Checking IP address location

We have just checked the IP address location for a website we are developing for a redundancy insurance client.

Where clients provide us with their one website hosting we always check that it is a UK located IP address (unless of course it is for a non-UK/worldwide business). If we find that the IP address is not located within the UK we advise our client that this can significantly impact on search engine rankings for their website. This is because Google and other search engines look at the location of the IP address to make an initial assessment of the geographic location of the business and whether to return this website for a search within a geographic area. With local search becoming more important this becomes a more important factor in the SEO of a website.

Working alongside our client to refine sales messages

Had a hands-on development meeting with our client this afternoon to refine sales messages for a white-label payment protection insurance template.

We considered the demographic of the target  and what language we can best use to identify with these particular customers.

Even changing phrases like:

‘What does it do?’

to

‘What will it do for me?’

immediately improves the message and makes it more relevant to people’s own lives.

At the same time we are aware that wording has to be kept to a minimum because visitors to a website will make a decision within a second or two about whether this product is right for them and bulky messages containing the main sales points will get lost.

A very productive afternoon working directly with our client to refine sales messages. The next stage now is to provide a white-labelling solution that can be rolled out to a number of affiliates wanting to sell this product into their respective marketplaces.

Setting up ads. in a WordPress controlled website

Teaching a client on setting up new banner, skyscraper, MPU and other ad types in an WordPress CMS controlled website. We designed and developed this website which will provide financial information for SME’s and is soon to be launched.

We sourced, installed and tested a plugin which enables our client to manage the ads on their website, including:

• zoning – positioning ads in certain zones/areas of the page)
• rotation – ads.automatically rotate where more than one is installed in a zone
• type – ads can be either images, flash or code
• impressions – a maximum number of impressions can be set before the ad. expires if required

So this plugin gives our client lots of flexibility in controlling ads which is very important as the primary means of monetising the content and funding the website when it goes live.

Welcome to ‘The Diary’

We have just launched a new section in the Areoff Blog called ‘The Diary’.

In this section we will publish new posts about the specific work we are doing on a daily basis for our clients.

We market ourselves as insurance and financial website designers and SEO experts. But what does this really mean and what kinds of skills and tasks does it encompass?

I hope that these posts will give you a greater insight into our methods, skills, experience and understanding when it comes to producing better insurance websites for our clients.

So look out for our regular (hopefully daily, but possibly less frequent) posts describing the kind of tasks we are undertaking on current projects.

We take the confidentiality of our client’s work very seriously so we only disclose general details about the kind of work we are doing and only show screenshots or graphics for projects where our client has given us permission to do so.

Life Insurance logo design

We have been developing a logo for a new life insurance brand and website.

This was the brief from our client:

Profile

Britishlife.com is a wholly online life insurance company and our primary purpose is to get people to fill in an online quote form which they then pass onto their providers who get back to the client with the best value quote. So British Life is a very ‘thin’ company that subs out the work involved in providing life insurance to the client.

It’s a new brand that is being launched by a company that already has several years experience of successfully selling life insurance exclusively online.

Market position

British Life will position itself largely on an image based around the positive connotations of ‘British’ and our multi-cultural, fluid, modern society. However, this modernity has to be  tempered with the solidness that is associated with ‘British’ in the same way that other British brands are seen as dependable like British Telecom (BT), British Airways (BA), British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

In other words a ‘British Airways’ vs ‘Blighty TV’ approach.

Current situation

The brand and website is not yet live and therefore will be a new player online.

Target market

The demographic for this brand/website is:

Age: 25-45
Gender: Male + Female
Marital status: mainly couples/families

Initial Ideas

We like the following design ideas/assets:

1. Union Jack to signify ‘British’ and likes how various brands are modifying this iconic image in a modern setting like ‘Blighty TV’ and http://www.edfenergy.com/
2. A Heart icon to signify life and love as in ‘Protecting your loved one’ or ‘Love Life, Love British Life’

Therefore, we are leaning towards a logo that might be a union jack inside a heart shape with some bevelled/raised surface.

However, we are happy to see ideas based on this and other concepts we may come up with.

Budget

The budget for this particular stage of the project concerns the brand/logo design. The second stage of the project will be to design a webpage template(s) for the website itself, based around the logo/brand that has been developed.

The budget is fairly low as it is a very small company that will work on low overheads and high PPC budgets to generate visitors for a highly competitive online product/search.

Please advise your costs for allocating 3 days to designing a logo for this project supplying 3 different ideas/variations on a theme?

Can you advise if this time allocation is feasible for developing a logo of sufficient quality?

Can you also advise your costs for subsequent revisions to the logo following feedback from ourselves?

Required format

We require logos to be designed in high resolution suitable for use in other formats such as paper-based advertising.

We require logos in an editable format should we require tweaks/other variations in future, although we would come to you for major design developments.