Epicado in genuine web marketing offer shock!

Gloucestershire, Wednesday:

In a blatant attempt to nudge customers into committing to website builds, search engine optimisation or pay-per-click advertising campaigns before August, Epicado, Stroud’s answer to Chipperfield’s Circus (”shome mishtake shurely, shouldn’t that be Google?”Ed),  is offering up to 20% off any previously quoted website price and any new estimates, if customers buy during July.

Speaking from his executive tree-house, a normally tight lipped Paul Lock, Director of Silly Offers, said “Have we gone bonkers? Yes, pass the coconuts Phil”.

Regaining what’s left of his composure, a clearly deranged Lock continued “We’re about to launch two new websites for Jillie Bushell Associates and ETS Technical Sales but there’s a window before the September pre-Christmas madness. We can’t get enough madness so we thought, why wait, let’s have some pre-September, pre-Christmas madness!’

Doctors advise Epicado customers and prospects to act now. They say Lock could regain his sanity at any time.

Last night the Woodchester based guru was reported to be “enjoying a quiet dinner with friends”.

Can he be serious?

Apparently it’s all about IT. The same goes for SEO. If only.

I don’t normally comment on competitors but this one’s a Gloucestershire web designer and I met the owner last week. Nice chap who seemed to know what he was talking about.

Let’s deal with the creative question first. If there’s no creativity invested in your website design and writing, what do you get? A website that functions perfectly and engages nobody. Creativity is the essence of memorable communication. “Apologies for the long letter but I didn’t have time to write a short one”- Winston Churchill. Pithy, witty and true - that’s creative communication.

“Search engine optimisation  is an IT task”. Ok, SEO involves technical tasks, er, lots of them - site structure (that’s partly about usability but let’s not be picky), internal linking, site maps and more. But none of these tasks is worth doing if the keywords are wrong, if the content is rubbish, if the tags are badly written, if nobody wants to link to your rubbish content, if your content doesn’t engage and if you don’t think creatively about how to get those precious inbound links. In other words, the technical tasks are essential but they’re subordinate to the thinking and creativity that you need to make them worth doing.

I’ll get back in my cage now.

Here in Stroud we dig the blues, our farmer’s dig our award-winning market and now we’re digging the canal - it’s finally being restored and that’s got Stroud’s shopkeepers worried. The inevitable traffic disruption could send shoppers elsewhere.

To help promote Stroud’s shops, on 1 June we launched a new website for Stroud’s traders www.shopinstroud.com on our new Content Management System (CMS). Within 2 weeks the site was on page 1 of Google for ’stroud shops’ which says something about how ‘Google friendly’ the CMS is. Each shop has a Google map, a description, picture, opening times and contact details. We’ll be adding a shopkeeper area so shopkeepers can edit their details. There’s a newsletter subscription module and links to enable visitors to promote the site on Facebook and Twitter.

Stroud, sleepy? Get outta here!