E-scape Blogs

First Steps to Online Marketing

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 16:24:47 +0100

In 2005, only 16% of 18-29 year olds used social media. By 2010, this had risen to 86% and is continuing to rise.

Digital marketing is not the future, its now! Are you at risk of being left behind? Digital marketing can be scary, especially if you’ve only ever known traditional, offline marketing. For anyone looking to take the leap for the first time, it can be a big step. There may be many potential worries blocking your path. Is it necessary? How do I learn it? Where do I start? Are these stopping you from making the step to begin incorporating digital marketing into your marketing strategy.

However, digital marketing isn’t as scary as it seems. Slowly integrating new techniques into your business strategy can be easy, and will make the switch a lot simpler. It is cost effective, engaging and you will find it much more straightforward to measure results. There are so many different techniques that can completely transform your business, you’ll be wondering why you never did it earlier.

91% of all online adults use social media regularly, so there’s a good chance that you’re already using this in your social life. By bringing your business into the social media world, you’ll automatically begin to engage more with your customers, keeping them up to date with your business and allowing you to interact with them easier. Digital marketing really can be as simply and effective as that.

But it doesn’t just stop at social media. There’s a huge amount that you can learn and begin to incorporate into your business. Don’t risk being left behind.

E-scape are offering a course for people like you, who want to learn more about digital marketing. Ideal for those who have only ever known traditional offline marketing, or for those who just want to learn more. This two-day intensive Fast Track Digital Marketing course is run by Econsultancy, the leading source of independent advice and insight into digital marketing. During the course you will learn about the cultural shift, the strategic view, search engine marketing, display and interactive media, social media, affiliate marketing, mobile, usability, email marketing, and analytics. With so much to learn, what are you waiting for? This fast track course is definitely not to be missed!

To find out more about the course contact Ping at ping@e-scape.co.uk

Econsultancy online copywriting course - 31st May 2013

Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:53:48 +0100

It was with anticipation that I sat down to start the Econsultancy copywriting course with trainer Tim Bax. It was an intensive, all day course, and I was eager to learn more about copywriting and ways to improve my communication when I write online. Having only started at E-scape three days previously, any training was going to be useful to me in the future.

The course was modest with 12 other attendees, making it a much more intimate approach to learning, plus it was easier to answer questions and get your point heard. Tim also made a point of learning everyone’s names, which made the day more personal and open. Tim has written for many leading agencies including Virgin Atlantic, Lloyds TSB and IKEA, and he is now Head of Content at Proximity London, a leading Direct & Digital agency, so I knew I would be in good hands.

The Course

We began the course by considering how people read online, looking at content structuring to aid scanning and how to create effective headings and links. Although it sounded simple, when putting what we’d learnt into practise it was much harder than it seemed. When it came to the first exercise, re-writing copy from an existing website, it appeared challenging. Focusing on what we’d just been taught, we each took a stab at trying to rewrite the copy before feeding back to the group. Everyone managed to complete the exercise successfully, with a bit of help from Tim along the way.

Next we began to look at SEO, and how what we write would affect people’s online searches. Considering what we want readers to do, and how to attract readers to our websites, we were set the task of writing paragraphs with specific keywords and headings. This helps to attract readers to a website and get the website to the top of search engine rankings. It looked difficult, but with a bit of concentration proved easier than expected.

After this things became slightly more challenging. We began to look at persuading customers with what we write. We had to write a piece of marketing for a website, that used the fundamentals of what we had just learnt. We learnt how to use the persuasive structure which was very useful, and made writing the copy a lot easier. It was something I had never heard of before, but will definitely begin to use in my writing from now on.

Finally we looked at writing emails and newsletters, as well as writing a useful subject heading and optimising content for email. We had to write our own email with a strong subject heading that would engage readers, and this proved hard. However, everyone on the course managed, putting into practise everything we had learnt from the day’s course.

How I found it

I found the course incredibly useful. Tim was engaging and made the course enjoyable. Having exercises throughout the course allowed us to put what we’d just learnt into practise straight away. It meant that we could see what we were doing right and wrong, with the help and support of Tim. He made the course interesting and managed to keep the attention of the group for the entire day.

What I learnt on this course was invaluable. Everything was new and is something I will be able to use in my day-to-day writing. For everyone else who had been in the industry much longer than me, it seemed that they too found what they learnt was useful and something they could use when they got back to the office.

And so I am left with saying a massive thank you to Tim Bax, for leading what turned out to be a truly interesting course.

E-Scape reguarly run Econsutalncy courses in Jersey on a number of different subjects. To find out more, head over to our training page on our website. If you're like to find out more about the course, feel free to contact me at kellystafford@e-scape.co.uk

How to sell yourself and improve your interview hit rate

Tue, 28 May 2013 16:29:12 +0100

It's an employer's market, jobs are limited and there are a lot of talented people so hiring is fun these days - assuming you have an efficient process to rank hundreds of CVs. As a candidate you really need to know how to compete and stand out in this over-saturated market. Unfortunately, not many unemployed know how to play the recruitment game, or can even understand the rules.

Here at E-Scape we created an apprenticeship program to strengthen our team by attracting talented and bright people at the time they enter the job market. We used social media and gov.je to spread the word around. This entry-level role was bound to attract many CVs. We were right. Ten days later we had 110 applications - typically (80%) from local undergraduates, 19-20 year olds with retail experience and some college education from Highlands.

Only 15% of CVs passed the initial CV quality and relevancy filter. We discounted applicants with no relevant skills and no evidence of understanding of the job description. Considering candidates have the internet and various government departments (NB: In Jersey if you are unemployed you will find that there is a public organisation which fits your demographic profile, experience and probably even your hobbies! ) that help and coach the unemployed, 15% is an extremely low hit rate. I was anticipating at least a third of the unemployed to be able to submit a decent CV, understand the job description and have some idea of the digital industry.

Some of the unsuccessful applicants were clever and asked for reasons why they were not invited to the next stage, and they received some constructive feedback from me, which they thought was useful. I will share some of the comments for those who are still looking for a career in technology. Perhaps this could help you in landing your dream job.

1. Study the industry and find your niche.

IT has many facets and you need to find your niche. You need to understand the job description and research all technical aspects of it. Employers are busy and the job specification is there to channel the right candidates. Start by looking at the list of the technology companies in Jersey, i.e. Itex, C5, Foreshore, Calligo, Webreality, Switch Digital and Prosperity 24.7 and understand what they do. When applying for a job, if there are any parts of the job spec (i.e. acronyms, technical definitions) you don't understand, Google them or contact the employer.

2. Word and Excel skills are good enough for admin jobs, but not enough in technology

If you are serious about a career in technology you need to learn and understand some of the technologies out there. It doesn't matter too much what they are if you are applying for an entry-level role, but think about the technologies your dream employer offers their customers and learn the basics. When you apply, you will then be able to demonstrate that you already have some of the key skills and experience the employer is looking for, increasing the chance of you getting the job.

3. Learn and experiment

There is really no excuse for having zero digital experience, especially if this is the career you are looking for. There are many affordable online courses, blogs and resources you can learn a lot from, without even needing to leave your room. It is important to gain experience and skills, and this is an easy and efficent way to learn.

Google Certification Program Learning Center (FREE)

Google Analytics IQ lessons

4. Network and attend industry events.

Jersey's digital scene is small but more and more visible. Attend BCS Jersey , Techtribes, Digital Jersey and other events to meet people who work in the industry already. You can easily meet half of your potential employers in one evening, and getting your name out there will only make it easier to get a job in the future. Potential employers will see that you are serious about getting a career in this industry, rather than just applying for a job because it's there.

5. Manage your online visibility and reputation.

You can get away with this if your name is John Smith, but we will certainly do our online searches on Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. It's important to be aware and somewhat control all the things potential employers can find about you. A rise in social media means this is something more and more employers are taking a look at, and they can learn a lot just from looking at your online presence. Ultimately, if you're not projecting the right image, it's something that can seriously damage your chances at getting a job. Take a look at the pages below to see how you can improve your online profiles.

