Once your business is online you will need to market it, but first ensure:-

• The site is clear and simple to use
• A phone number is clearly displayed and allow customers to contact via phone and email, also consider using online chat
• You tell customers where you’re located
• You use high quality photography and imagery throughout the site – customers like polished images
• It’s easy, streamlined and uncomplicated for customers to purchase
• It’s clear to customers that the site is secure and what payment methods are accepted
• Don’t hide costs, such as VAT or delivery
• There is a page detailing delivery and how returns are handled
• Communicate to your customers that you provide value and service
• Don’t force customers to provide endless information about themselves
• Customer are kept in the loop with their order, fulfilment and delivery
• Upsell relevant product to what the customer is viewing or searching on

Then:

• Register you site with all the major search engines and directories
• Set up Google Analytics so you can see what content on your site is popular and what is not
• Work to a marketing strategy / business plan
• Ensure continued offline and online marketing
• Keep your content fresh and customers updated of new products and offers
• Use special offers to entice customers back to your site
• Provide savings for multiple purchases to encourage the customer to spend more – such as offering free delivery when you spend over a certain amount

Without the correctly styled site for your marketplace and continued marketing, the business will quickly drop of the radar – The illusion of  “We’re online – the sales will come rushing in” is still one of the most common e-commerce misconception. No marketing equals no business. Don’t limit your market – being online means you have a worldwide audience, so don’t restrict this, for example, by limiting your options of delivery.

Contact us if you would like to discuss growing your business online.

The site offers information about the island of Cabo Verde aka Sal island which is home to some of the world’s ultimate windsurfing spots, set in an abundant natural paradise which up until recent years has been almost undiscovered. The site encourages you to discover your own perfect windsurfing spots by giving you all the relevant information, as well as providing the opportunity to have a clinic with the Josh himself, PWA Wave World Champion 2009.

Solution »»

Josh’s unique experience as a World Champion windsurfer led him to want to share his talents with others through small clinics. We worked with him to provide the first stage of a comprehensive website with information on equipment and most importantly windsurf lessons and clinics, ultimately with the aim of offering a complete holiday package. The site offers everything you need to enjoy the diverse island of Cabo Verde and it’s windsurfing opportunities including; windsurfing kit hire, information about wind quality, wave quality, how crowded particular areas are, consistency of the surf experience as well as an all important guides to levels of difficultly.

In the near future we’re looking to finalise negotiations with hotels and apartments complexes to add to the package to make this the No.1 resource for windsurfing holidays with the World’s top windsurfing champion.

Features on the site include:

• Seamless and easy secure e-commerce payment process
• Back office customer administration management
• Video integration
• Interactive map of the island

Well all of that is possible with Boost Email Marketing. Boost Email Marketing gives you a complete email campaign overview, recipient behaviour, email client usage and much more.

Armed with this information you can easily see what’s hot and what’s not in your email campaigns thus allowing you to refine future campaigns. Once a campaign is sent, (these can also be scheduled) real time stats start tracking the email campaign and displaying instant results. At any point after sending you can log-in to see the email campaigns progress and see which recipients have already opened the email and which links are the most popular.

With the tracking of individual users it’s possible to see what your conversion rate is if you are promoting a product that can be bought online. Simply compare the email address used in the purchase of your product with the statistics in Boost – you’ll see a direct correlation between those who followed the link in the email to the product and those that then went onto buy the product.

All of these great features for just 1.5 pence per email and a campaign delivery fee of £25. The more emails you send the cheaper the per email cost.

Boost Email Marketing also has the added feature that you only pay for the emails you send, when you send them.

Here’s a quick video of just how easy it is to set up a campaign and another on the email campaign statistics that Boost Email provides.

More information is available at www.boostemail.co.uk

Solution »»

The CMS and flexible design allows for easy updating of any area of the site including adding and re-ordering menu options, products can easily be added or modified and the solution has its own secure user management system built-in to log new users, their details, their purchases and buyers habits. As items are purchased the the system automatically emails the purchaser and the shop with the completed order details so these can be processed ready for dispatch, as well as logging and tracking all the information from the CMS control panel.

