May 3rd, 2012
Vertebrate Graphics & Vertebrate Publishing Marketing Executive
We are a fun, ambitious, longstanding web, design and publishing business. We are looking for a full time marketing executive to join our team.
If you can say ‘yes’ to the following, then give us a call….This describes me:
- Friendly enthusiastic attitude
- Good at selling
- Confident in speaking with senior managers
- Willing to work weekends and evenings
- Goal driven
- Organised, diligent with excellent attention to detail
- Self-motivated
- Outdoor activities enthusiast, maybe a cyclist, climber or hill walker
- Previous sales and marketing experience
- Car owner
Based in Sheffield S11
Salary dependant upon experience plus extremely generous incentives with the possibility to earn up to £3000/month
About Vertebrate Graphics
Vertebrate Graphics is a leading design agency specialising in the outdoor leisure and local South Yorkshire market. We are also Britain’s leading publisher of climbing, mountain biking and serious hill walking books and guides.
Please email a letter and or CV to jon@v-graphics.co.uk
Or post to:
Vertebrate Graphics
228 Psalter Lane
Sheffield
S11 8UT
NO AGENCIES PLEASE
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January 16th, 2012
6 months ago I purchased a Motorola Xoom tablet as the old laptop was creaking and groaning and the wife kept pinching my work laptop. I am a big fan of the Android operating system, and having an HTC Desire HD phone, I soon got to grips with the Android 3.0 interface.
Having passed the tablet onto my wife – who loves it, we have discovered a few frustrations and it’s not with the device itself. It’s with websites you view. Now I am the first to appreciate that tablets are new to the market in comparison with the laptop / notebook however they have been purchased in significant numbers for the past 2 years. So why are some of the big players still not optimising for tablets.
Problem 1 – You are a Phone
When serving a page to a tablet, the server thinks it’s a mobile phone. This often means a text version or stripped down version of the website is made available. Now if this website has the same functionality as the “normal” version then all is good, however many websites lose key functionality.
Example – The Next website allows you to view products and purchase, however if you want to make a payment to your next account, this function does not exist.
Solution – offer a view full website link which will over-ride the server selection and ask it to serve the full website
Problem 2 – Download the App
Mobile and tablet applications are an excellent way of getting consumers interacting with your brand. They can offer key functionality to the mobile and tablet user, designed in a way which makes best use of their interface. There are 2 key issues that crop up time and again
- We’ve developed the iPhone app but have no Android App – missing a real chunk of the market given that the Android platform is now more popular worldwide than the iOS (source Gartner).
- We have an Android App but your version of Android is too old / new
Example – The Tesco application was launched on iPhone approximately 6 months ago and has only just come to Android. However if you are on 3.0, then you cannot find it in the Marketplace. Oh yeah the mobile version of the website is terrible for shopping.
Solution – sort out mobile version of website.
In short, tablets are another medium to which people are consuming content, be it text, images, video and it is important that your brand is accurately represented within this “mobile” marketplace. If you would like to chat to us further about how to make your online presence penetrate further into the mobile / tablet market, please give us a call on 0114 2679277.
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Tags: Brand, Mobile, tablet
Posted in Customer Service, E-Commerce, Mobile, Website Design, Website Management | No Comments »
January 5th, 2012
Is it a real contender to rival Facebook and will people use it… well only time will tell.
When I first looked at Google +, my first reaction was “All my stuff is in Facebook so I ain’t uploading that again” and that still stands, however after looking into it a bit further, it may prove a good platform for business.
In creating a cleaner interface for businesses, it’s possible to provide a much more user friendly and less constricted Business Page to interact with your audience. At the moment it is riding a wave of new momentum, but here are a few Pros and Cons
Pros
- Nice clean interface
- Chance to start a fresh area for your business and create something new for 2012
- The circles and hangout functions are very intuitive mechanisms
- I bet you already use Google everyday
Cons
- Starting from scratch
- Yet another Social channel to monitor / update
– If you use an aggregator such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck, you cannot update your page / status on Google +
As with anything new to the market, the early adopters have taken hold and are now waiting for the early majority to start making noise about this. If this does not happen, could we see it going the same way as Buzz or Wave
We can only wait and see.
By the way, you can find Vertebrate Graphics on Google Plus
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December 13th, 2011
Are you struggling a bit with the new look & features within Google Analytics? Well here are 5 key features that you should start using:
1. Keyword Clouds
If you aren’t familiar with a tag cloud then they provide you with a visual and textual representation of how popular a certain topic is. The bigger the font size, the more popular the topic is. You can now use these clouds to view the keywords visitors are using to access your website.
2. Real-time data
Remember when you used to run log files through an analyser and get yesterdays stats. Event Google delayed stats by up to 24hrs. Now it’s possible to get real time information, very useful for monitoring marketing campaigns
3. Site Speed
A slow site will almost always affect your audience and they will soon leave your site in a cloud of frustration. This new function allows you to keep an eye on the site speed – especially useful when launching new features or during periods of high traffic volume.
4. Flow Visualisation
Whilst the entrance and exit pages were previously available, you can now following the flow of visitors through your website. This can help identify flaws in conversion funnels such as a lengthy basket process or complicated registration forms.
5. Dashboard
You can now create your own custom dashboards providing information that is relevant to you and your measurements. This allows you to create a top level dashboard for the CEO – so he can see all the numbers going in the right direction, and a more detailed view for the Marketing Manager – so he can keep the numbers going in the right direction.
If you have not logged in to Analytics recently (Why Not !!), take a look for yourself – you’ll soon find yourself drifting into the immersive world of website statistics.
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Tags: Analytics, Web Management
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November 21st, 2011
Vertebrate Graphics has had a trio of successes in pushing new and old brands alike to a global marketplace.
Vertebrate Graphics specialises in graphic design and web design for the outdoor leisure market, having worked on outdoor pursuits programmes for Adidas, the BBC, the National Trust as well as familiar brands such as Scarpa, Mountain Equipment, The BMC and Rab.
Recently their skills have been employed to great success in the global market. New work and websites have been seeing significant overseas interest. First up start-up company Steepedge (steepedge.com), brain-child of Brian Hall and John Porter. The film download and streaming site, has rapidly become the world’s largest collection of climbing, skiing, biking, caving, canoeing and adventure films, significant overseas subscribers has meant the company, still in its first months of life, is planning foreign language stand alone sites. Brian Hall commented, ‘slick functionality and a robust website coupled with an unrivalled collection of new and historic films has made the site very appealing to the global market’.
Second up is the massive success of the the revamped Rab (rab.uk.com) website, already with dedicated UK and US sites, a roll out of key European sites is well under way for spring launch. Latest stats show an increasing use of the site from overseas, with some countries showing a 100% increase in views compared to the old Rab website.
Third up is Vertebrate Publishing’s quiet bit of empire building, already well respected as a leading producer of outdoor leisure guidebooks to climbing, walking and cycling in the UK, recent deals with Italian, German and US publishers has significantly extended the reach of its literature, while overseas agents are happily selling UK guidebooks on their behalf. This summarised by Vertebrate Publishing’s winning the best international guidebook award at the Banff Mountain Film and Book festival 2011 for their Peak District Bouldering Guidebook.
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