How An Online Reputation Can Hurt Your Job Hunt

Manage your online reputation on Google - Tools and guide from Google

Create an about.me page

6. LinkedIn is a must have recruitment tool.

Create a decent LinkedIn profile. You can even generate your CV from LinkedIn. Make sure you have a professional looking photo - not half populated photos and you with a pint in your hand, which only relays an unproffesional image.

LinkedIn tips for the unemployed

Best ways to address unemployment on Linkedin

10 terrific twitter tips for job seekers (Twitter Guide but still relevant)

7. Don't listen to recruitment and government agencies.

In Jersey the recruitment agencies and government have limited knowledge of the digital sector. Jersey is small enough and tech companies are very open so that you can connect directly with your potential employers, demonstrating your enthusiasm for getting a job.

8. A CV isn't there to sell your soft skills.

Create a keyword rich, tailored CV. I'm more interested that you built a HTML5 website than the fact that you are presentable. Your CV is there to get you to the interview stage - you will have plenty of opportunities to sell your soft skills at the interview. Make sure you include past experience and how that has helped you to develop relevant skills to the job.

9. Read and research the job description, company and decision makers.

We invest time to read your application, you should do your homework and find out who the decision makers are and carefully read the job description - there is nothing worse than getting emails from candidates who clearly haven't read the job spec and ask silly questions. Try and pick out important parts of the job description that you know you can do well, and make sure you sell yourself in your cover letter. There is no point describing irelevent skills and experience that wouldn't help you in the job.

10. Use standard and readable file formats e.g. PDF

Avoid zip, rtf, doc - if your application looks like a virus or we can't open it it will most definitely land in the bin, especially if there are hundreds more to look through. If you can't create a PDF, learn! Otherwise I don't think digital is for you.

11. Send your application from your own email.

Make sure you're sending the email from your own address, rather than a family one for example. Also make sure that the address sounds professional, rather than one you made when you were 11. It's a good idea to stick to using just your first and last name. You can create your own account here

12. Test and learn

If your hit rate is as low as 20% then clearly something isn't right and you need to change your CV.

I hope this helps - post your comments below and feel free to connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn if you want to know about the latest job opportunities at e-scape. Only high quality and relevant applications please!

Econsultancy back in Jersey with two more courses!

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:56:07 +0100

Fast Track Digital Marketing - 20th/21st June 2013

This two-day intensive course is a great place to start your digital marketing training. It gives marketers a complete overview of the digital marketing landscape including all the essential disciplines, how they fit together, how to assess what's right for your strategy and where you need further in-depth learning. The aim of the course is to equip each delegate with the confidence, the tools and the techniques to build the right digital strategy for their organisation including:

Search engine marketing (content) and paid search
Display and interactive Media
Social media - video, social media outreach, online PR
Affiliate marketing
Mobile
Usability and web design
Conversion rate optimisation
Email marketing
Data, tracking and measurement

This course is ideal for those with experience of traditional, offline marketing but who have had less exposure to online marketing channels, or those with experience in specific digital disciplines who want to know how different channels can fit together.

If you would like to register your interest in either of these courses please contact me on 01534 491096 or download our booking form and email ping@e-scape.co.uk. Spaces are limited to ensure that sessions are engaging and highly interactive so reserve your place today! All courses will take place in St. Helier in Jersey.

Find out more about Fast Track Digital Marketing training from Econsultancy here.

Online Copywriting - 31st May 2013

This one-day course provides copywriting training aimed directly at marketers working online. You will learn best practice online copywriting techniques and how to apply them to real-life examples. Throughout the day there will be exercises and peer reviews to provide practical insights and feedback from trainer and colleagues. Key learning outcomes include:

Online vs offline content: key differences
Formatting and structuring content online
How to write effective news and press releases online
Understanding users' needs
Introducing search engine optimisation techniques
Copywriting for SEO and PPC, accessibility, social media and mobile
Tone of voice
How to build a content strategy

This course is ideal for anyone involved with website content - including business owners, marketing & website managers, project managers, copywriters and content editors.

Find out more about Online Copywriting training from Econsultancy here.

Download a booking form	Price	Date
Fast Track Digital Marketing Training (2 Days)	£870	20-21 June 2013
Online Copywriting (1 day)	£550	31 May 2013

About Econsultancy

Econsultancy are the leading digital marketing and e-commerce specialists providing reports, events, resources and training. Their trainers are the world's top digital marketing experts, each is an active practitioner in their chosen discipline, so you know their advice is based on the latest case-study and practice.

Econsultancy Usability and User Experience Training Course- 27th March

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 13:37:46 +0000

Thank you to Paul Rouke for running our first partnership training course with Econsultancy in Jersey. There was a fantastic turnout for the Usability and User Experience training course with delegates from different industries including agency, client and government.

About Paul Rouke

Paul is the Founder and Head of Usability and Conversion Optimisation at PRWD with over 13 year's experience working with clients including Speedo, Lakeland, AllSaints, Molton Brown, Monsoon Accessorize, Schuh, Bank of America and British Cycling. His background is in web design which in 1999 progressed into usability and user experience with the UK’s largest home shopping group, Shop Direct. In 2006 he founded PWRD who are now one of the most respected conversion optimisation agencies in the UK.

Where do I start?

Not only the first question you should ask yourself in usability but also where do I start to describe this course? Throughout the day, Paul showed his expert knowledge with his most recent case studies and experiences in usability and user experience. Our delegates participated in an interactive session of card sorting exercises, brief reviews of their own websites, personal experiences of other websites, creating task scenarios and observing each other using websites.

The course covered usability and user experience testing techniques, design recommendations, conversion optimisation techniques and best practice examples, to name but a few.

Sharing his profound knowledge, successful techniques and resources, meant that our delegates were able to take a lot of useful and interesting tips and tricks away to use for their own sites.

As digital marketers, we are constsantly thinking about optimisation and ways we can improve conversion. One of my favourite conversion optimisation techniques must be the 'call to action language and styling'. Testing the effect on what three simple words can do to increase conversions is phenomenal. From your 'more info' to 'view all features' can make all the difference!

And so to leave you wanting more, I thought I'd end with just one of the powerful messages from the course. There is a theory on the styling of call of action buttons that states your primary call to action buttons should be a different colour to your secondary call to action buttons. If the image below improves your perception on call to action buttons, then think what it could do to your conversions!

E-scape and Econsultancy are running a series of courses covering many areas of digital. For more information please contact ping@e-scape.co.uk or give me a call on 01534 491096.

Creating a Virtual Power Meter

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:00:00 +0000

It's not all web design and Apps you know! One of my other passions is competitive road cycling. I dabbled as a teenager and have fond memories of riding a 40mile charity ride with an old school friend. I also did a very short stint riding with my University Team although got thourougly demotivated by the ability gap between myself and the core team members. And lets face it given the choice between the many other social activities whilst at University compared with hours on the road in appalling weather getting thourougly destroyed by much stronger riders, the cycling got forgotten. Roll forward 20 years, marriage, two kids and far too comfortable a life style and something needed to be done.

So back to cycling, however this time the bug caught hold properly and this year I completed my first season as a competitive rider at club level. I've had a great year, developed a fitness level to rival if not exceed that of my youth and there is still plenty of scope to improve. So how does that improvement happen?

In general terms improvement happens in the same way that you improve any skill or ability. Lots of hard work, hours riding on the road and on indoor trainers (Turbo Trainers), as well as cross training for general fitness for the truly commited. Now for me being very technically minded I like to see something tangible for my efforts. I need to see some raw data to analyse and digest to pin point exactly how I'm improving. In cycling this is most easily done using a power meter. Power meters come in a number of forms, crank based ones, wheel hubs and pedals. By far the most popular and accurate are the crank based units, but there is a problem. Cost. Even the most basic crank based power meter is over £1,200 which is a lot of money to justify these days. But where there's a will there's a way, a much cheaper way as it turns out.

As part of my training plan I have to complete a couple of indoor sessions each week. These are done on a Turbo trainer under much more controlled conditions than the open road. With careful research I selected a Turbo trainer that is known to have a fairly reliable and predictable resistance behaviour. So for a given speed ridden on the trainer the resistance is at a certain and predictable level. As power is a measure of how much energy is required to overcome a certain resistance, there is a direct correlation between the speed I ride on the trainer to the amount of power I am exerting. So if I can capture the speed I can calculate the power without the need for an expensive power meter.