The shopping basket is our own custom built module that is connected to Expression Engine; the content management system (CMS) we have built the site upon.

Features on the site include:

• Instant product image detail on mouse rollover
• Measurement convertor – Inches to Centimetres
• Live price update as you alter your required size and finishing options
• Seamless and easy to use secure payment process that doesn’t leave the website
• Instant shopping cart updates using Ajax and JavaScript
• Back-office user management and full product management
• Shop analytics: purchases, product views and abandoned shopping carts

The Net Curtain Corner payment gateway is SagePay.  This provides a secure and trusted platform for the credit card verfication process. We have built the payment process directly into the online shop so the user never leaves the site.

As part of the package to Net Curtain Corner we host the site on our server and manage the purchasing certification to ensure the site is fully secure and compliant to handle credit / debit card purchases.

Solution »»

The name creation process had two objectives. The first being that whatever name we came up with, we would need to be able to register the domain name (or something suitably similar) and secondly the name needed to emphasise what the Email Campaign system does.

As most of us are aware short domain names with any real meaning or uniqueness are becoming more and more scarce, with many of the best names registered but just purchased and parked by cyber squatters.

After some time noting all the keywords appropriate to our system we shortlisted and then checked against availability of the domains. Boostemail.co.uk was available, so the Boost Email solution was born.

The logotype is bold, easily recognisable and stands out, with a strong colour that can be reflected elsewhere in literature or the supporting website.

If you are interested in more information about what Boost Email Marketing can do for you then talk to us with your requirements or visit the website.

Solution »»

After consultation with the client to assess where they see themselves in the marketplace and what their vision and values are, we presented fifteen concept logos. Following further discussions and a few design tweaks we narrowed down the selection before finally deciding on the ultimate design.

The typography is clean and uncluttered with some of the letter shapes tweaked to add balance. A soft reflection creates a horizon line from which the other elements all relate to, giving a sense of depth and to avoid the logotype looking like it’s floating.  The water splash was hand drawn based upon photographic reference as a vector file, meaning it can be scaled to any size without distortion - perfect for exhibition stands, vehicle livery and large format poster campaigns.

As part of our ongoing relationship with the client we are now working on direct mail, email marketing campaigns and their website.

Solution »»

All of the assets for this project were kindly provided by the Empty Shops Network, The Meanwhile Project and The Revolutionary Arts Group and our brief was to create a workbook from this information. The workbook is aimed more towards the ‘Art Scene’ as this makes up a large proportion of the target audience; along with Councils and Government bodies.

The results is an A5 arty booklet that gives you all the information needed to turn an empty space into an exciting opportunity. As part of the project we also designed the Empty Shops Network logo.

The ‘Workbook’ is now available to download here.

Apt quote for the Workbook
“It is vital that we do all we can to enable vacant properties to be used for temporary purposes until demand for retail premises starts to improve [and] stimulate a wide range of other uses such as community hubs, arts and cultural venues, and informal learning centres, which can unlock people’s talent and creativity.”

Department of Communities and Local Government

Solution »»

As part of our ongoing relationship with Best Cabins they asked us to design a series of factsheets to compliment their website. These factsheets are for use at shows, postal enquires and for their various cabin show sites. We created new floorplans of each of the cabins and used photos supplied by David Perks Photography. The colours reflect those of the website to ensure the brand values are upheld across all media.

Print ready artwork was supplied to our preferred printers, Baker Press who as usual did a great job, at a good price.

With the branding, factsheets and website all designed by twobelowzero the client can be assured that their brand is consistent in its message.

The Sussex Internship Programme provides over 100 30-day grant-supported internships for recent graduates at a wide variety of digital based employers across the county.

Twobelowzero is offering 13 years of our industry knowledge to any keen graduates that want to share their skills and work with us.

Do you want to work with twobelowzero?
We are looking for a keen individual who is willing to learn, has a good eye for design and wants to get involved in both online and offline design based work and wants to be part of a fun growing company.

If you want to get a head start with twobelowzero then brush up on your XHTML and CSS knowledge and Expression Engine which is our preferred Content Management System.

More information about our internship can be found on the SIP website.