September 22, 2010

“Boy, they never told me it’d be this hard!” – MD addresses University of Buckingham students

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As we have detailed in a previous blog posting (Education, education, education …), Virtual Viewing is firmly committed to playing a role in the education of tomorrow’s workforce, recognising the importance not just of producing a future workforce with the skills and attitudes to best serve business and the economy, but of ensuring that students receive the best and most relevant education that they can so. It was in this capacity that Stewart Bailey, Virtual Viewing’s MD (view an online profile and video interview), recently addressed an audience of BSc Business Enterprise students at the University of Buckingham.

Three obvious questionsHis talk delivered a core message for anyone with ambitions to their own business – be prepared, you’re in for the long haul – and the mixture of levity and seriousness with which the message was delivered was captured in the title: “Boy, they never told me it’d be this hard!”

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September 22, 2010

yourpeoplemarket recruits the services of EMMA

Posted by Virtual Viewing under e-mail marketing, e-marketing, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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yourpeoplemarket.comBased in Milton Keynes and founded by a team of recruitment experts, yourpeoplemarket.com is a new fixed fee online recruitment marketplace that connects employers and recruiters. Designed to take advantage of competitive market conditions, their online recruitment marketplace puts employers in control of the recruitment process, posting jobs at a fee they set, engaging with a recruitment community based on performance and complete transparency, and achieving significant cost savings.

As a company that has not only put marketplace transparency at the heart of recruitment – employers can, for example, rate recruiters on a range of criteria based on their own experience of using their services – www.yourpeoplemarket.com has brought a new approach to the online market whereby easy, quick data capture and the effective management of client communications is key to maintaining competitive advantage.

Yourpeoplemarket launch campaign emailIn light of this, yourpeoplemarket.com has adopted the services of Virtual Viewing’s EMMA (Email Marketing Assistant) email campaign and newsletter management system. Indeed, their use of EMMA has been both critical to the success of this young business and sophisticated in the use of some of EMMA’s more advanced features.

After initial consultation, during which we provided analysis and review of the initial yourpeoplemarket.com system build (focusing particularly on usability and functionality), we developed an HTML email newsletter template design that reinforced the website branding, and created an EMMA account.

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August 25, 2010

Make video part of your Online Marketing Strategy

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, e-commerce, e-marketing, search engine optimisation, Uncategorized, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Video is making a real difference to our online viewing experience, and many companies are now exploring the best way to incorporate video into their online presence. Online viewing is growing dramatically, providing significant and unique opportunities to grow brand awareness, convey company missions, values and ethos, promote both products and services, drive web traffic and uplift sales in B2B and B2C marketing – an opportunity that Virtual Viewing, working in partnership with A2S Works, can help you to realise.

They say a picture paints a thousand words: moving pictures say even more. The following video illustrates just some of the points we make in this article (as well as introducing us):

So where do you start? – read on to find out more.

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August 16, 2010

From crowdsourcing to consultation – the web provides new opportunities to engage with a wider audience

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From the outset, the world wide web was designed to be a medium for collaboration and interaction: indeed, one of the main triggers for its initial development was to allow scientists to share their information and research with each other online.  This line of thinking has been traced back to a historically significant essay, As We May Think, written in 1945 by Dr Vannevar Bush, the US Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (a copy of this essay is still available online). Having directed the American scientific community to support the wartime effort, he was concerned with the peacetime application of technology to more constructive means: his ideas included a (hypothetical) model for a ‘collective memory machine’. The video clip below shows an animation – itself made in 1995 – that shows how his machine, the ‘memex’, might have looked and worked: it’s hardly as coolly iconic as an iPad, but modern technology has still barely scratched the surface of some of the ideas his essay contained.

We usually accept that widespread take-up and adoption of different technologies can be unpredictable (we’re still using fax machines, for example, but the idea of micro-payments has been explored for at least 20 years with little sign of mass take-up), but the speed – or lack of it – with which we adopt them can still be surprising. Sci-fi writer William Gibson once memorably observed that “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”, and a look at the invention dates of many everyday items does prove his point (sms messages, 1992; digital camera, 1975; GPS, 1978; credit card, 1950; mobile phone, 1947; microwave oven, 1946; robots, 1921; radio, 1895; battery, 1800).