As it turns out capturing the speed I am riding at is relatively easy, there is a pervasive tracking system in sports called ANT+. ANT+ is a communications standard allowing various monitoring devices such as speed, cadence or heart rate monitors to transmit their readings to a paired reciever. These recievers generally take the form of light weight on-bike computers such as the Garmin Edge units. However as ANT+ is an open standard implemented by many manufacturers it's not just Bike Computers that can tap into this stream of tracking data. In fact the nice people at Garmin created a USB stick for doing just that. So getting the data as a live stream into a computer can be achieved. The next problem is what to do with that raw data.

Sports tracking is a big area online. There are many services that offer different views on how this should be done, with some being multi disipline, some being sport specific and others being GPS location centric. Also each vender of these monitoring devices usually has some sort of desktop App for tapping into the data and doind some sort of analysis. The problem is they mostly want to sell you expensive power meters rather than let you bypass that with some cobbled together virtual system. Of course the internet is vast and most problems have an Open Source solution. In this case the space is filled by a project called Golden Cheetah. This project does an excellent job of reading in performance data for cyclists and producing all sorts of analytics, reports, charts and predictions. Just what I'm after to understand my performance improvements.

The other great thing about Golden Cheetah is that it already has provision for getting Virtual Power from Turbo Trainers. The problem is that it can't do it from my particular trainer. Now this is a problem as each type of trainer has a very different 'power curve' with some being fairly linear and others being very progressive. My particular trainer, the CycleOps JetFluid Pro, has a progressive power curve, one that gets very much harder the faster you ride. This type of curve is supposed to simulate the sort of resistance that you get when riding on the road. Remember that as your speed increases wind resistance increases as a cube of the speed! None of the included virtual devices were close to my device. What now. Break out the code!

So right now its a real benefit being a developer as I'm able to grab the source code for Golden Cheetah and build it myself to add in the necessary power curve to represent my trainer. But it's never that simple. As it turns out Golden Cheetah is a pretty complicated beast. It is a cross platform product available for Windows, Mac and Linux. To achieve this it must use techniques and frameworks that support all platforms, in this instance the primary one is the QT User Interface Library. It also incorporates about a dozen other Open Source Libraries to achieve connection to USB devices, format graphs, talk to Google for Maps, export XML files and many other things. All of these sub-projects need to be obtained and built before you can go anywhere near building the actual program.

This didn't go as smoothly as I'd have liked. Golden Cheetah is a fairly old project, its been around a while and has been through many versions. This is good as it means there is a core of developers keeping the project going and it gets new features on a regular basis. However it also means that some of the libraries used are out of date as they have not been kept up to date in the project. This happens quite often, especially if there is no need to improve or tweak that part of the project. For the embeded developers this is not a problem as their build environments are built up over time. For me however this caused quite a few issues. Finding and compiling old libraries with new build tools is not always easy. In this case it actually took the best part of two days work to get all the components and get them all compiled and hooked together to build the project. It then took about five minutes to add my virtual power device!

But how do you represent a virtual power device in code? How does that specific speed to power curve get translated and distilled down to an equation? Now I'm no math geek, but there is a whole area of math that addresses this called polynomial equations. Essentially using polynomial equations you can represent curves on graphs. Better still given a set of data points on a graph you can derive a suitable polynomial equation. No idea how you do that, but the Internet knows and I was able to find an excelent tool to solve this particular problem that took my data points and spat out an equation in C/C++ format. But where did I get the data to build the curve?

Unfortunately the manufacturer was less than helpful in this area. Aparently the power curve for the trainer is proprietory and so could not be divulged. This seems crazy as there is an easy way to work it out. You stick a bike with a power meter and a willing test subject (my coach in this case) on it onto the trainer and then record regular speed and power figures across the range used for training. Of course this does mean you need access to a power meter, but borrowing one is a lot easier than buying one. So after a session of tourturing my test subject I had the raw data, the online tool gave me the equation and I could then build the program.

The proof is in the riding of course. My next training session produced a power trace and bingo the numbers matched up with the data gathered during the test session so I'm pretty confident that everything stacks correctly. Of course this is not as acurate as using a power meter, variance in temperature in the trainer and tire pressure, even cadence level during the session all impact on the true power levels I put out. But it is consistent enough and conservatively the margin for error is around 5%. So as long as I stick to this method I will see changes over time which will be a reflection of my improvement over the course of my training season. Power solved for the cost of a USB dongle (£25) and a few days of geeking out over some Open Source Code. Bringing the geek into cycling.

No test subjects were harmed for the purposes of this experiment, well not much at least. Consolation to the test subject as he did hit an impressive 700W peak power output during the testing.

E-consultancy Training Courses in Jersey

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 11:31:50 +0000

In this fast moving online world, things are always changing, improving and moving forward. To maintain business advantage it's obviously important that your company and staff are up to date with the very latest trends in order to have a clear understanding of your client or customer behaviour; how they find you, how they browse your website and whether they can find what they want. Continued training and development is vital, not only to improve your own skill set, but to find new ways to develop more business for your company.

To date the opportunities for high quality training in digital offered locally have been limited and the alternative of sending staff for training in the UK for training can be prohibitively expensive. With this in mind E-scape have found a solution for you! From the beginning of 2013, we will be offering digital marketing training courses trained by the digital marketing specialists; E-consultancy.

Our relationship with E-consultancy means we are able to invite expert trainers over to Jersey and arrange one or two day specialist training courses to anyone! Whether you are a marketer or business owner we will be organising courses to suit all levels and types of business, offering you a great savings with no travel expenses!

Information about the courses can be found on Econsultancy's website.

Course	Price	Date
Fast Track Digital Marketing Training (2 Days)	£870	20-21 March 2013
Social Media & Online PR B2B Training (1 Day)	£550	TBC
Online Copywriting (1 day)	£550	TBC
Usability and User Experience (1 day)	£550	27 March 2013
Google Analytics - Optimising your site (1 day)	£695	TBC

All courses will take place in St. Helier in Jersey, exact dates TBC.

If you would like register your interest to any of these courses please contact me on 01534 491096 or via email: ping@e-scape.co.uk. Spaces are limited to ensure that sessions are engaging and highly interactive so reserve your place today! Upon your registration I will contact you with further details and confirmation of dates.

About E-consultancy

E-consultancy are the leading digital marketing and e-commerce specialists prodiving reports, events, resourses and training. Their trainers are the world's top digital marketing experts, each is an active practitioner in their chosen discipline, so you know their advice is based on the latest case-study and practice.

The Outsourcing Time Bomb

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Let's get one thing out in the open right away - I'm completely opposed to outsourcing to places like India. The problem is that I am constantly harangued by colleagues or peers claiming it is not that bad, or that our industry is just too expensive so we must outsource or become irrelevant, and many other pro outsourcing arguments.

The most often posited argument is that to stay competitive, we must reduce costs in an increasingly commoditised market place, which given the cost of living here in Jersey is just not viable. And so the argument for outsourcing is brought to the fore as the solution to our supposed impending financial doom.

So the immediate question if we do outsource is; What do we do with our developers if their work is being sent to India? The standard answer is that it frees our developers from the mundane, from that commodotised work to do better, more exciting, more complicated and advanced work.

On the surface this is a plausible argument, however, if you look a little closer it's actually a deeply flawed one. At first blush it seems pretty obvious that our developers would benefit from the time and opportunity to do better things to really fly within their field. But lets be honest, not every developer is that good and for those who are, they will have spent many years honing their craft on the very mundane work that is being thrown away.

So here's the rub. If there is no basic work to hone future developer's skills on, how is it exactly that the new generation of developers will ever be good enough to move onto the new more highly skilled and valued areas of technology?

