Young Enterprise Birmingham and Solihull will be in The Mall on Saturday March 19 with their North Birmingham Trade Fair.
Young Enterprise provide a variety of programs throughout the country run through schools and colleges and supported by volunteers from business.
The fair on Saturday is part of the Company Programme aimed at 15 to 19 year olds who set up and run their own enterprise over the period of a year while being mentored by Young Enterprise Business Advisers.
The students are involved in all aspects of setting up and running a business, from electing a board through raising capital to presenting accounts at the end of the academic year.
Schools taking part in the fair include Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls, Solihull School, Park Hall, King Edward’s and Kingsbury School.
In addition to providing the space for the fair The Mall will be giving a £50 voucher to the winning stall.
"Today, young people need to be more adaptable than ever before, and the Young Enterprise programme gives students key skills and invaluable experience of the real world of business. We hope that shoppers will come and support them in this important experience and enjoy browsing the products for sale."
Fiona Faizey, The Mall
The NORTH BIRMINGHAM TRADE FAIR 2011 Saturday 19th March 2011 8am-4.30pm The Mall, Sutton Coldfield
The Mall Sutton Coldfield recently announced the final three local businesses in its Retail Factor competition and they will each be given two weeks trading time on an RMU (Retail Merchandising Unit).
Described by The Mall as an "Apprentice type challenge" the two weeks provides an opportunity for the retailers to show the judges that they have both a product that sells and the skills to win over the Sutton Coldfield shoppers.
We have been incredibly impressed by the standards of entries this year, which has made the short-listing process very difficult. However after intense thought and discussion, we have chosen the three finalists and we look forward to seeing how they fare during their two week sessions. We are delighted that the community has embraced the competition and it is clear that Sutton Coldfield has overwhelming talent and entrepreneurial spirit.
Fiona Faizey, Marketing Manager of The Mall Sutton Coldfield
The three Sutton Coldfield finalists, Chic Jewels, U Say We Print and Khadi UK had to get through a very tough opening round to prove themselves and have a shot at winning the first prize of a start up package valued at £10,000.
U Say We Print was set up by Sonia Baker and Rhona Caines of Erdington in 2010. Providing gift items customised with images of special occasions U Say We Print will be trading from their RMU between March 7 and 19.
Also trading at The Mall from March 7 until March 19 will be jewellery retailer Chic Jewels owned by Jinder Badwal. Jinder describes her business as supplying "Distinctive luxurious jewellery with a vintage feel."
Khadi UK will then commence trading from their RMU on March 21 until April 2. Set up by sisters Annabell and Semone Lamba in 2008, Khadi UK supplies natural, ethical, beauty products.
B72 would like to wish the best of luck to all three finalists.
A quick glance at the title of this post may give the impression that its intention is to explain why I think you or your business should have a website. This is not so - the point of this post is to emphasise the importance of identifying the purpose of your site.
It is not unusual for a site to exist simply because 'everyone else has one' or because a designer friend has recommended one based more on their desire to build their portfolio than to build your business.
However, a website is an investment in both time and money and these are not good enough reasons to have one. Before anything else, therefore, the purpose of the site should be identified as ultimately this will affect the final design and the effectiveness of that design
Furthermore, it should always be remembered that a website is part of your business and as with any other aspect it needs to demonstrate that it is making a return on that investment.
So how do you know if this is the case? Well, the return on investment can be measured in terms of the performance of the site against specific, measurable goals derived from the original objective.
Areas of the site deemed to be successful when looking at their performance in relation to the goals can be built upon while those areas that are failing can be reassessed. REMEMBER: Objective - Goals - Implementation - Evaluation - Action
As an example let us say that an organisation has a site where the objective of that site is to act as the first port of call for people wanting to know more about the organisation
From this objective they have defined the following four goals:
Of course, many more goals could be identified and each goal will depend on the organisations current position and what it hopes to achieve but the principle is the same. Without realistic predefined goals it is impossible to determine the performance of YOUR site to the level that YOU want it. Hence we have the question 'Why have a website?' Ask yourself this question before any other because once you have a clear understanding of why you need a site you will have taken a very big step in ensuring that it is a success.
One of the many questions I get asked is typically why do websites fail to deliver?
There are of course many possible reasons why the owner of a site may be dissatisfied with it's performance but here, in no particular order, are five of the most common problems I have come across.
If a site is to succeed over time it is important that it offers at least some regularly updated content. This will not only increase the number of visitors who return to the site but will help with search engine optimisation as the search engines love fresh content.
Of course the extent and frequency will depend on the type of site and what it offers. A site that provides news would probably require updating several times a day while an online shop may only need weekly updates on offers and general information surrounding the products.
A site that looks fresh and up to date is also more likely to retain a first time visitor than one that has content that does not appear to have changed for a long time.
If there is one thing that is guaranteed to put off new visitors and send them running it is a site that is difficult to navigate. Generally visitors to the site don't want to be made to have to think just to find what they are looking for. Some sites are like a test for MENSA when all you want to do is buy a simple item online.
In addition to navigation that is not intuitive and user friendly is the wonderful 404 page not found error. A user that finds a 404 and then leaves the site is invariably going to forget about you and your site. They are not going to come back later in idle curiosity as to whether the page they wanted to look at is still broken rather they will put their energies into finding what they wanted elsewhere
By poor design I am not referring to personal likes and dislikes but to the poor implementation of design rules which give an overall effect of an amateurish site. For a site to be successful in meeting its goals it should inspire confidence in its visitors. This is regardless of whether the site owner wants the visitor to read a blog or to part with their hard earned cash online. A poorly designed site is less likely to promote confidence and is therefore more likely to fail.
