The Technology Studio

We love sharing the success stories of our clients who partner with us to create fantastic solutions that are recognized throughout their industry. In the case of travel website GoLearnTo.com, the accolades just keep on coming with no less than four awards and nominations in the past month which include…

Now you’re talking…

The International Association of Language Centres (IALC) have voted GoLearnTo.com agency of the month recognising them as a leading language travel agency with a range of courses where you can learn Spanish in Spain or learn French in France and over 14 more languages worldwide.

 
The public have spoken…

For the 2^nd year running, GoLearnTo.com has been nominated for a British Travel award in the category ‘Best Holiday Experience Provider’ proving that the trend for learning holidays continues to get the public’s vote.

School’s have their say…

Language Travel Magazine readers which include language schools from over 30 countries worldwide have nominated GoLearnTo.com for ‘Best New Agency’. GoLearnTo.com have found a niche with language travel and are inspiring more of us to learn a language by combining languages with a unique range of fun activities such as cookery holidays in Italy, yoga holidays or even surfing and much more.

Guiding the way…

Last but not least, GoLearnTo.com has received a nomination for The Good Web Guide’s Website of the Year Award recognising websites that not only function well but inspire.

This proves once again how an aesthetically pleasing, functionally rich and easy to use website designed and developed by The Technology Studio with maps by Earthware can do for you.

At The Technology Studio we don’t believe the work of creating a successful website that makes the most of digital marketing opportunities finishes when you sign off the delivered specification – that’s just the beginning.  We also don’t believe that you can outsource SEO to the next muppet who SPAM emails you with the email title “Guaranteed to get you to #1 in the Google search rankings” (if you ever get one of these use the delete key immediately – nobody can do this).

The Technology Studio believes that the best Search Engine Optimisation is a team effort between a client and their web developer or technology partner.  Many clients struggle to understand (or frankly get excited) about SEO and would dearly love to delegate (or more accurately abdicate) the hard work of getting to the top of Google Rankings to anyone other than themselves.  SEO and PPC (Pay per Click) are not exactly the sexy side of offline or online marketing!

At The Technology Studio we believe there are a lot of things a good web developer can do for SEO but that clients also have to take responsibility for a very important part of this – content.  Why?  Because it is very difficult for anyone outside the business to understand the business well enough to write a lot of compelling content (and frankly it is very expensive to outsource this to a PR/copy writer).  In addition, the client may write good copy for a human being to read but forgets that each page has two audiences – human beings (potential clients) and search engines (the way potential clients find the relevant page in the first place).

At the Technology Studio, we are always looking for ways to help our clients make the most of their websites.  We were recently approached by a new client who was struggling to write 110 pages of compelling content, including good key words and key phrases, about their properties dotted around the UK.  They asked us to help so we dumped everything they had into a file and created our own Keyword Density Tool.  The client was so delighted (it saved them days of work) that we decided to create a generic version and give it away (at least for a while anyway).

Click the ‘Keyword Density Tool’ link below to download our Keyword Density Tool and feel free to use it to write great keyword rich web copy for your website.  We only ask that if you are ever looking to find your next technology partner then you consider The Technology Studio. You can also see how we used the tool to write this blog article by downloading the ‘Keyword Density Tool with example’ from the link below to help you get started.

If you have any comments of questions or just want to let us know how you got on using the Keyword Density Tool then please do get in touch with us on 0845 642 9880 or email info@thetechnologystudio.co.uk.

(Part 1/5)

If you are a commercial property agent, have you asked yourself the following questions?

1.  Am I falling behind in the fight for the digital space?

We strongly suspect you may not even know how you stack up. We certainly couldn’t find a good analysis of who the winners and losers in the online UK commercial property space are.

2.  Who is winning and what are they doing right?

Hopefully this article will help you to understand who is winning a lot better. We have looked at a number of data sources to come up with a list.

3.  What are my opportunities to win online?

Now that’s the hard question. Albert Einstein once said “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” Winning online is usually a combination of client passion, an excellent technology partner, and the appropriate business resources (both money and human).

At The Technology Studio we believe that websites are only really about two things:

1. Getting as many of the right people to visit your site as you can
2. Making it as easy as possible for those people to find what they are looking for

The first is all about Search Engine Optimisation or SEO and this is what this article focuses on. The second is all about usability. For example, you can have a site with a great Google page rank and great SEO but is hated by users and is very poor at converting visitors to leads. That site will still rank highly on the lists below as there are many more objective metrics for SEO (e.g. visitors, page rank, back links) than for usability.

Anyway, onto the analysis.

The Analysis

Methodology

This is normally the long boring part that you had to write in science reports at school. To make it easy for the reader, we will put a lot more detail in the final blog article in the series (for any insomniacs) but suffice it to say that we used a number of sources to get a representative list of more than 100 significant players in the commercial property marketing sector in the UK and then ran a lot of data queries over a period of a week to identify the top 100 and their key data and statistics.

