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People do not read websites like newspapers or books. Reading from a computer screen is a more laborious process and can be 25% slower than reading from paper. Readers are put under pressure to scan the page and select information relevant to them.
With this in mind, writing copy for your site can seem terrifying. How do make sure visitors find what they want? How can you engage them more? Writing good content is not impossible but it does take practice. Here are our top ten tips to get you started:
- Headlines should tell users what the page is about. Being too clever can backfire.
- Make the first sentence after the heading count.
- Use 50% less copy than you would for printed material. If you have more to say, move it to secondary pages or make it available to download as pdf.
- Put keywords, statements and important information in bold. This helps users pick out what is important to them quickly.
- Break copy up. Use bullet points and sub-headings to make copy more scannable and easy to read.
- Structure copy using the inverted pyramid style so users get the most important information first before drilling down to detail.
- Avoid marketing language. This bogs users down with unnecessary words to process. They need to get information quickly. It can also turn them off.
- You don’t have to be polite. This delays users so “welcome”, “please” and “thank you” can be dropped without being rude.
- Avoid using “Click here”. As well as being lazy, it is a no-no for disability standards. Replace it with an action and tell you reader what will happen, e.g. Visit the MintTwist blog for awesome posts.
- FAQ and Help pages should get to the point. Don’t be afraid to say yes or no – it’s the answer people are looking for. Say it, then explain.
Posted in BLOG, SEO, WEB DESIGN, Web Marketing | Leave a Comment »
Trainee Digital Agency Entrepreneur at MintTwist
| Job title | Trainee Digital Agency Entrepreneur | ||
| Job Type | Internship / Training | ||
| Job categories | Sales, Business Management, Digital Marketing and Digital PR | ||
| Salary | Daily expenses during internship followed by sales bonuses during practical sales training | ||
| Job description | MintTwist is a full service digital agency providing increased qualified sales leads for its clients through the application of digital services. MintTwist work as a one-stop-shop for businesses providing a wide range of digital marketing as swell as design and development services for its large and increasing number of business clients in the South East, the UK and abroad.MintTwist are seeking entrepreneurial and sales focused professionals with a passion for business and digital marketing technology to train as independent sales professionals that could progress into entrepreneurs in their own right, managing specialist and regional sales operations. | ||
| Qualification requirements | The most suitable trainee for this position would have:- a UK degree in any subject - excellent oral and written English skills - excellent presentation skills - a strong analytical mind and an interest in digital marketing |
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| Application | Send a CV and covering email entitled ‘Graduate Trainee’ to iwanttowork@minttwist.com | ||
| Full-time/part-time | Full-time | ||
| Start date | Autumn/Winter 2012 | ||
| Duration: | 3 months internship followed by optional 3-months practical sales training | ||
Posted in WEB DESIGN | Leave a Comment »
At MintTwist, we are always learning about new products, services and software. In the digital and technology industries, what is new today is already old. We are always on the lookout for the latest SEO software or development program. If you ask me about the software that we use today, it is vastly different from what we used 6 months ago.
One of the newer solutions that we have started to use is Gemini – a bug tracking, issue tracking, software testing and project management tool. We use this mainly from a development and build perspective but have found it just as useful for managing SEO and web marketing campaigns. I’ve decided to write a short review on Gemini as I do think it is a great product.
First of all, it is completely customisable. We have spent some time making tweaks to it so it fits in naturally with our procedures. Of course, it has also helped us be a slicker, meaner, quicker development machine than ever before. With Gemini you can assign issues to resources (staff, clients, consultants), set which component of a projelict is affected and what build version.
The project management aspect of Gemini is a personal favourite of mine. Although working on the web-marketing department, I am often involved with submitting bugs and updates to client websites. This means I use Gemini from a project manager’s perspective and from a client’s perspective.
I would definitely say that logging bugs in Gemini is easy and straightforward – and using it as an issue tracking system couldn’t be easier. You can see how issues develop over time and where they have been assigned to different resources and so on.
