My screen saver kicked in twice while I was reading it - so it must be quite long, or I read slowly, or my screen saver is set to turn on too quickly. When you consider that I can get through any normal day without ever seeing my screen saver, not even when I get back from the loo or kitchen, therefore either my trips away from my desk are infrequent and cursory or my screen saver isn’t set to turn on too quickly. Also I can read a full EVO Cover Story article whilst ‘incapacitated’ in trap 2, so my reading speed seems up to scratch too. Which leads me to the conclusion that your article was too long!

Anyway I hope you enjoyed your all expenses trip to London while Rich and myself earned a few pennies.

There didn’t seem to be the design agency pitches like last year, but the Microsoft Silverlight slot wasn’t great. Benedict Ireland from Microsoft showcased the Aston Martin website they developed using Silverlight. He mentioned that you can plug in a iPod, erm, I mean Zune and his examples were the butt of numerous jokes from other presenters throughout the day.

What was evident was the lack of audible Apple talk in the presentations (although there was one slide). Andy Clarke kept referring to his “breakthrough Internet communications device” aka his iPhone. I think this gagging order is really unexceptible, especially considering the audience.

My overriding impression from last year’s event was that it catered too much towards the two primary sponsors, with many of the remaining sessions focused around pitches from design agencies, and as such didn’t provide any real value for the conference attendees.

Has that situation improved this year? It sounds like it may have done. Or maybe you are just getting soft in your old age!

Thanks for taking the time to put your point across.

By the way, I’ve taken a sneeky peek at your site and I noticed that you are happy to recommend a “trustworthy well priced web site developer” to build websites from your designs. I know one who’s very good called Trevor - he works here - you should really give him a try.

So it is required that the company itself evolves with it’s customers.

I recently rebranded a company who originally intended to offer a range of services…over time they realised that in fact they were offering one service only, were in a niche, and finding that niche very profitable.

They wanted their re-brand to reflect that solitary service only and thus better allowing them to focus their marketing activites on their niche service area instead of ‘watered down’ marketing efforts for many services.

All businesses develop and change over time and businesses should not fear allowing their brand to slowly evolve also to reflect those changes.

In February this year I decided to launch a blog myself, and the reason for this was mainly to increase my ranking in the search engines and grow the site traffic further.

From as early as May onwards I’ve experienced a substantial surge in site traffic and sales have increased in line with this.

I would urge any company serious about seo to maintain a company blog and ensure regular postings.

In addition, of course a blog also serves to reassure your customer base of your expertise and help to connect with them on a more personal level.

This blog is a good one, and good design/marketing blogs that are regularly updated are quite rare I have found, so I shall revisit it.

The news articles are a great way for us to express our opinions in graphic design and web development, bring new users to the site & keep existing users involved and keep the site content fresh and up-to-date.

Glad you enjoyed it!