Well the entire way in which the internet is navigated is changing rapidly. No longer do people just hit and search on Google when shopping online. eBay is an eCommerce monster, allowing people to shop for almost any item in any condition on one site.
Now, of course, Facebook is entering the fray in a big yet subtle way. It already accounts for a huge percentage in the amount of time spent online for a vast amount of the Western population but now with its Facebook Shopping Solutions it can monetise this traffic all the more.
Hence we have set up an online store on Facebook for Telephones Online.

At the moment people do not naturally consider shopping on Facebook, but we are sure that it will grow in its appeal and, standing on such a platform is sure to take a good slice of the market one day.
The store uses Paypal, which eBay owns so until Facebook create their own currency eBay will have their slice of the cake too.
References :
Telephones Online
Telephones Facebook Store

It is always great to be involved with any large event, especially when the motivaition is charitable.
The Paddle Round the Pier beach festival in Brighton has been going since 1996, during which time it has raised over £100,000 for charities. The event was conceived by David Samuel of DSA and was originally surfers just paddling around Brighton’s Pier to raise funds for charity.

Since then the event has grown in size and popularity to become an internationally reknowned event which is rated by the press and visited by 40,000 people a year – and it is free.

Last year we were involved with the coordination of the Paddle Something Unusual where a series of unlikely floats took to the seas. This year we set out to improve the website. Last year’s website was a slick and comprehensive affair but it was not readily editable by the many volunteers who comprise the paddle team.

The Paddle is a social event and so required the facility to bring together all the online threads and make it the focal point of a community.

We built the site using a page structure which echoes the various areas of action such as water events, land events, kids, entertainment and music. The music area of the site was given a custom menu as it is almost an event in its own right. Wordpress’ post functionality allows us to add press releases and news in a separate format and with RSS feed generated for simple syndication. Additionaly the website’s URL structure was improved upon with clean addresses and a simple navigational structure. We were also able to repoint old web addresses to the new ones via 301 permanent redirection so that bookmarked pages and backlinks could still find the requested content. The site is a rich source of accessible information and is fully SEO optimised.

Social media plugins were implemented on each page to read from the feeds generated by the event’s various outlets such as Twitter, YouTube , Facebook and Flickr. We were also able to echo the structure of the Flickr galleries onto the gallery page on the website.

The site’s IA (Information Architecture) was agreed upon through meetings with the Volunteer team , A1Surf and DSA ;whilst Mayermedia and Bionic Graphics provided both branding and graphical direction.

The result has been an engaging and feature rich website which allows a disparate team to add content as the festival grows, which looks great.

Further Information is, of course, available at www.paddleroundthepier.com
The event takes place on Hove Lawns, Brighton, East Sussex on the weekend of July 2^nd and 3^rd this year – 2011

If you are a charity event which wants help in any way with your online ventures then please contact us, if we have free time we will be happy to help.

Aloha

Social Media has taken over the world, it is official; last month Facebook™ overtook Google™ in the USA for number of page impressions.
This is indicative of how we are changing the way in which we view the web. We used to search online for information, for products or services.
Nowadays we are more and more likely to visit trusted resources. If I want to know about the history of Brighton Pier my first visit may be Wikipedia; when I want a new surfboard I go to eBay and for car insurance I may consider visiting a well known comparison site.
I get my tide times from Tweets.
What this means in terms of SEM ( search engine marketing ) is that it is increasingly attractive for the website owner to have a strategic position with respect to social media. Leveraging ( this means using simple tools to maximum effect ) such platforms as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook can pay dividends in engaging your customers and attracting new visitors to your site.

There is another side, however, which has been labelled with the acronym of GMOOT – get me one of those.
This is where a webmaster/ site owner decides that they “just outta have some social media” on their website.
They want the colourful little icons which associate them with youth, Web 2.0 and cool. So, they may get an account on each of these platforms, but then what?

Does your flower store really expect to have fans on Facebook? Should your iphone case emporium expect to have so much to say that people will follow your Tweets? In many cases the answer is a resounding no and it is not long before these pretty icons lead off to pages last updated a year ago with the text “Wow, we are on Twitter at last” or suchlike.

However, there is no doubt that a strong and well organised social media presence can do wonders for your online marketing strategy. If you have a product or service which can be regularly updated in some way, that has a real place in the world of frequent updates, Diggs and suchlike then it really is worth investigating how best to present your company on these ‘new’ stages.

Like so many things online, and indeed in life, it is worth doing only if you are going to do it well.