Marketing Effectiveness

We didn’t want to just do some analysis on who got the most traffic (though we have that later in this series of articles) but wanted to give you a view on the marketing effectiveness of the websites. We looked around for an independent assessor and decided to use Websitegrader.com. In essence, WebsiteGrader looks across many of the parameters that Google uses to assess the value of your website and analyses how effectively it implements technology and content. It then turns this into a score out of 100 to rank a website vs. the 2m+ other sites it has already analysed. These are the top 22 from the list of UK commercial property websites we analysed.

Some surprises? We think so. It is worth noting a few on the list.

NovaLoca – this site didn’t exist 30 months ago yet has risen to 3rd on this list in that time. We are biased (The Technology Studio built NovaLoca) but it is a triumph that this is possible despite lower traffic levels, a lower number of back links and a UK only presence unlike many of the top 20. From our point of view this is directly due to the tenacity and innovation in the team and frankly a lot of hard work but we are pleased it is paying off.

Land Securities – this is a great success story and we commend everyone working on this site as it scores 97/100 (and a Google page rank of 6/10) and this despite it only being ranked 51^st in the list for UK traffic. We also like the layout and usability of the site – a really good all round success story and one others should aspire to and could learn from.

EGPropertyLink – being careful to be fair, 30 out of the 100 sites have a score of 90 or more putting them in the top 10% of sites in the world according to WebsiteGrader. However, whilst EGPropertyLink is the dominant UK portal with the most properties, it only comes in 23^rd on this list.

Read ‘Who leads the pack for commercial property websites in the UK? Part 2: Google Page Rank’

Twitter is still a relatively new marketing tool for most businesses and one which in many cases (from our experience) many business owners and marketers are yet to realise the potential of. One reason for this could be the fact that historically it has been difficult to see the value of it for you business.

Things have now moved on with a number of Twitter statistics and analytics tools being developed which all work to give you an idea of how Twitter can/is promoting your company and driving business online. This article gives a list of these websites and applications as well as a few tips on using Twitter for business. These tools could really help you evaluate the effectiveness of Twitter to ensure you are using the latest online communication tools to build your business.

For further information on using Twitter and other online marketing tools to drive business contact The Technology Studio on 0845 642 9885 or email info@thetechnologystudio.co.uk

We are a small, but fast growing technology company with two brands: ‘The Technology Studio’ develops and manages websites (usually with both challenging back end and front end requirements) for clients across a number of industries including property, travel, media. ‘Earthware’ is a globally recognised interactive mapping specialist helping clients to bring their products and services to life using mapping.

We are looking for an experienced (3-7) years ASP.net developer to join our creative and professional team to develop client facing websites for a variety of clients. Day to day activities would include planning, designing and developing websites (both back end and front end) from client pitch to final delivery and testing.

Applicants need to demonstrate the following essential skills:

• Strong, full life cycle, Asp.net C#
• Excellent CSS / HTML / Javascript
• SQL Server / TSQL

The following skills / experience would also be advantageous:

• Ajax frameworks
• XSLT / XML
• Any web mapping experience
• Silverlight
• Unit testing
• ASP.net MVC

In return we can offer on target earning of up to £35,000. We also offer the opportunity to be part of a growing company with a unique culture built around integrity, enthusiasm, initiative, playing as a team and having fun. We actively encourage your personal and skills development but also look for people that are a bit different and embrace being part of an entrepreneurial, ‘we are in this together’ culture. This is not the place for ‘also rans’!

If you think you meet these requirements and are interested in applying for the position please email your CV to recruitment@earthware.co.uk.

All applicants must be registered to work in the UK.

NO CONTACT FROM AGENCIES

If you think you would be a great member of the team, we look forward to hearing from you.

The awards for the travel website GoLearnTo just keep on coming! This time it has been recognised for being one of the UK’s most promising internet companies. ‘First Tuesday’, Europe’s largest professional network for high growth technology companies, shortlisted GoLearnTo down to a final of 8 other entries.

This proves once again how an aesthetically pleasing, functionally rich and easy to use website designed and developed by The Technology Studio with maps by Earthware can do for you.

Only a few weeks after Golearnto.com Wins Daily Mail Website of the Week it has now been awarded yet another honour.

The Independent, one of the UK’s most respected newspapers, has compiled a list of what it considers the 50 best travel websites and included in this prestigious list is www.golearnto.com.

The flexibility of the site is one thing mentioned in the short review, where you can search for “holiday courses according to destination, length, budget and type of trip: choose from sport, language, cooking, creative or well-being breaks.”

A second award for this site is something that The Technology Studio take great pride in. It also proves that when it comes to professional, functional travel websites we are experts in this field.

The Technology Studio’s first travel website, GoLearnTo, has just been awarded ‘Website of the Week’ by the Daily Mail. GoLearnTo provides a range of  learning holidays to suit any location or budget.

