stuff we're doing |
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U Star Novels: power of leverage
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The power of leverage is a concept we're all familiar with and always trying to capitalise on. From bank interest to sub-contracting work, having the multiplier effect work for you can build great wealth.
U Star Novels, the producer of personalised romance novels, have decided to harness the power of reselling to capture a larger slice of the market. With over 15 resellers and the number growing weekly, U Star Novels stands to increase their potential customer base exponentially.
The U Star Novel product requires the customer to answer a series of questions about themselves and a partner for compilation into a romance novel. Jericho Project was tasked with developing a solution that would work with resellers without requiring them to make any serious modifications to their existing e-commerce solutions.
The true power of reselling is that the resellers are essentially selling your product for you. A commissioned based payment system encourages the reseller to sell more products that in turn increases your product turn over.
There are 6 main advantages of using resellers:
- Cost Effective: Rather than launching into a new sales campaign or hiring a new sales person, resellers require no investment to start or maintain.
- Penetrate New Markets: The setup costs of selling overseas can be a daunting and costly task. Resellers can help break into these markets for you.
- Niche Products: Resellers are highly skilled, market a variety of products, and really know how to target the specific audience your product may need.
- Increase Sales: A reseller becomes a salesman for you, however the benefit of the reseller program is that if the reseller doesn’t sell anything, you don’t have to pay them.
- Product Exposure: The more sites listing your product the better. Besides the obvious advantages of product exposure and ‘back-links’, customer perception may benefit from the seeing the product "everywhere".
- On Site Reviews: Resellers often feature their new products on their home page, usually in the form of a review and imagery.
So if you have a product that could be sold using resellers contact us today to talk about how we can help you with some options.
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what's new on the web |
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getting a grip on video
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We probably couldn’t imagine the impact that television had on the population when it first came to town. The radio went into the back of the cupboard and people became 'glued to the box'. The moving picture had made its mark.
And so it is in this new age that people are foregoing the standard text page for the moving picture. And not just for entertainment. TechCrunch has reported YouTube now accounts for 25% of all searches on the Internet, the second largest search engine on the web next to Google. We've certainly been guilty of landing on the home page of a non-descript site and watching the introductory video in a zombie-like manner until they have told me every piece of information available. This goes way beyond the standard period I would usually stay on a single page (I timed it at 3 minutes 52).
The conclusion? The moving picture is once again grabbing our attention. Video is King! If you can include video on your website you are more likely to engage with your audience, communicate all the important points and leave your audience reeling for more; more entertainment, more information, more involvement. More importantly, if you can then share that video with others, it not only improves your search engine ranking but it also opens up your product to a whole new viewing audience.
To help you out in the world of online video sharing, we have compiled a small list of sites to get you started when it comes to uploading video.
1. Going Viral
To get the biggest viewer numbers YouTube is undoubtedly the winner when it comes to uploading your video. MySpace and Yahoo have similar sharing sites and MetaCafe is becoming very popular as well. Storage limits for these sites are around 100MB and most of the general video formats are supported.
2. Making News
Are you a budding journalist in the making? If you’re prepared to go through the paperwork the enclaves of the news world are no longer off limits to the layman. Both CNN and ABC accept footage of newsworthy events that are happening around the world if you happen to be in the right place at the right time.
3. Funniest Home Videos
These sites are best for sharing between family and friends and for ease of navigation and registration, Blip.tv has some great sharing functions which allows posts and emails. Vimeo is also gaining some popularity for being able to tag and comment on uploads but is quite light on the amount of storage available.
4. Editing Shared Video
Jumpcut and Motionbox are really the only two in this genre, allowing you to splice and edit your video online so you only need to show people the best parts.
5. Show me the money
Someone will always come up with a way to make money out of something. In this case it’s advertisements. Uploading your video to Revver allows you to take a 50% cut of the advertising spend if a user clicks on the ad that appears at the end of your video. Brightcove is also a quickly developing site that allows you to launch customized Internet TV to distribute video.
If you do choose to integrate video into your site and then share it in one of the above formats to gain greater exposure be sure to read the fine print. Some sites like Yahoo grant itself the right to use your video for any monetary gain they like, as well as the right to edit or re-distribute the footage in any way they wish.
Remember though, video is the most engaging way to communicate with your audience today, and a little research into the most suitable video sharing site will be sure to bring benefits.
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tools you can use |
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what is CMS and should i use one?
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CMS or Content Management Systems are quickly becoming the flavour of the month with companies who are looking to improve their online presence through regular updates and features.
CMS websites allow you, as the term implies, to manage the content of the site yourself. This means that you can log in to your website through a designated area and change the text, and often the images, yourself without requiring professional help.
The increase in social networking, blogs and news articles has resulted in site content being updated much more frequently. So let's look at the pros and cons of setting your site up with CMS.
The Pros
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Enables you as the customer to update site content as you please, no need pay a web developer to do simple changes and additions |
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Customers can update text, images, news articles. Even your address and contact details can be changed |
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Most CMS tools today will make sure the contents of your CMS pages are readable by search engines |
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Sites that update their content frequently always score well with search engines like Google |
The Cons
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Customers may not have the time to do their own updates |
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Customers may not use consistant formatting and imagery that the original designer developed |
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Setting up your site as a CMS takes a little more time, and therefore money than a standard website |
Interested in creating or updating your site to be a CMS? Contact us today and let us help you with your options.
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web design we love |
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www.bellecour.fr/new/en/
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This month we're taking you across the seas to experience the coolness of France at the Belle Cour School of the Arts in Paris.
Often when we design sites we have to design to the smallest screen resolution to make sure everyone can see it, or whether they have will still see the site if they don’t have the Flash plug-in blah blah blah. You get the picture.
This time we're doing it differently though, and although we've been kind enough to leave you with the URL extension that will take you straight to the English version, that's where our kindness stops.
This is the site of one of the best design schools in Paris, designed to be viewed only by those with very large Mac screens, a pimped up hard drive to cope with the animation and, of course, pure hedonistic Flash.
Not that those of you who lack the equipment won't be able to see it, but viewed in it's entirety it's a beautiful site; full of life and colour with funky sci-fi robots roaming the plains of the fantasy world that houses the Belle Cour School of the Arts.
Made up of three sections; High School, Applied Arts, and 3D Animation, our favourite is undoubtedly the 3D area simply for the heaving monstrosity that lumbers up to greet you on arrival and continues to gesture to you depending on your navigation selection.
The site's navigation is clear and the information concise and comes complete with 'goodies' for download if you like the theme as much as we do.
So if you’re up to your neck in corporate websites with top banners with drop-down menus, freshen up your day and visit the bellecour.fr.
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remember... |
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We still have our referral program in motion - FREE Gen 4 ipod nano's available to anyone who recommends a lead that we convert to the sale of a website. We realise that nearly every human on the planet has an ipod already so if you don't want to double dip, we are also providing a $200 gift voucher to the restaurant of your choice.
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