Overall, it is a highly flexible online bug tracking tool and its level of customisation means it is completely adaptable to how you work. It will also help you manage your projects more effectively and track the progress of issues and client tickets.
A quick comment on Gemini’s four key features:
- Bug Tracking – easy to lodge bugs and assign them to resources
- Issue Tracking – easy to track issues and their progress
- Project Management – easy to manage projects and resources
- Software Testing – easy to compare versions and builds
In conclusion, I think Gemini is a great bug tracking tool. It is available as a hosted or installed version and as proprietary, open source or with free 3-user licence.
Posted in WEB DESIGN | Tagged bug tracking, bug tracking review, gemini | 2 Comments »
This article is highlighting MintTwist’s proposed ‘Social Capital Model’ for delivering continuing and sustainable growth of its business.
The proposal was introduced to people working within the business at the MintTwist Annual General Meeting on 30th November 2011.
This article is written so that people working within the business and other interested parties may use this area to facilitate discussion, questions and comments on the proposal.
What do MintTwist want to do?
MintTwist aims to be the most successful supplier of Digital Agency company services for businesses in Europe by 2016.
How?
MintTwist is aiming to do this by developing and further growing its network of clients and by adding more value to their businesses by devloping and further growing its network of highly skilled people working across the organisation and together, with well defined process methodologies.
How will the growth be funded?
MintTwist have been seeking a sustainable growth model that accurately represents the key value drivers for the existing growth that MintTwist has experienced to date and one that will incubate, encourage and reward the key value drivers for future growth of the business.
MintTwist’s Proposed ‘Social Capital Model’ for facilitating sustainable growth of its business
MintTwist’s proposed solution is a key component for facilitating the continuation, development and expedience of its market/service diversification growth strategy … MintTwist have termed it ‘The Social Capital Model’.
social capital model
The social capital component represents a portion of the company that cannot be bought, sold or owned.
Access to the benefits of the social component is for people who are working within the business.
Key elements may include:
1. A share in governance with direct representation
2. A share in the profits
???
Weighted access may be representative of:
1. Length of service
2. Relative value of contributions
???
Posted in WEB DESIGN | 1 Comment »
MinTwists’s August meetup debated the benefits to businesses of creating a mobile websites or mobile applications to communicate with their target customer groups in a manner optimised for mobile platforms.
In essence should a dedicated mobile platform be created, or should businesses simply allow their mobile users to be served up their ‘normal’ website in whatever way the browser software on the given mobile platform chooses to do so?
It’s a tough question and one which the group mostly debated from an ROI perspective. Given that mobile usage rates in the UK are still fairly low (5% of a websites traffic may come from mobile users), one might be tempted to conclude that for typical small and medium sized b2b businesses the answer is no.
However, it is not that clear cut.
Firstly, there is the issue that mobile usage is growing incredibly quickly (see article : What will Smart Phones Do to our Websites? for more on this) and there may well be material benefits for ‘getting in quick’ (including SEO benefits).
Secondly there is ‘how mobile users are behaving issue’. The data is not entirely accurate at the moment – but early signs are clear: mobile users do not use the internet in the same way on their mobiles as they would do on their PC’s or laptops. Usage is driven by factors such as location (users accessing their mobile devices to find information on ‘where they physically are at the moment’) and impulsivness (users accessing their mobile devices to find an answer to a fairly immediate question/problem). Factors such as these all feed in to the ideal way in which the information should be presented to the mobile user, i.e. b2b businesses could have a ‘mobile optimised homepage’ that clearly presents a clickable telephone number link and clickable interactive google map so that visitors to the business can quickly get the information that they may be after if they are accessing the website from a mobile device.
A difficult topic for business oweners and marketing manager to grapple with; here are MintTwist’s high level thoughts on the subject …
- Mobile is an important consideration, however, it is not necessarily a vital immediate concern for ‘most’ small businesses (because well designed website designs will render correctly already).