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July 21, 2010

2010 Milton Keynes Investors in Education Awards

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As a company that has always been committed not just to supporting the local community but to investing in the education and development of the next generation, we were delighted to be recognised in the 2010 Milton Keynes Investors in Education Awards, awarded by Countec EBP, the city’s Education Business Partnership.

At the recent presentation ceremony, Stewart Bailey was awarded “Winner of the Work Experience Assembly Presenter of the Year 2010″. This is the second successive year that our work with the local business education community has been recognised: in 2009, Stewart received a “Business Ambassador: Highly Commended Commitment Award”.

 

June 2, 2010

Hold the Front Page: making a first impression

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, e-commerce, e-mail marketing, e-marketing, search engine optimisation, web development | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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If you follow the media’s coverage of the media itself, you’ll be aware of plans for some daily newspapers – currently available to read pretty much in their entirety free of charge online – to put their content behind ‘paywalls’. There are complex business reasons at play: newspapers are struggling financially as more of us get our news from the web. Google and other search engines make it easy to browse not just the country’s but the world’s newspapers in an instant. Indeed, people use Google – making Google profitable – to access newspapers online, who make nothing from the transaction. Old business models are being outstripped not just by technology, but by the way we use it.

But listening to James Hewitt, editor of The Times, being interviewed on The Today Programme recently, he raised a point that is hugely relevant to all websites – whether or not they charge for access beyond their first page. That first page – usually your Home Page – is not just a gateway: it’s also a lure to tempt people to explore further, and an advertisement for what they will find inside. Hewitt drew the comparison of a newsstand: customers see only the front page – and usually just the top half of it. That view must tempt them to buy the paper, confident about its content.

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April 26, 2010

Recent client website launches

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At Virtual Viewing, we work with companies and organisations of all sizes and in all sectors to develop websites that make the very most of the opportunities – and the budgets – that are available to each client.

We have worked with many of our clients over a number of years, building partnerships where we are able to combine our skills – not just in the technical aspects of development, but in using the in-built measurability of digital and online media to analyse online performance to offer recommendations that maximise the use of available resources – with our customers’ industry expertise to continuously refine and enhance their online presence.

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April 19, 2010

Be You Own Chancellor: maximising your marketing budget

Posted by Virtual Viewing under content management, e-commerce, e-mail marketing, e-marketing, web development | Tags: , , , , , , |
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All businesses and organisations work in their own ways, and serve different markets with different goods and services, but they have at least one thing in common: a need to make their marketing budget work as effectively as possible. Your existing marketing mix may include: your own printed materials; trade, national and local newspaper advertising; direct mail and/or email campaigns. Embracing internet marketing can add a whole new range of channels: websites, search engine advertising, email campaigns, social media and much more. But the continuing responsibility of marketing budget holders is to balance spending in these areas to maximise effectiveness.

The percentage of your business that comes directly from websites or email campaigns will vary from one sector to another. A business selling goods online, for example, should make every effort (through email campaigns, search engine advertising and integrated use of social media) to drive as much traffic as possible to the website, as cost of sales online may well be substantially lower. The context may be very different for a consultancy, where the role of a website or an email campaign is more likely to focus on establishing brand positioning and values, making the latest news, offers and service details available as quickly as possible, providing information about services and including calls to action that encourage – and make it easy – for web site visitors – to make contact with appropriate points within the business.

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January 25, 2010

Fulfilment? There’s more to e-commerce than just selling

Posted by Virtual Viewing under e-commerce | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
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As a company that likes to provide advice as well as the best possible service, it’s only fair to say this isn’t directly an article about our services. But if your company is selling products over the web, it would be ‘best practice’ for you to read on, as running a high quality e-commerce website doesn’t begin and end with stocking the right products at the right prices and having a robust and well-designed website to sell them from. Every third-party you contract must play their part in maintaining your reputation.

Think of this as a case study – albeit one where a few names have been concealed. But what happened is a true story, and one that might be eye opening if your company’s reputation is important to you. It is, we hope, obvious, that – at least as far as your customer is concerned – an order isn’t completely fulfilled until they receive the wonderful product that you have sold them.

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