A Window on Imre

We try not to get involved in logo design as there are many issues.

Our advice:

When you talk to a logo designer make sure that you have covered the deliverables:

1. All Items should be delivered on a CD
2. The logo should be designed for print. (Will the logo print on various print media)
3. The logo should work for digital media. (Not just websites, pdf files, powerpoint, overhead projectors etc etc)
4. The actual deliverables should contain
   1. Eps files for print
   2. Original source files eg Adobe illustrator
   3. Logos delivered as .gif, .jpg, and .png.
   4. A good logo designer will also deliver versions for fax heads and items that will photocopy
   5. How about a version for embroidery onto hats and shirts?

Good luck, and dont do this on the cheap.

Deepend Pools have demonstrated that they are masters of their trade with  a double win.

1. They have just been awarded “The most improved Dealer” from Golden Coast

2. All very hush hush, but Deepend Pools have won a contract to supply a pool for a major television show. Millions will see the work of Deepend Pools.

Congratulations to Rob and his team! We wish them well as these news items clearly show their expertise in the market place.

And oh, watch out for the new site and blog, coming soon. Here is a sneak preview.

Great news! Our client The Studybed Company have been featured on the ITV1 60 Minute Makeover program. This led to massive surge of web traffic and a steady stream of leads for the client.

You can watch the programme for the next 30 days by clicking here.

Visit the The Studybed website here and have a play on Adam’s impressive flash tool here.

The Studybed Company are a joy to deal with and we wish them well with this boost in coverage.

We are happy to announce that IMRE is now able to provide training and workshops for the Click Cart Pro product range. Please contact us on 01494 819900 for further details.

DNS whilst being a wonderful mechanism has a huge drawback. If you make a mistake………  you can end up without emails and your website.

Well, I made a mistake and caused a client’s email and website to go offline. As we are in the Easter period all the normal support channels are closed with no hope of automated tickets or phone calls getting any action. (I tried)

After a bit of digging I was able to determine that the DNS was pointing to a competitor’s hosting services. What choice did I have? Do nothing (not an option) or try the competitor (unlikely to help)? Well I phoned www.webdimension.co.uk to see if something could be done.

The initial reaction was “Sorry I cant help you, this is Easter, I have been out and I have a hangover (I could also hear his kids in the background…..)  My contact’s name is Rob, and Rob took a few seconds to realize my predicament….. and then he decided to help out.

To cut a long story short, Rob was under no obligation to help me out, but he did. By helping me, he has helped our client minimise loss of emails and website down time.

THANK YOU ROB.
You are a true professional.

Web Dimension  build websites for the Army, have their own CMS and do a lot more besides. If this is how Rob treats a competitor, can you image how well he must treat his own clients?

Imagine this. You get taken in by a salesman who does not do his research and sells you a product that cannot possibly deliver. Imagine that you make this discovery by talking to project managers and you actually come to a conclusion that actually you should simply cancel and walk away from the whole thing. But you listen to the patter of the marketing director who suggests a compromise. You think, well this sounds reasonable and then you go for it. Some internal voice says “You had better document these conversations……”

Well I am glad that I kept good notes because soon I became a football in an organization that promised to call me back and never did.

 Here is a list of people who all said. “Dont worry Paul, we will look into this and get back you.”

The Salesman
The Marketing Director
The Managing Director
The Product Managers
Various people who pick up the main phone
The accounts department.
The credit control department

I had all these promises, notes and emails, but would the accounts department take any notice? No. Sorry sir – you must pay this invoice. What? I have just told you I have emails, notes, the word of your MD and Marketing director…… Sorry sir, you must pay.

Pay for what? Nothing has been delivered!

Then it all went quiet. For months nothing……

Enter Omid Mahmoudi. What a difference he made. He started by making promises and keeping them. He came to see me. He sorted out all the problems and got the product delivered. Omid did his job by taking care of all the simple customer service stuff. This one man stood up, took a personal interest and followed everything through.

Would I buy from this company again? (I don’t know, perhaps if I could avoid all of the people who would not keep promises…. well maybe) Would I buy from Omid? Certainly. Would I recommend Omid? Yes. Omid is an asset to his company, and they could learn a lot from him. All they need to do is listen.

One man can make a difference.

Cheers,

Paul

CC. MD of the company concerned.

See Andy at Movit2008.

What a mover!!

The Google Analytics set of tools has a very useful feature called site overlay. See this image below where we have compared a section of the IMRE website home page.