- The trend towards increased mobile usage is growing.
- The differing user goals and usage habits of users on mobile platforms needs to be properly understood on a case by case basis for a useful and quality mobile solution to be delivered.
- The group felt that businesses that should be immediately addressing mobile users (because they could potentially see a real ROI) are:
- Businesses with large visitor numbers
- Media businesses
- Some retail (e-commerce) businesses
- Businesses running functional websites / website applications
- Other groups of businesses may want a mobile solution (even if it won’t provide them a clear ROI) for other reasons (e.g. to get ahead of the competition, brand identity etc).
- Two main categorisations of mobile website solution exist, these are outlined by the information chart below:
| Solution | Useful for situations like … | Ballpark Costs | Useful for businesses like … |
| Mobile websites (extra pages that are specially built to be auto-delivered to mobile users) | Making a ‘normal’ website have a dedicated set of page(s) that will show up (in a manner optimised for small screens) when a user goes to the website on a mobile phone. Principal Benefit: Increased conversion rates from mobile users. | From £3k | e-commerce / Retailb2b businesses with very high visitor numbersb2c brands |
| Mobile Apps and/or Web Apps* (Android, Apple, Web apps that are downloaded) | Information that can be delivered in a potentially highly functional and potentially highly interactive way. Principal Benefit: Increased engagement levels/brand identity. | £5k++ | Any big brandApplication/Web service vendors |
Thoughts and feedback on this post are very welcome 
Posted in BLOG, BUSINESS, WEB DESIGN | 3 Comments »
What effects will smart phones have on websites in 2012 and beyond?
All the data coming out of the researchers suggests that the trend towards smart phone/tablet usage and away from desktop/laptops is taking hold. E-Consultancy are reporting that 57% of US professionals say that they will use a smart phone or tablet device as their primary source of internet usage (vs a PC). They are also predicting a rise in the proportion of online spend that is dedicated to Mobile, today in 2011 it is 15%, in 2015 it is predicted to be 64%.
What does this mean for our warm and snuggly websites?
Maybe not that much. As is the way with things, they tend to evolve rather than spontaneously transform (albeit at a speedy pace in the digital world). The same E-Consultancy data appears to show that the focus of mobile spend is around 3 areas – the mobile web, mobile search and social networking.
Some more examination of these phenomena reveals that they are all in fact evolutions and in some cases the same animals as those faithful ‘old’ websites that we know and love so well.
What does this mean for my business?
Mobile Search
Mobile Web
The vast majority of updated websites will be compatible with Smart Phones, HTML5 based websites are entirely supported.
Moving forward, it is worth considering creating a mobile version of the existing site, this means presenting the content in a way that is ‘mobile friendly’, i.e. short, concise with a focus on contact information. This need not be an expensive addition to your brief – correctly put together it would be an extension of the existing website system.
Mobile Search
Again, if you are engaging an SEO or Web Marketing agency, Mobile search will be partially covered by the traditional SEO work that is taking place.
Moving forward, if the website system has been designed in a manner in which it supports both platforms as mentioned above, the job of specifically optimising for mobile platforms should be a natural extension to the SEO campaign work and mean only a minor increase in budget.
Social Networking
The Social Networks have been quick to capitalise on the Mobile Web and have extended their systems intelligently to support mobile platforms. They have designed new front-ends, optimised for the mobile experience that leverage the same application and database systems that power their PC and laptop interfaces.
In order to be successful here, businesses need to engage in a progressive Social Network marketing campaign that is integrated with the SEO (the Social Networks will make the technology work). By doing this, businesses will be able to leverage their website and SEO plays to improve the outputs of their social endeavours. It’s all about good old-fashioned strategy and correctly done it results in more potential customers engaging the website via online channels – from the mobile, PC and the of course the real world also
Posted in BLOG, BUSINESS, SEO, Web Marketing | 3 Comments »
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