The journalist reviewing the site commented that the site provided, “Excellent search options and a reassuring level of detail”. He followed this with, “If you’re looking for a holiday course with a learning element, this website is a time-saving godsend”.

GoLearnTo invested time to work with The Technology Studio to design and plan the website before the final build. This commendation proves that the more time spent planning your website, the better this is reflected in the end result.

The Technology Studio have a strong background in travel websites and as such we are aware of the issues you may face as a travel provider and how these must be addressed in your website. Through careful planning and good project management, your website should also be one which consumers champion.

Research by Fasthosts has found that half of UK businesses with a website make no effort to optimise their position on search engines.

When it comes to finding a business consumers are heavily reliant on search engine results and they prefer to use organic (main search results) rather than sponsored (businesses have paid to have them displayed) listings when making a decision on which business they should approach. However, with 17% of UK businesses yet to even submit their website to search engines and 35% of UK businesses making no effort to ensure their website is listed highly in search engine results it is not surprising that consumers are failing to find one in two businesses online: and this is ignoring all those businesses that don’t have a website at all. All these companies are losing out on potentially massive sales opportunities simply because they are not being found by the people that are out there actively looking for them.

The main reasons for this failure to cash in on online opportunities appear to be, that business owners and marketing teams do not understand how search engine results are compiled therefore they cannot see how their actions in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO) can influence their website ranking. In addition to this, there appears to be a lot of mis-understanding in regards to the amount of time and the costs involved in SEO.

The Technology Studio has long recognised the need for SEO when it comes to online marketing and making the most of a website. This is why the web development team ensure all websites they build are done so in an SEO friendly way. But you don’t need a whole new site to improve your search engine listing positions. Simple tweaks to your existing website such as making sure the content on your site is up to date, relevant, and contains keywords that your customers are searching with will make a huge difference to your online presence. The Technology Studio can make suggestions which you can then easily implement in-house as part of your company’s on-going marketing strategy.

Commercial property search engine, NovaLoca is just one company that has already benefited from making some simple changes. Read their story here and if you want to find out more about Search Engine Optimisation and how you can improve your ranking, contact The Technology Studio.

The head does what the head is designed to do whilst a leg does what a leg is designed to do, but they both work together (with other parts!) to form a whole body that functions.

This maybe a slightly random analogy to use to explain the launch of the Technology Studio, but let me explain.

Earthware (the head) was launched back in January 2007 with the aim of using the latest web based mapping technology to bring their clients products and services to life. Seeing the success the mapping had in achieving this we came to see the additional benefits of using the latest web development technologies to create a complete website that would further ensure that the clients services are brought to life and attractive to customers (the arm). The two parts have been happily working independently, and together, for some time and have both shown great successes under the overall branding of Earthware.

However, we believe that now is the time for the ‘head’ and the ‘arm’ to be recognised under their own names. Earthware will continue to be the brand name for the interactive mapping and will be the registered company name under which the web site development will operate, however, the web development will be known under its own branding name of The Technology Studio.

What makes The Technology Studio unique?

The Technology Studio’s web developers have many years of experience in designing, planning and building websites. Therefore, we have a comprehensive understanding of how a website should be designed and built to make it perform well, as well as of the processes we, and you, need to go through.

With all this then put into practice you will sign off the final site with a satisfied smile on your face knowing that you have a site that you, and we, are proud of; one which attracts and converts customers and one which hasn’t caused you, or us, any sleepless nights during the development process.

In order that we can make this happen for you:

1. We refuse to quote you for a website straight off - We will only put a quote together for once we, or another developer, have created a schematic or wireframe of the proposed site. We believe that it is only then that we are able to accurately estimate the time and cost involved in building your site.
2. You get what you pay for - Our schematics mean that the website spec is so detailed from the beginning of the build that you and we understand exactly what the requirements, costs, timings and expectations are, meaning that there will be no nasty surprises for either party along the way.
3. We don’t spend your money unless it makes you money - If we do cannot see how you will generate a financial return after spending money on us we will persuade you not to spend money on us.
4. We are in it for the long term - Sorry, once you’ve got us, you can’t get rid of us! We aim to get intimately involved in our client’s business and always challenge ourselves on how we can help them make money. If we see something that will benefit you, we will let you know.
5. You can call any of our clients - We could tell you what we want working with us to be like but only our clients can say what it is actually like. Therefore, we will send you our clients contact details (they have agreed to this!) so you can have a chat with them about their experiences of working with us.

What Does The Technology Studio Actually Do?

For a complete idea of what we do and to see some examples please visit The Technology Studio website, but in the mean time here’s a taster:

• Web design and development – create an effective website

   

• Online marketing – drive traffic to your website

   

• Software development – improve your businesses efficiency

   

• Technology consultancy – review your existing systems and processes

For more information about any of these services or The Technology Studio, please contact us and to find out about Earthware’s mapping solutions contact them here.