedback, it is also a great way to learn insights from and about your fans.

Do Something Unexpected
Few brands have the guts to try something unexpected and even fewer can be successful at it. One “Do-Something-Unexpected” story is Magic Hat. They sent out an e-newsletter to promote their Number 9 beer for the brew’s sixteen-year anniversary. The email was written from the point of view of a proud parent, poking fun at the beer entering into adolescence. The email was so bold, funny and captivating, the audience could not help but read on.

Empower Your Most Passionate Users
Finally, empowered fans will promote your brand and spread the word of your business. They are ultimately your number one asset. We want to encourage businesses to find out what it is about their brand that ignites their fans’ passions and by 'fueling the fire' you can build a loyal following for your business too.

Advertising Your Business Effectively

At Verve Graphic Design Shrewsbury we found an interesting statistic that, as per the BBC experts, we see over 500 advertising messages every day. An incredible number here, so how many of these do you think you could you recall on your way to work? Not many? Me either!

500 advertising messages every day may sound like an unusually high figure but advertising can so easily wash over us, instead of doing what it’s intended to do, that is, grab our attention. So often, nowadays, advertising acts more like a garnish to our everyday lives. We are aware it’s there, sitting on the side of the plate - but we’re just not interested in taking it in.

In order to make an impact with your business it is crucial that your business identity, website, flyers, etc, that is, all marketing materials you have will:


a) Stand out, and 


b) Communicate your Unique Selling Point to potential customers in those few seconds you have to impress them

We are extremely determined and passionate about our work to achieve both of these points when creating designs for our clients, whether it is for their business identity, website, flyers, or advertisement in a magazine. We work closely with our clients to gain their full concept to ensure we effectively create the perfect design that will stand out and communicate their business' USP successfully.

We're based on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, in Shropshire, please give us a call to discuss any of your business design requirements as we'd love to assist.

Top 5 Website Mistakes

Julian Smout, our Managing Director here at Shropshire's Verve Graphic Design & Marketing, has highlighted the 5 most common mistakes made when producing a website. Businesses can spend a great deal of time, money and effort on creating their business website, however, a website that isn’t bringing in the right customers, or any customers at all - isn’t worth having! At Verve we constantly come across websites that are not working effectively, and not selling the products or services that they are intended to sell. These sites are not just do-it-yourself sites but large expensively produced sites. There are 5 key mistakes:

1: Text heavy and poorly thought out content. Think of your website as a shop front. Would you have an essay on your shop front? Would you expect people to read all of that essay? All main pages of your site should have small paragraphs - digestible blocks of text - utilising headings, sub headings, bullets and pull quotes. Visitors to sites will skim and scan - if you want or need to have a lot of information then keep that deep in the site for visitors to find should they require it. Remember - there is a reason us designers like white space. We like to ensure that the message comes across and is not overlooked. Text heavy content is just not readable and therefore is a major mistake. Too many companies flood their sites with content - pages and pages - scroll after scroll. Be descriptive yet concise.

2: Poor Design. There is a lot to designing a website. We would say that I know - but there are a lot of very important considerations. Content needs to stand out and imagery, font selection and poor contrast can make a massive impact on the visitor. Obviously a professionally designed site is going to portray your company a lot better than a self made one (in most cases). But even then - mistakes are made. Too often text is unreadable and there are no size differences. Making some things appear larger than others is much more appealing to the eye and will attract the eye. Contrast variants is key as well as it is the use of contrast that will guide the eye to where you want it to be lead. Use of colours will facilitate this process too. We are constantly coming across sites that are just bland, un-appealing and simply boring. Good design will correct this and is another key factor that should not be ignored and too often is. Spend a bit of time getting the design right. It will be worth it.

3: Technically flawed Navigation It is essential to have quality content that looks good, but poorly structured and technically flawed navigation can be equally as damaging for a website. To avoid this mistake, always plan ahead as to what navigational structure will suit the business' needs best and ensure this is carried on throughout. A good navigation structure should be seamless and will keep visitors on your site for longer, which means potentially more readers, more subscribers, more sales and leads - whichever is your primary objective. Good use of stand alone buttons/links are useful tools for easy navigation. Don't make visitors think about how to navigate your site; it should be effortless and natural.

4: Where is the site? This common mistake is hard to come across as it is difficult to find the site in the first place! Too often businesses spend time and money on a producing a site and then do not pursue any methods to market it. A method such as using google adwords, organic search engine optimisation, online advertising, social media, referral sites etc, need to be employed otherwise no-one will find your site. A starting place which is too often ignored is organic search engine optimisation. When producing a site research the keywords that you think people will use to find your site, then use them in the copy and get your website designer to add them to the "meta" tags - nominal descriptions and page titles. Then make sure your site is submitted to all the main search engines and ensure those search engines can easily navigate your site by producing a site map. Too often websites are not set up in this way. It is just a matter of investing some time - and this time will bring traffic to your site. This in itself arguably makes poor onsite marketing the most important and worst mistake to make.

5: Call-to-action - where's that? Finally, the website is put together, looks great, can be found but all that is useless if your primary call-to-action is a plain "click here" link buried in a sea of text. Call-to-action buttons are a great way to grab the users attention and then importantly capture said users information or sale. Too many websites have no clear strategy when it comes to call-to-actions - and the user is expected to find pages, contact info etc. Decent call-to-actions should mean that the user is attracted by that call-to-action and will follow the link and then enter their information or make a call. Visitors should not have to work or think about what to do - or they will leave the site. Your content should have answered, "What's in it for me? and your call-to-action should now answer, "What do I do now?"

These 5 mistakes are by no means the only mistakes made when producing a website. I could list hundreds but in the interest of keeping this article succinct I chose 5.

Jolly Good Move

We are pleased to announce we have just re-launched the Jolly Good Van Hire website. They currently have two branches one near Wrexham and one in Shrewsbury, with a third due to open in Ely near Cambridge in November.

The site has been developed in Word Press and very particular attention (as usual for us) was spent on optimising the site before going live. Verve, web design Shrewsbury, have also been retained on a monthly basis to manage the site for them and continue with the search engine optimisation process on an on-going basis.

Jolly Good Van Hire