Work started last night on updating all of the content on www.outside-ideas.com. We’ve been making tweaks to our web text and business offering over the past month and have started to upload content. We’re going to have a load more pictures and a load more relevant which in turn should hopefully boost us up the search engines. 

We also want more people contacting us, we have decided to include call to action buttons on lots of pages. 

Check back next week to see how we’ve got on.

We’re thrilled to announce that Outside ideas has secured our third client in two weeks. Active Autos have taken a full branding and sales package including logo and identity design, website design and promotional materials. 

I paid a trip to google London today. The place was incredible. Beanbags, pillows, hammocks and telephone boxes seemed to somehow fit seamlessley into every room. The place was buzzing and I have to say, I was too after the experience. 

We were there to listen to Google UK’s managing director Matt Brittin and marketing director Dan Colby talk about ways that business could speed up in a slowdown.  Google suggest that whilst the economy slips, businesses that use the internet to market to their customers are in a strong possition to gain momentum.  The pair talked about how the slowdown is fuling online growth as bargain hunters now search online for the cheapest option before making purchases. Apparently we’re up to 17p in every pound spent online. 

They talked about the need for businesses to cut costs whilst remaining proffesional and introduced the room to the brilliant google apps suite (oi already use it) which is similar to microsoft office except its all hosted on the internet. 

There are loads of free tools that google have made available to businesses that enable them to get online and perform better online, a great resource is google.co.uk/webmasters which provides great advice for webmasetrs on how google indexes and crawls websites and ultimately ranks your site. 

They also suggested ways of increasing market share by directly targeting niche customers with google addwords. 

To find out more about what was talked about, you can visit www.google.co.uk/speedup

About a month ago, my girfriends car was on its last legs. We happened to pass by a local garrage one sunday to find a man tinkering with a car. I explained the problem and asked if he could fix it. The next morning Roy (the man with the spanners) arrived and set about on the car.  He’s old school and found lots of issues, largely as a result of a build up of grime. Roy spent all day on the car and cleaned every point and cable. It now runs perfectly. 

I’m pleased to announce that Oi has been asked to provide a quote for active autos, for a full corporate identity / web design / sales promotion service.  This is very good news!

We today signed an exciting contract with AJ Machinery ltd to produce their very first website.  Over time the owners had come to realise the importance of being able to profile their current stock online. They spend a good edeal of time each day emailing pictures of machines to clients, the new website, due to be finished at the end of the week will allow them to upload their inventory to the site and save a great deal of time.

Just over a week after we launched the Smile campaign, we today recieved our 51st business owners request. 

We plan to send personalised emails to each of the business owenrs today asking them to encorage friends to sign up. Once we get to 201 business owners we’ll again approach sponsors.