It is widely accepted that our technology education system and curriculum are a joke, and that we struggle to get the raw developer fodder into the machine to churn out the experts of tomorrow. So with such a dire education system, how exactly are we going to get those new developers anywhere near the standard that they need to be to do this new and higher level work? The short answer is we're not. Without the very basic work that we are talking about giving away, the core training ground that we do still have is disappearing fast and we will have no way to educate or improve the next generation of home grown developers. Essentially the entire industry will die with no new talent being brought in.

Just sticking your head in the ground about outsourcing is, of course, not an answer either. The fact is that the work we use for training and developing skill is being moved offshore and will continue to be erroded for the foreseeable future. The question to answer it seems is, is there a new or slightly different training ground that we can use to get the same results? It has to be real world experience not just some elaborate training course or programme. I don't have an answer to this yet. If we don't find an answer though, we are at serious risk of losing any way to train and bring on the next generation of developer super stars.

Times are tough. We won't give away our Intellectual Property anymore.

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 10:30:00 +0000

If you go and see your lawyer (or anybody's lawyer for that matter!) it is almost certain that they will charge you according to how much time they spent talking to you and thinking about your work. You know this is going to happen, you know you are going to have to pay for it and it allows them to recover their costs and make a living. After all, lawyers and accountants and many other professionals, charge their clients according to the time they spend and everyone knows this. It's no big surprise and you know you are not going to get it for free because their time is valuable.

Over a hundred years' of experience

In our firm, we have a mixture of professionals from highly skilled developers to designers to marketeers to accountants. In all, we probably have over a hundred years' of experience across a number of key areas, all of which are vital to running a successful business. Like these other professionals, we also charge our time by the hour. But we are very poor at recovering that time compared to our lawyer or accountant cousins because the sense of value that our clients get, drawn from their expectations and historical understanding, make it a much harder sell. Maybe it's because they think anyone can build a website, that there are almost no barriers to entry in our market. But we have to change that view.

Customer expectations are often misaligned with the reality of costs

In the three and a bit years that I have been at E-scape, I have met many potential clients that take our time, plus our knowledge and end up giving us nothing in return. More often than not we spend many hours, over a period of months and many meetings, putting together a detailed and costed plan to allow them to bring their projects to fruition. They then take this valuable information and either do nothing with it becasue it was actually far more costly than they anticipated (expectations misalinged with reality of costs) or find someone else to deliver at a cheaper price now knowing exactly what it is they want. For us the cost doesn't end there as there is also all the time wasted in our weekly prospect meetings talking about projects that are never going to come home.

We tend to be generous!

We are always keen to take new work on and understand that sometimes you need to invest a bit of time upfront before you can catch your client. But is it worth it? What does it say about the value of the service you are giving? If you are happy to sit and talk and produce plans and estimates and discuss budgets and timetables, to give sage, experienced business advice but you don't want paying for it, what value will the client place on it?

We have such a good base of experience in the firm that we are able to give general business advice to budding entrepreneurs as well as detailed advice on digital projects. We can be a sounding board for a new business or highlight possible legal issues from a regulatory perspective. We have strength in depth and why should we give it away for free?

So we have changed our stance. If you have a great business idea and you want to talk to us about how it will work or even if it will work, or get our advice on what online form it should take, then surely that is the same as going to discuss your business with any other professional. You would expect to be charged by the lawyer or the accountant so why not by your online consultant?

We firmly believe that if you are serious about your plans, then you should be willing to pay for our advice. And if you're not, then maybe you just aren't that serious after all. It's also a good indicator whether you have the funds to take the plans through to fruition and whether we'll ending up spending our hours chasing you for payment of our development bills!

So what has changed?

Well as Jason Stratford wrote in his recent blog 'Thinking of websites as software', websites are now so much more than just a few pages. Yes, we still get people asking us to build them a brochureware site or something simple, but that is becoming rarer as the complexity of business evolves and clients realise that they are inextricably linked to the world wide web and social media.

We also find that projects are spread across all our teams, where development and design can sometimes be led by some great work in the digital marketing team which then bring the games guys in to help the social media interaction. These are complex projects which need proper thinking and good advice.

More recently we have been involved in putting together some extremely detailed plans in the gaming sphere for a number of clients. They involve websites and apps but also complex platforms and software engineering. To spend hundreds of hours working on these projects on the 'hope' that the development work will cover that investment cannot be seen as a good business model.

So we are now telling our prospects that yes, we are really keen to work with you, that yes, we think your idea has legs, but no, you're not ready to put together a brief and you need help to do that. That journey from idea to brief is crucial and we now encourage client workshops which produce a deliverable that the client can either give to us or take elsewhere. But they have to pay for it, because it has value. We have been pleased to see that these clients also see that value, as we have not had a single refusal so far. We also believe that it adds value to the other work we do for them and gives them a better insight to the quality of work they are getting and the complexity of the product we are delivering.

If people want our intellectual property, they have to pay for it. Times are tough, we can't afford to just give it away.

Thinking of websites as software

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 09:00:00 +0000

The world is full of websites. Every man and his dog has a website these days. Along with this ubiquity has developed the belief that building websites is easy. This is perpetuated by the plethora of "mates - sisters - nephews who can build you a website for a few hundred quid". Websites have been totaly devalued by a large proportion of the client base and with outsourching to countries with cheap labour costs there are plenty of semi-professional agencies who can deliver websites for peanuts. I have a question though; is it true that websites are easy and should be cheap?

It is true that there are a lot of tools out there today that make delivering simple websites very easy indeed. You can lose count of the number of services that allow you to click and build a website, so in this sense, yes, websites are easy to make. However the problem comes when you factor in scope and customer expectation. Building some simple web pages with maybe a contact form and even some basic dynamic features is relatively easy today, but is it just about knocking a few pages together? If it is, why do I employ graduates with Computer Science degrees or Developers with years of experience? These people have invested significantly in their skills and education and you're telling me that their jobs are easy and have little value anymore. Is this a simple case of "Who moved the cheese?" and we should be doing something else already?

I would argue that most people's expectations far out strip this "simple website" bracket. They expect bespoke design, unlimited changes during the build process, a full CMS experience with advanced features such as social integration, mobile compatability, e-commerce or whatever feature-du-jour that pops to mind. They want this and they want it for peanuts because, after all, it's just a website right? And websites are easy.

The trouble is they are wrong. There is so much more that goes into building decent and complex websites. There is design, usabillity, performance tuning, ongoing support, content planning and delivery, search engine optimisation and any number of other things that you don't think about when you think of websites being just a bunch of pages. As people's expectations increase and the complexity of what is required to deliver for them goes up, it is natural surely, that the price should also be going up. Bunging a few pages together is getting easier, but nobody wants just a few pages anymore.

I think we need to stop thinking in terms of websites as a bunch of pages. We need to think of them as pieces of software that deliver a service. More and more we find ourselves facing challenges that are software engineering rather than plain old web page building. Software requires a different process, it requires more complex skills and management. Software is still seen as having value. Is it time we stopped saying we build websites and instead say we build online software?

For several of our more recent projects we have done this, we have changed the process to be more in line with software development and delivery. This change is as much a mind set change as it is a process change. It has an impact on how we feel about our work and it transforms how our clients think about what we do for them.

Ping returns from Nepal

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 09:21:21 +0000

It was a challenging but amazing 3-week experience in Nepal, but now myself and the team are back to our hectic lives after helping to build an orphanage for 80 children in a remote and very poor area called Bengakhadi in South East Nepal.

The central project, financed by Jersey Overseas Aid, was to construct an orphanage that will accommodate up to 80 orphans. Presently 30 orphans are housed in a small rented orphanage nearby where they are crammed in two bedrooms, sleeping on rickety old bunk beds and cardboard. The new building will provide children who would otherwise have nowhere else to go with badly needed permanent accommodation.

The children's exsiting bunk beds in the orphanage

As a team of 12 we shifted 25,000 bricks and ton upon ton of gravel by shovel or even by hand. Working alongside the local builders we saw the building grow from its foundations to just above window level.

The building on the first day

The building on the last day

Ping brick-laying

Unloading gravel onto the site

Before leaving for Nepal we managed to raise in excess of £7,000 from various fundraising events including salsa evenings, bucket shaking in St Helier and through some very generous donations. The kindness that you have shown has financed the purchase of 80 mattresses,along with pillows and blankets for the new orphanage. We have also been able to commission newly design bunk beds for the children and provide them with two gas cookers for the orphanage.