The image on the left shows the normal view, this is how most people would see these links. The image on the right shows the site overlay feature in action. This graphic tells us that 38% of the home page visitors go straight to the IMRE blog.

Now as a business what action would you take? Well we are at it….

Psst….

We just had a potential client phone us up to say that they had looked at our website and our Blog. They also told us that many of their peers had websites made for them where actual site was ok, but the long term support was lacking. They had read our posts on our Dell experience and could see our attitude towards customer service. There you go. That is the power of a Blog. Forget the clean, massaged, clinical and polished website pages….. your potential clients want to understand what you are really all about.

One of the business networking events I attend is called Connect 4 Success, C4S, and we meet once a month in Marlow. This group tends to be a bit more IT focussed with representation from solicitors and the occasional banker.

Members of C4S were invited to a presentation held at Wycombe Wanderers, on February 7th, and co-hosted by the Wasps. The evening was divided into two with a talk from the Wasps CEO and a speech by an Economist from the RBS.

The talk was good, with lots of detail and a picture was painted of a world economy with many unbalanced  elements. I scribbled a few notes in an attempt to retain the key messages.

So what did the man from the RBS say?
Well his last slide was full of legal mumbo jumbo and disclaimers that basically said that what ever I or we heard was not said! Thank you RBS – so you will sue me to hell and back will you?

Now for the serious stuff:

World picture, slow down not slump
World GDP has doubled (India and China).
Huge Chinese trade surplus of 1.5 Trillion Dollars. (China won’t want the dollar to collapse)
Huge US deficit, house prices are going downwards in the states.
US banks exposed in a similar way to the 70s and 80s with Latin America exposure.
The US economy is in recession for sure.

The UK economy is a different story
The UK finished 2007 in good shape with good growth. (Probably too good)
The UK can grow at  2 – 2.5 % without too many problems.
Last year we saw inflation pick-up and the Bank of England take action.
Interbank rates are under control.  (Well past the Northern Rock debacle)
House prices are moderating.
We have more employment.
The corporate sector is ok.
We are not alone, the EU seems to be ok also.
Asia seems ok.

There are some issues to be worried about, in the UK at least
The interest rates are coming down to help business.
The public sector costs are going up.
The consumer does not feel too good. (energy prices and debts)
The taxes for the consumer are likely to rise.
Income growth and house price inflation were at odds with each other and were not sustainable.
The savings rates are too low and need to rise.

So what will 2008 bring?
More volatility.
The era of boring solid growth is over. (Things will be more exciting for economists – nice to know that)
Imported deflation is over. (The prices of manufactured goods can only go upwards now, the end of falling prices)
The US banks. Ah the US banks. What else are they hiding?  If all the dirt has been exposed then 2008 will be a difficult year. If there are more skeletons then we can expect severe problems.

My reading of all of this?
Not as doom and gloom as the media would have us believe. They like all this bad news as they get to fill column inches. The UK should be able to weather this storm and perhaps we are starting to see the US being decoupled from the rest of us. Remember Japan? They were in severe trouble and we seemed to hardly notice. Perhaps we are moving into an era where need to worry more about China and India? China has yet to sneeze.

Yesterday I posted about the Google 20% freetime…

To my amazement, the post was listed in the Google indexes within 15 minutes! You have trouble believing this dont you? Take a look at this screen shot.

Stone the crows! I still cant believe it.

What are the lessons to be learnt?

1. If you are not blogging…… why?
2. If you are blogging, well then get on with it, share your experiences, boost your profile, let people find out about you and your business. Let the Blog show your passion. Show people how you can help them.
3. Uncle Google will then help you by accelerating the discovery of your pages.
4. You will be up there and found on the pages that have no Google adwords. You will be a part of the long tail of keywords searched. (Save on SEO and SEM costs)

I was convinced about Blogs before, but this discovery of an almost instant Google inclusion just blows my mind away……

Some of you reading this post will not be convinced. I can hear it already. (To tell the truth I was also thinking it) By some miracle of events… I just happened to make a post prior to a Google bot visit etc etc etc etc. I can even hear someone bet me that the experience is not repeatable. Well it is. This very post you are reading was saved and published. A few minutes later it appeared on the search results. Again take a look at the screen shot.

Update from IMRE 10/Feb/08
Our client Studybed.co.uk had noticed this also. In their case, they had made an update to their Blog and an hour later they noticed their post had made it into the Google search results.