Typical design errors are inconsistency in the use of fonts, too many colours that clash, text and background colours that are too similar, designs and proprietary code that only work in one specific browser, sites that are too busy and especially when the content is mostly made up of advertising banners and Google Adsense.
These are just some examples but the web is full of a lot more and I expect you have your own 'favourites'
It is a common misconception that simply building a nice website and uploading it to a server will result in traffic and that this traffic will in turn result in goal conversions. However a website, regardless of how good it may be, is like a billboard in the desert when left without being promoted in anyway. I have seen beautifully designed sites with great functionality failing simply because no one new they existed.
It is possible to make it easy for people to find your site through a whole host of techniques and methods.
This may seem like common sense but it is not uncommon for an individual or company to launch a web site with only a vague idea of its purpose.
It is a vital part of planning that specific goals are identified which are measurable. This is true of all sites whether they exist to increase sales, generate leads, increase dialogue, share information or whatever. Without clearly defined goals it is not possible to objectively measure the performance of the site, build upon its strengths or identify its failings and improve upon them
Without a clear strategy focus is easily lost and a site can lose direction
The following is a basic guide to some of the metrics we use in our analytic reports. It is not in the least exhaustive as the metrics we use for each individual client is dependent on the needs of that client and the goals behind the website.
I hope, however, that it provides a brief introduction to web analytics for those who are unfamiliar with what kind of measurements are involved.
The number of visits to the site. This needs to be looked at over time to determine any patterns, such as seasonal variations. Where peaks and troughs occur it is important to determine what, if anything, occurred immediately before them.
Visits is a blanket figure and a useful guide but more important is the unique visitors stat. A site may receive 50 visits but from only 5 visitors. Alternatively it may receive 50 visits from 50 different visitors. Which is best will depend on the goal of the site - if user loyalty is important then the first will be more positive while the second will be if the goal is to get as many new people to the site as possible.
This is a very important metric as it indicates how engaging the site is. Single page visitors are usually classed as bounced visits and the higher the percentage the poorer, generally, the quality of the visit.
This is recorded as the overall total of pages visited and the average number of pages visited per user. The higher the average the more engaging the site.
Similar to the average number of pages viewed, the average time per user spent on the site is an indication of the amount of visitor interaction with the site.
As with many of the metrics, the predefined goals dictate how they should be interpreted. However, most sites will aim for a good balance between attracting new visitors and having visitors who return to the site.
It is possible to determine the country and city of origin of the visit which can help determine the quality of those visits, again based on the predetermined goals.
Many people think that websites are entered through the homepage and that the users navigate the rest of the site from there. However, this is not true. Visits can start on any page that is returned by the search engine or linked to from another site. These are known as landing pages and it is important to know which ones they are and which are the most successful in terms of retaining visitors. Popular landing pages should be treated with the same importance as the home page.
Just as any page can be a landing page so visitors can leave a site from any page. Identifying these pages can help in determining problems that are causing people to leave or, more positively, if users are completing conversions based on the sites goals. Thank you pages are more than just polite - each time one is reached it tells the site owner that a user as completed a transaction, be that a purchase, a sign-up or something else.
This is answering the question, how did the site user arrive at the site? Was it through a Search Engine and if so, which one? Was it via a Pay Per Click campaign? If the visit was from another website what was that referring site? Finally did the user type the address directly into the browser as when taking the address from a flyer, advertisement etc. To help monitor this marketers often use a unique page for each offline ad campaign in order to determine where the user obtained the address for example www.mydomain.com/guardian would provide data on the number of people who have visited the site after reading an ad in the Guardian newspaper.
This provides information on how a user has progressed through the site from the landing page through to the exit page. This helps the site owner to understand how visitors are interacting with the site. Where there is a specific goal such, as a purchase, this helps to see if users are following the required path to complete a conversion and if not at which point are they abandoning the process.
Which keywords are being used to find the site? Are there keywords appearing which were not thought of during the initial optimisation process and should they be considered for further optimisation.
For sites that require registration, what is the ratio of registrations to visits? If it is very low could there be a reason for this that can be addressed, for example, is the registration process too complex? or difficult to locate? Is there an easily accessible privacy policy?
For sites that promote user interaction through forums and comments it is important to measure how active the users are. What is the ratio between the number of unique visitors and those who contribute. Can the quality of the contributions be measured based on predefined goals?
How many external links are there to the website. An indication that users find the site useful and that it meets a need is there willingness to link to it. This is in addition to the importance of backlinks in Search Engine Optimisation and is an indication of the perceived quality of the site.
AddThis is a service for quickly adding social bookmarks to sites such as Delicious and Digg and like inbound links can be used as a measure of perceived value of the site by others.
As touched upon a number of times above, every website should have a purpose and this purpose should be defined in terms of measurable goals. each time a goal is met by a user a conversion as taken place. The ratio of visits to conversions is therefore a very important metric when gauging the success, or otherwise, of a site.
Finally, a quick word about segmenting the data. To get a true insight in to the performance of a site and to produce genuinely actionable metrics segmentation is vital. All the data that can be obtained should be able to be broken down. Bounce rate, for example, is an important measurement in terms of engaging visitors but because so much more important when segmented using other metrics. Which visitor source has the largest BR - Direct? Search Engine or Referrals? If it traffic delivered from the search engines have the largest bounce rate, then with which search engines is it greatest and with which keywords and landing pages. When looking to address the bounce rate of the site the owner will be in a better position to take action based on this information than just the initial bounce rate. This process is true for all the metrics - the more they are broken down the more they can
be acted upon.
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