The village itself was an interesting ‘holiday destination’. It was like stepping back in time. The roads were bumpy, people travelled on ox and cart and random cows were walking on the roads. The houses were either made from bricks or sticks and every family had reared goats, chickens, and buffalo of their own. The food was delicious, however morning coffee meant milk would come freshly squeezed from the buffalo - yuk!. We would have curry for lunch and dinner everyday for 3 weeks! Unsurprisingly, we were struck with alsorts of unnatural bowel movements, but we were very lucky with our accommodation, in that we had 4 walls, a ‘shower room’ that consisted of a tap and bucket, a toilet room that involved squatting - need I say more, and we were given mattresses and blankets to sleep on the floor. In comparison, the builder’s HQ had only 2 walls, and they slept on bamboo and cardboard. Their shower was shared with the orphans which was just a hosepipe located in the street.

Our home

Our bed

Our shower facility

The community welcomed us with open arms and we all became very close. There were a number of very poor families one of which lived just 100 metres from our site. They invited us into their home where five of them slept and cooked within a complex which measured no more than 9 x 4 feet! Work was a struggle for the father, which subsequently meant the parents would often go without food in order to ensure the children had something to eat. The house had no beds, no mattress or blankets. Between them they had only one tiny box of belongings. Not only did the money we raised go towards the furnishing of the orphanage, but we were also able to buy over 100 families a 30 kilo bag of rice and a blanket each. Which was greatly appreciated. We also gave 30 bags of rice to a poor village nearby, along with clothes, toothpaste, toothbrushes, colouring pens and pencils that we had been given in Jersey to take with us. Distributing the aid was a very moving experience and made alot of Nepalise extremely happy. We only wish we could have done more.

The home where one of the poor families lived in

Distributing rice and blankets to the families

We also gave 100 hand knitted teddies, made and donated by St Luke's Church, to the local children and the orphans in a special distribution ceremony where we all participated in the singing and dancing, which includied Nepalese dance, salsa and even some Scottish dancing accompanied by Alisdair MacCleod on the bagpipes one of our team members.

The children with their gifts

Having had a very positive and heartwarming experience helping and integrating with the local community we have pledged to continue supporting them by continuing with the fundraising programme. There is a huge unemployment problem in the area with many families finding it struggle to have enough money to even eat. Having met with the village elders we have agreed to purchase some bicycles for just £30-£40 each. With their help we plan a bicycle distribution programme for needy families which will enable them to get to work, maybe collect wood to sell and take their children to school. In short it these bicycles will give them a real chance to help themselves to improve their lives.

The bikes we would like to buy

The children loving the bubbles

Would you pay to tweet?

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:08:35 +0000

If the Gartner Hype Cycle is to be believed, then micro blogging is heading firmly into the 'trough of disillusionment'. The hype has gone off the boil and the reality of unsubstantiated revenue models come to the fore and the risk of total collapse is high.

So what does this mean for our favourite Micro Blogging service Twitter? In simple terms it means they need to start converting their massive online community into some serious revenue streams. Now for Twitter this presents some big challenges. They have grown organically from inception, based in part on the understanding that there are no costs to use the service, no costs to develop for the service and no real restrictions on what you can use the service for.

As a landscape for generating revenue, this is pretty poor from Twitters perspective. What is worse for Twitter, the only significant monetization attempts have all been by the injection of advertising into the Twitter stream by third parties (therefore generating no income to Twitter) or the sale by Twitter of sponsored trending tags and follow recommendations, which whilst they have generated some cash, they have been generally panned due to their intrusive and disruptive nature to the natural order of the Twitter space.

This need to generate revenue has manifested more recently in some fairly radical and very controversial moves by Twitter in the area of third party integration. Essentially last year Twitter reclaimed the client space in an attempt to make sure that the end user experience was protected. However, a more cynical view is that if they don't control the client space then they can't control the revenue streams. This move caused some pretty major ructions in the developer community with a lot of bad sentiment directed at Twitter from the people who, in their view, helped to build Twitter in the first place. This year Twitter have started to put restrictions on the volume of traffic allowed through their developer API. Again this has caused a lot of noise and bad feeling from the developer comminity, but from Twitters perspective it's a cost capping exercise to restrict some of the bigger drains on their resource that don't pay for it.

So if this is the situation now, what can Twitter do to actually make some money out of us all. Advertising aside there is one option that has not reared its head yet; direct monetization by charging the user base for access.

Now on the surface of it this seems like a really bad idea, and its true that general charging for the service would be a mistake. But, what about charging for Twitter+?

In the first instance I would argue that Twitter is not actually a Micro Blogging system, it's a Nano Blogging system. The character limit per Tweet is just too short for more content rich use models. Twitter has grown up from the meme of people's reports on mood and bowel movements to a much more diverse and useful space for not only social discourse but the sharing of truly useful information and ideas. However with this more rich content it is often hard to convey everything in that single short tweet. So even here the developer community has stepped in with a number of 'long tweet' solutions. The trouble is all of them break the flow and user experience and really offer a band aid for the true problem.

So the cornerstone of Twitter+ could be a longer message, say two or maybe three times the length. It has to be longer, but it can't be too long as that would dramatically change the spirit ot what Twitter is. Introducing a paid ability for long tweets has some collateral impact, what about re-tweets? If I pay for long tweets, but you don't pay, you still need to be able to re-tweet me, that has to be part of the deal.

But what about bandwidth? Twitter processes vast amounts of traffic every second, if you double or triple the size of a single message then you double or triple the bandwidth needed to send it. This is a big problem. But this is where the cash comes in. If the price is right then Twitter gets cash to cover the extra load and some left over for itself.

Another area that could be incorporated to sweeten the Twitter+ deal could be to offer analytics on their builtin link shortening and image/video attachment systems. It is a real pain to use external link shorteners like ow.ly from HootSuite with a lot of the existing clients for which the pay off is being able to quantify the value of your content by measuring those click throughs. For me having this integrated into Twitters offering would be a no brainer as they say.

With all of this in mind we are left with two questions; first will people pay for advanced features, and second why hasn't Twitter introduced this already? I for one would pay for it if the price was right, couple of pounds a month would do it. What about you?

Go Mobile Marketing Book Review

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Location-based marketing, apps, mobile optimised ad campaigns, 2D codes, and other mobile strategies to grow your business

About Go Mobile

The mobile web is expected to reach nearly 2 billion users by 2015. Advancements in mobile technology have influenced the way in which consumers’ research products / services, communicate with friends and peers, and ultimately, engage with brands. Go Mobile explores mobile marketing and advertising mediums, techniques and quick wins for both novice and advanced digital marketers alike to launch their very own mobile marketing initiatives. Using practical, ‘real-life’ Fortune 500 company examples, Go Mobile illustrates best practice mobile marketing and advertising approaches, including; location-based services and advertising, mobile ppc / paid search, mobile display advertising and mobile ad networks, as well as ‘appvertising’ and app monetisation.

Go Mobile begins by exploring the evolution of the mobile landscape (carriers and manufacturers, and understanding smartphone operating systems), mobile websites, mobile applications and mobile app development, and delves deep into classic marketing models such as the 4Ps (price, product, place, promotion), 5Cs (company, collaborators, customers, competitors, and climate) and E. St. Elmo Lewis’ AIDA (attention, interest, desire and action) model to help illustrate how consumers have historically, and still do, engage with brands – laying the foundations for successful mobile marketing.

Strategic mobile marketing planning

Step 1 of your mobile marketing campaign initiative should seek to identify the ever-changing wants and needs of your customers, leverage existing analytics data to determine which devices, operating systems and locations your target audience / existing users are engaging with your brand from.

Top 10 mobile devices – Apple / iOS accounts for 92% of top 10 consumption!

If your heart is set on developing a mobile app, you must first consider what the final objective of the application is to be - branded, acquisition, loyalty or a combination of each. Common app categories typically include: news and information, social, games, culture / fun, shopping, branded apps, productivity, financial tools, organisers / time savers or business tools and utilities (for a complete list of app examples, please visit the 60 second marketer website).

The mobile marketers arsenal

A mobile marketers arsenal contains SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Message Service), two communicational mediums that most people are familiar with, location-based marketing, 2D / QR codes, as well as mobile display and mobile search advertising.

Mobile display advertising

According to Borrell Associates, mobile display ad spending in the US will grow from $685 million in 2011 to more than $8 billion by 2015. Mobile display ads can appear anywhere within a website, a mobile app or in a game. Mobile display advertising is complex and in order to harness the strongest results, a mobile ad network must be incorporated into any display-based campaign. Mobile ad networks are basically networks of channels (websites, apps and games) that are ‘opted-in’ to serve ads to their users. Popular mobile ad networks include:

Mobile search advertising

Mobile search is expected to represent 25% of Google’s total ad revenue by 2013. Before exploring best practice recommendations from Go Mobile, it is first worth re-visiting the changes in customer behaviour that smartphone technology ignites. Logically, as a direct result of the complexity of typing using a smartphone keyboard, the tail of search queries is typically no longer than 1 - 2 words. The use of voice search is also increasing, which adds yet another layer of complexity to campaign planning, keyword research and configuring your campaign settings. It is not all bad news though, particularly as mobile marketing campaigns can yield stronger CTRs, lower avg. CPCs, and more often than not, higher conversion rates – that is, if you hit the ground running with best practice account set up techniques:

Create separate campaigns for both mobile and desktop users
Tailor ad content based on operating system, mobile device or carrier
Configure device settings accordingly when conducting keyword research via Google’s Keyword Tool
Introduce broad match keywords to gather the actual search phrases that are triggering your ads
Drive mobile traffic to a mobile optimised / responsive landing page
Aim for a keyword position of between 1 – 2 to drive greater CTR

Conclusion

Go Mobile explores key best practices for mobile optimized websites and campaign landing pages, providing practical and performance-driven advice for building mobile ad campaigns. Jeanne Hopkins and Jamie Turner have successfully explored the multifaceted area of mobile marketing, whilst providing a comprehensive overview of both existing and emerging mobile technologies. The only missing addition that would have further credited the book would have been the impact of mobile on search engine optimisation. Go Mobile is a book E-scape highly recommend for any marketer, business owner or webmaster looking to embrace mobile in 2012/13. The book is available on Amazon.

If you would like to discover more about the opportunities that mobile marketing and advertising via Google search or display advertising can deliver, please get in touch.

Atlassian, JIRA, GreenHopper and Bugs - Oh My!

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 11:30:00 +0000

One of the biggest challenges I face is making sure we have the systems and processes in place to make E-scape as efficient as possible. Back in the day when we were six in a back room this was not such a big deal as everyone pretty much managed their own workflow and got on with things. Roll forward a few years and we are getting on for twenty over two floors and four teams and things are not so easy. Don't get me wrong, just because everyone used to look after themselves didn't mean we used to get it right and now can't becasue its all grown out of hand. No. We were rubbish back then - it was just easier to hide with smaller and fewer projects. Now there is just too much in play with too many players so things can go spectacularly wrong if you don't have a handle on things.

So where to start? For us being a web/software/online marketing/kitchen sink type of agency there is a lot to cover and most of it has different requirements from eveything else so clearly a one fit approach was never going to work. Being a great proponent of not pimping the workflow we spent quite a lot of time just getting things straight in our heads and with some more mundane process changes. But in the end we needed to make it all work in an integrated fashion. For us this had to start with tracking work, tracking time and tracking projects.

There are many, many different task/project tracking systems out there. Some of them are software based, a lot of them are cloud based and some of them are even pretty good. The trouble is most of them try to solve the problem from a single view point that in most cases just doesn't fit us and certainly doesn't fit our split personaility approach having multiple teams. Also with critical systems I like to have them onsite. Cloud is great but we just don't have access to big enough bandwidth to make it work properly and if the bandwidth goes (which it does on occasion) we need to be able to keep on working. For this reason our solution had to be software based to run on our internal systems. It also had to work on OSX - of course. After playing around with a few different systems we eneded up going with JIRA from Atlassian.

Atlassian is a great software company, they've been around for a while and have a very clear and focused set of products that support pretty much every phase of software development or for that fact any task/process driven business. But mostly it fits the software world. They cover everything from Task and project tracking to Knowledge sharing, continuous integration, code sharing, source control, agile method and many other things. If you are going to stick with one vendor to build your systems around Atlassian is a good fit. The only fly in the ointment is cost. It is definitely not the cheapest way to do things, their licensing can be a little unfair if you only want to have a subset of users for one system as it all ends up having to be sized around the numbers accessing the core JIRA system. A small but potentially expensive gripe and certainly one that has prevented us from using all of their products. That said the feature set quality and rapid development process makes up for a lot.

The othe thing I like about Atlassian is that they recognised a fellow Channel Islands Developer, Steve Streeting, and his truly excellent Mac Client for Git and Mercurial called Source Tree. They thought it was so good they went ahead and bought it up, and its been going even greater guns since.

So vendor sucking up done what have we been able to do with JIRA that we couldn't do before? First of all JIRA tracks everythig we do. The one thing we constantly hammer out is "No ticket, no work". We have gone from a disorganised free for all with PMs and RMs being able to grab resource on a whim without visibility to anyone else, to a totally tracked and transparent system where we know all and see all of what is going on. This in itself is still not a huge help on a day to day basis, as to start with anyone can create a ticket and assign it as they wish and then go and verbally bully, sorry request, that a particular job gets done. Clearly this is not a solution but a step towards one. What we needed to be able to do was introduce some control.

Control is easily achieved with JIRA we are able to setup task types, work flows per task, permissions schemes and all many of other configurations on a project basis to tailor the system to our needs. So for example our Web & Special Projects Team (WSPT) has a gate keeper approach. Our projects are not visible to the other teams other than by invite only. So for example the RM is invited into the project so that they have visibility, but they have reduced rights so that they can not manipulate the assignement and scheduling of work. This is for the PM to organsie and the developers themselves as they become better at self organisation (a bit of agile there that I'll mention later). It seems counter to the whole trransparency and open approach that we like to start shutting things down, but with a large number of projects going on across multiple teams you need to de-clutter to get things managable.

Another team, our Managed Services Team (MST) has a slightly different approach. Their system is a little more open as they operate on smaller queue based tasks that need a quick turn around for many different clients. They are just starting out on the customising JIRA process now, but having worked so much out setting up the WSPT systems it is going to be a breeze to roll something out for MST and indeed for our other two primary teams.

The biggest issue we have with JIRA is the sheer size of it, there are so many features and everything is so flexible it is difficult to know what is possible or how it can help us. This has been pretty overwhelming, but we are starting to get more out of the system now which is just reinforcing its position as our primary business system. And we haven't been anywhere near their rich developer API to truly make it do just what we want yet. So much potential, so little time to work on it.

At the moment though the key system that is being worked on by the WSPT is GreenHopper. GreenHopper is a plugin for JIRA that adds support for Agile Methods (Scrum and Kanban predominantly). This module has recently transformed the way we deliver work as it has allowed us to extend our detailed planning out to a two week or more time frame giving us much greater confidence in what we are doing and how we are going to do it. We now use a GreenHopper Rapid board to plan two week chuncks of work (sprints), chunks of work that we are commiting to deliver in those two weeks. It has really allowed us to focus on delivery across multiple projects but manage it all in one place. Developers get a unified task list that can be prioritised as we go, that also provides a clear view of work volume and progress. Developers now have a much better idea of what is going on rather than just seeing a mess of tickets spread all over multiple projects. It's also very visual which makes working with it much easier. Task lists are dull, they do not make you want to deal with them. The simple act of dragging a ticket from the In Progress channel to the Done channel is very satisfying.

There is so much more that we do with this system that we are probably getting to the point that their might be a role to manage and extend our internal systems soon. A technical role with no direct client work, never thought we would get to that point!

E-scape launches new Gamification service

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:00:00 +0000

My Inner Geek

I have always been into games, ever since receiving a Commodore 64 for Christmas when I was just 11 years old. So yes, I've spent years fascinated with playing games and in more recent years building them.

I am amongst the first generation of adults who has grown up playing computer games. Just like countless others of my generation I have actively engaged with the characters, story lines and goals. Whether it involves saving the princess from the castle, shooting at pixelated ducks or adventuring in a virtual world fighting off Orcs and practicing magic, games are now an integral part of many if not most lives in modern society. It is believed that in 2008 the gaming industry overtook the film industry grossing $65 billion and is predicted to increase by another 9% by the end of 2012.

The explosion of social gaming in recent years has helped to dispel the stigma that gaming is reserved for geeks sitting on their own at home in just their pants and has opened up the experience of playing games as a socially acceptable pastime, even becoming a more family friendly event. Who hasn't spent a Christmas or Boxing Day sparing with their Auntie or Uncle on Wii Sports or convinced themselves that the Wii Fit balance board was the answer to losing those unwanted pounds come the New Year?

Gaming in Business

It may come as a surprise to some people that Gaming also has a place in business. Now this does not mean we should all post a game on the side of our website to give our customers something to play and at the same time try and sell to them, but it does mean that we can experiment with ways to introduce gaming psychology into the online marketing process. In short, that's Gamification, it's an industry recognised practice of introducing game elements into non game situations to engage our customers and encourage them to perform actions based around our brand.

E-scape have been designing and developing games for over 9 years, and since joining the team in 2005 I have personally managed the delivery of over 60 titles! The majority of games we produce are for Camelot who run the UK National Lottery, and they are unique in that they all have predetermined outcomes. In the same way that you can purchase a scratch card from a shop, the way you scratch the foil off the ticket won't impact the result, but with the online version of these 'games' the experience of revealing those all important numbers is the 'fun' element which engages the player and turns a losing experience into one which was enjoyable and one that they would pay to play again.

Having worked on a wide range of game types, including board games, sports and more abstract titles such as pirate treasures and space invaders we have a good grasp of the elements which make a good playable and engaging game. These same elements can be used in a gamified system on your website, whether you are trying to build brand loyalty, launch a new product or service or you just want your customers to spend more time browsing your website, gamification techniques can achieve this and many other opportunities for marketing amplification.

The best and most engaging gamified systems are the simple ones, where you are not trying to force customers to perform actions they don't necessarily want to perform, but making the experience of carrying out tasks that little bit more fun and enjoyable.

A really simple example of this is the profile completion bar on Linkedin. Any regular user of Linkedin realises that this is their online CV and therefore will want their profile to show them off in the best light. The chaps at Linkedin also know this but recognise that the act of completing forms with data isn't the most interesting of tasks so by adding a simple completion bar and graphic giving the user instant feedback at each step of the way they are actively encouraging user to continually complete or update their profile, and as we all know, knowledge is power for a site like Linkedin to be able to deliver you targeted advertising and content.

Coursera Gamification Qualification

I recently heard about a qualification in gamification being offered through Coursera by the University of Pennsylvania and I jumped at the chance of gaining a qualification in something I already enjoyed. Six weeks of video lectures, homework quizzes, assignments and an exam later and I passed the course. Of the 81,000 people who enrolled in the first week, some 8,000 passed. I would recommend this course to anyone interested in Gamification and Game theory.

Here at E-scape we like to stay ahead of the curve and while still in it's infancy, we believe gamification will continue to gain momentum as a leading business practice with more and more examples of gamified systems become common place on the worlds most popular websites.

Over the next few months I envisage our gamification services going from strength to strength and, with the help of Luke and Nathan and their extensive experience in Digital Marketing, campaign monitoring and benchmarking, I believe we will be able to deliver a very attractive proposition to our clients.

I'm really excited about the future of gamification and how it will impact the way we buy, learn and communicate online and I hope that you too can ''find the fun'' in your business.

Perfection vs Reality

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:52:59 +0000

As a developer I'm always trying to improve, be it the quality of my work, the efficiency or the innovation contained within it. With every piece of work there is an end goal, a set of features or functions that must be delivered. There are nearly always several ways to achieve this end goal, some better than others but lets assume for the moment that I always choose the better way (nearly always). The question is at what point am I finished, at what point are the features or functions delivered? It is nearly always true that a solved problem might be solved a little better. The better solution might not always be the best solution. The code could always be that little bit better. Things could always be a little bit more perfect.

Of course at some point reality kicks in. You just can't keep tweaking for ever. At some point done is done and things are as good as they need to be. A lot of times you can actually deliver much earlier than this perceived perfection point and still achieve significant and tangible results. In a well run and supported project or business there will always be the opportunity to return to the delivered items and make those tweaks or additions, usually with better insight or refined requirements. You could be following the deliver early and deliver often mantra of the agile movement. The trouble with this approach is that you may well get things early and get some benefit however, you have to accept that for a period of time things might not be right, they might not be perfect. For the perfectionists among us this is a very hard truth or compromise to accept. We have been taught to strive for perfection but the real world keeps demanding results before we are done.

Having been in this business for many years, it has been a long time since I have been able to indulge my quest for perfection. However I remember it well and can easily see it in others. I can also see when the quest has taken over and they are missing significant benefits from existing results and, in many cases incurring, significant additional cost for little additional benefit. The worst of this is when I see it in clients who have commissioned work.

There are those who get trapped into the quest for perfection and nothing less will do. The trouble with these types of client is that their quest has detached them from what matters. The result could be delivering for them already but, they are missing out for that last tweak, that last minuscule change that really matters very little in the cold light of reality and business pressures.

There are also those who are not necessarily seeking perfection but are afraid that anything less will be a disaster and do more harm than good. This is rarely if ever the case and even with the perceived level of perfection there is still the same chance of that unknown bug surfacing just when you least expect it.

For me the problem is how to convince these perfection seekers that accepting something less is actually the better option. How do you convince someone that inferior is actually superior and that they have lost a clear perception of what really matters. These types are probably never going to accept or embrace the agile approach of deliver early and deliver often no matter how you try and explain it.

Digital Career Choices in Jersey - Project Trident Jersey

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:03:14 +0100

E-scape are passionate supporters of the Trident project in Jersey. Project Trident is a work experience scheme in which all Jersey secondary schools participate in. It provides a unique opportunity to experience working life while still in school. There is a growing demand for digital skills in Jersey, and initiatives such as Project Trident help support and raise awareness of the technology sector amongst the next generation.

What is your name, and which area of E-scape excited you the most?

Hi I'm Jonathan Leck.

Having worked at E-scape as part of my work experience for Project Trident (a work experience programme in Jersey), I can tell you about the different areas in the company, and what area I found the most interesting.

For the 2 weeks I worked with E-scape, I worked with the website design team for 3 days. This involved making logos and wireframes (basic website layouts) for different companies. This was very interesting to me, as I have always liked creating and designing different things.

Is there anything that surprised you about working in this area?

One thing that surprised me about the design team, was how the companies you were designing the logo for, left the design of the logo and the final result completely up to you. The idea was that you should create a logo, based on what the company specialised in. For example an evil corporation would need sharp edges to the text in their logo, maybe some dark menacing colours (not saying E-scape work with evil companies of course!).

Was this something you have always considered doing?

I've always considered working in a career which would utilise creativity, and I think having a career which involves designing things to be a suitable career choice for me.

What do you think are the three most important skills to succeed in this area?

Working with a career that involves designing definitely involves a few skills. You need to be a creative person, of course creativity is a vital component in a career which requires designing. You also need to have an open mind, your colleagues may have ideas on the logo you're working on, or the company may want you to influence a few things into your design. Furthermore you need to have a good amount of patience, sometimes the design your working on may have to be worked on over a long period of time.

What would you love most about working in this career area?

The thing I love most about working in this career area is the amount of designs I could be able to create. Once you get to grips with the software your using to design the product (for example pixelmator), you can use it for your own designs, and thats really good for me as a creative person.

Are there any negative aspects of working in this career area?

The only negative thing I can think of is trying to figure out how to use the software to design your product effectively. However, there are many tutorials on the internet which can show you how to design a product with the software effectively, and just by watching a few of these you can get to grips with the software very easily.

Is there any other information that would be of interest to someone thinking of this career?

The environment at E-scape is fairly relaxed, you can listen to music whilst working on a task, you can wear your own smart casual clothes, and you can meet up with your friends in town for lunch or after work as E-scape is situated in town. This environment is very suitable for a creative person like me, and I think working in a career similar to this would be a good career choice for someone like me.

Lost Petz launches for iOS

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:28:04 +0100

Our App team has been busy over the last month not only working on the existing Lost Kidz App and its continued evolution, but also on its new sister App Lost Petz. The American Humane Association has been a strong supporter of the Lost project from very early on and with their dual role of supporting both Child and Animal welfare in the US a Pet specific version of the App is very important to them. However the process of rebranding Lost Kidz for Pets was not as simple as slapping on a new logo and pushing it out to Apple.

So what was going to be needed?

The first place to look is right back at the roots of the App. We had to make sure that the user experience matched the new use case and made sense. Right away we recognised that there would have to be some alterations in the data stored about the Pets and also in the processes for alerting users when a pet went missing. The obvious ones are that Pets don't need to have information stored about height, weight, eye colour, hair colour etc. In fact a much more simple set of data was required, name, type, sex, picture and description. That pretty much covers all you need to know about the pet for the purposes of helping find them when they wander off. Also when you send an alert the process is slightly different depending on the animal type. For instance you might need an instant response when your dog runs off on a walk, but you might not raise an alert about your cat for a day or so as they tend to make long walk-abouts every now and then. This would require a change in process and user interface.

Next we needed to make sure we could get this new App going without having a detrimental effect on the live running Lost Kidz App. We needed to be able to use the same central infrastructure without any inturruption to its ability to service the constantly growing Lost Kidz community. Fortunately we spent a lot of time during the initial construction of this platform to make sure we could do something like this, however there is always the possibility that actually doing it might bring up something we missed. So even with all the planning we still had to be very careful and methodical in our approach to extending the core systems.

So to get things going we had to rework the User Interface to take into account the new data set and alert process, as well as change all references and collateral information from Kidz to Petz. A new set of fluffy characters to keep the interface engaging. A new version of the central API to support pets, and of course a new branded website to co-ordinate everything through. So not such a straight forward job.

A spanner in the works!

In any project there will be that gotcha that rears its head at some point. Usually just when you don't need it or when it causes the most disruption. In the case of Lost Petz it was the release of the iPhone5. The big deal about the iPhone5, as everyone knows, is the change in screen size.

Apple had up until this point kept the basic device screen size the same (from a developers point of view) which made developing for new iPhone or iPods incredibly easy. This all went out of the window with the iPhone5 and its extra 88 (176 for retina) pixels. Now on the face of it this shouldn't have been a problem, Apple handled the switch to Retina screens very well. To release a Retina compatible version of an App all you had to do was add Retina versions of all your images with a special naming convention. This works really well, very easy to implement and doesn't add any unnecessary complexity. So of course Apple being who they are and always trying to make things "Just Work" did the same thing for the iPhone5. Wrong.

Apple have actually done nothing to make this easy. Without going into a big rant about how awkward it is, the gist is that developers need to manually switch to iPhone5 sized images when needed or find appropriate tricks to bridge the gap. The thing that is most annoying, is that Apple could have made this just work. Just like the Retina issue Apple could have introduced a new file name convention and automatically switched out images for us. They haven't, so we just have to deal with it and move on.

Extra sprinkles of magic

So all spanners and changes in data and process aside we always like to add something new as we go along. For the Petz App we wanted to add some Map views in to make the interface easier to use and fit the lost pet scenario better. Lets face it, the chances of you being with your pet when they get lost is less likely. To account for this we needed to add the ability for the user to set the location where the Alert should be issued rather than assuming that it was the current location of the device.

We are really happy with the addition of the Maps, it really helps users get a feel for where things are happening when an Alert comes in now. And regardless of what the popular press has to say, the Apple Maps look much nicer than the Google equivalent and are much faster to download which matters a lot when using mobile data.

So what next?

As with any App project this is only the beginning. We have lots of ideas that still need working on and there is a huge opportunity to bring the two App communities together in the future. Watch this space!

Ping e-scapes to Nepal with Jersey Overseas Aid

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:09:40 +0100

How many times have you said to someone 'Just Google it' in order to find an answer? or how many times have you said to someone 'I'll text you later' when you're going to keep in touch? Now imagine life without the internet, computers and mobile phones.

We forget that some places in the world, even today still don't have simple things such as electricity. Nepal is one of very few countries in the world to have a short supply of electricity let alone have internet access! I am leaving technology for steel-toe capped boots where I will be spending my holidays with a group of volunteers from the Jersey Overseas Aid Commission for 3 weeks to build a well needed home for an orphanage in Nepal.

The aim of the project is to build a primary school and a small clinic for about 80 to 100 children (boys and girls) in Mahottari, Central Region, Janakpur Zone, Dhanusa District, Nepal. The children’s home will provide accommodation, food, medical care and education for the children who are at risk and give them a secure environment. The primary school will provide free education for the children of the home as well as children from the surrounding area. The small clinic will provide free medical treatment for the people of the village.

Now, with only 1 week to go and with E-scape's support, we would really like to raise a final £500 that will go towards medical equipment, school supplies or gifts for the children. The important thing is 100% of everything we raise will go to the project and the children!

If you would like to donate, you can do so here: http://www.gofundme.com/1apniw. I will post a photo upon my return to show you what exactly your money contributed to! (And I promise it won't be me in business class!)

Thank you for your support!

Top insights and takeaways from JUMP 2012 | Econsultancy

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:06:09 +0100

Econsultancy events are always packed with good speakers and content. With a choice of 60+ talks running in parallel, expert panels and networking it might be a challenge to capture everything that was presented. We did, however, manage to see at least a dozen presentations and here are five takeaways that we would like to share.

1. Ling's presentation - Method in the Madness?

Ling runs an online car leasing company called Lings Cars, make sure you TURN OFF your speakers before you visit her site! She proved to the audience that established web conventions don't matter. Her aim is to make her customers happy and she knows that money will follow. It was fascinating to hear how she managed to turn a boring and lengthy process of leasing a car into a fun experience. This unusual marketing is not for everyone but she does make money. It's not very British but perhaps we need more businesses like this? When someone asked her 'How do you measure happiness?' she said that she looks at how much money she makes from the website. With YoY profits up £100k she must be doing something right!

2. giffgaff - Lessons in engagement

Another example of an unconventional approach to marketing and running a mobile phone service. Emma Jenkins is an engaging speaker and she shared some interesting lessons from the launch campaign in the UK and early struggles to engage the target audience when starting from scratch. Great case study on how you can create a national brand by simply involving your customers, engage them and more importantly, listening to what they have to say and acting on their feedback. giffgaff doesn't employ any customer service staff, all queries are handled by their loyal customers.

3. Multichannel attribution

It was a heavy start with four web analytics sessions and two of them talking about online attribution. It's great to see that the industry is finally maturing and more companies are interested in measuring the relationship between users offline and online journey across multiple devices and channels.

4. StickyContent - Make do and mend

The buzz sourrounding content marketing was represented by the overflowing conference room for the arrival of Sticky Content CEO, Catherine Toole. Catherine metephorically compared the challenges of content marketing with some great World War memorabilia pictures - symbolising that now, like then, budgets are being squeezed and expectations are being raised. Catherine's presentation explored how tweaking existing content could deliver strong results.

5. Social search and Google+

The topic of Google+ and its imapct on Google search engine rankings and SEO were never far away. Social and search are personalising the web and now is the time that businesses of all shapes and sizes should be embracing Google+ and its potential to increase search engine rankings. Research suggests that social signals, such as likes, tweets and followers etc. are increasingly being used by search engines such as Google to rank websites. The key message was: Don't get left behind!

It was good to see some of the old faces from Lynchpin, meet new people and learn about the new trends in digital. Econsultancy events always attract the best speakers and we are looking forward to the next event.