The overall structure of your website is important in helping your visitors to quickly and easily find the information they require. Although Google searches every page in your site, Google also like to understand what role a particular page plays in the overall structure of your site. You want to make it easy for your visitors to go from general content to more specific content. I’ve noticed that on some sites it takes a multitude of clicks to get to where you want to with each click resulting in a painful wait as the next page is loaded.

Your site should always have a home page, this is the starting place to navigate around your site and would tend to be the most frequently visited page. You should make it easy and clear to your visitors about how they go from your home page to other pages or sections in your site. You should also make it easy to navigate back. I can’t tell you how many times I have got lost in the depths of a website with no clear way out! Breadcrumbs are a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page and can be a useful technique for enabling visitors to navigate “back up”. When it comes to navigating your site, the focus should be on simplicity and ease of use.

Avoid using menu systems based on Flash or JavaScript if possible as the search engines tend to prefer simple text links.

A site map is a page on your website that displays the structure of the site and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. This can be useful if someone is having problems finding a particular page. While the search engines may also visit this page it is mainly aimed at your human visitors.

An XML Sitemap is built specifically for the search engines to use so that they can find every page on your site. It is important to create a Sitemap and submit it to the search engines. If you make any changes to the structure of your site by editing or adding new pages then you must change your Sitemap and resubmit it. If you are removing pages from your site then remove them from your site map too. However, it may take days or even weeks for any links to these deleted pages to be removed from the search engine’s data which will cause “broken links”. A broken link is where the search engines display links to pages which are no longer there. This can be annoying to users of the search engine and squanders all that good work you have done in getting your site high up in the organic rankings. Therefore you should always redirect from an old link to an existing page to prevent broken links.

Even if you are vigilant in ensuring you don’t have broken links, visitors may still incorrectly type in the URL to your pages. If this happens then it results in a HTTP status code of 404 which means the page doesn’t exist. If this happens then the browsers will display an appropriate message however a custom 404 page which guides the visitor to a working page on your website can greatly improve the visitor’s experience. For example your 404 page can have a link to your home page and perhaps provide links to popular or related content on your website.

Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com

The goal for any business must be to increase profits and AvecSys’ job is to support companies like The Comserve Group in using IT to succeed in meeting their goals.

AvecSys has been an important partner to The Comserve Group for over 12 years. Over that period there have been many advances in technology which has changed the way companies do business. AvecSys has been instrumental in enabling them to take full advantage of these advances as we have the depth and breadth of knowledge to ensure they stay at the leading edge of technology use. For The Comserve Group IT is about enhancing their business, to make it more productive, improve their customer service and ultimately increasing their profits.

The internet has rewritten the rules of how business is conducted. Any company that ignores the emergence of the internet does so at their peril. The challenge for any company, large or small, international or local, in whatever industry must be to use the internet to their advantage and provide them with a competitive edge. If they don’t then their competitors surely will.

The internet it is not just about having a static website and too much email. Instead the internet can be used to improve the way companies connect to their customers, their suppliers and even their employees. For The Comserve Group the internet has improved the flow of information around the company and between them and their customers. Engineers can submit their maintenance reports online while they are still out in the field and customers can have access to these reports via a custom built website. Information flows in minutes instead of days.

Of course the use of the internet comes with its own dangers and pitfalls and so AvecSys ensures The Comserve Group’s network is secure; their email is filtered to remove viruses and spam and their use of the World Wide Web is appropriate.

The last 5 years has seen the development of unified communications by leading networking companies like Cisco. As a Select Cisco partner, AvecSys has implemented this technology into The Comserve Group to reduce costs and improve the way they communicate internally and externally. This coupled with state of the art secure wireless technology has allowed flexibility in how and where (and even when) people work.

More recently we have introduced The Comserve Group to the technology of server virtualisation. This has resulted in the dual benefit of reducing hardware capital expenditure and maintenance costs while also providing a disaster recovery solution.

The buzz words in IT now are Cloud Computing and the challenge for AvecSys is to discover what that means for companies like The Comserve Group and how it can be best utilised to enhance their business.

Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com

Before we start let’s get some term definitions out of the way. I guess we all know what a search engine is otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog. The “search query” is what the user of the search engine types in to the text field when they are looking for something on the internet. You should think carefully about this when considering the information below. Matching what people are typing in as a search query to your website is not trivial. Take for example the avecSys website. We provide a wide range of IT services to small and medium sized companies. Now IT services encompasses a lot and I bet most people don’t type the phrase “IT services for small and medium sized companies” into Google when they are looking for us. More likely phrases are “IT support”, “computer support”, “computer help”, “computer advice”, etc. The list is almost endless. Furthermore, the fact that IT is a word in the English language doesn’t help the situation for us.

After you have entered the search query (or even as you type it) a list of results is displayed showing possible websites that the search engine thinks matches your search query. Each result is made up of a title followed by some text which is referred to as a “snippet”. It’s important to be aware that words in the snippet are bolded if they match words in the user’s search query. Obviously having plenty of bold text in the snippet indicates a good match between your website and the search query. To discover where the search engine gets the title and snippet text from read on.

Web page titles, the contents of the HTML title tag, are an important aspect of search engine optimisation because it is the web page title that appears in the search results title. Your web page’s title should give your business name and the main focus areas of the web page. Ensure the title accurately describes the page’s content rather than just using generic titles for every page. Therefore be sure to give each page its own title making the title short and descriptive rather than just a long list of keywords. Most importantly avoid using default titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1″.

The “description” meta tag lets the search engines know what the page is about by giving a sort summary. If the search query better matches the description meta tag than the content of the page then the search engine might use the description meta tag in the snippet. This gives you a great opportunity to match people’s search query in case your page’s contents doesn’t. It is considered best practice to avoid filling the description meta tag with only keywords.

Having easy to understand URLs which describe the content of the web page can help both visitors to your site and the search engines to know that your page is relevant to them. Also having easy to remember URLs can help visitors return to specific pages in your site and to store links to those pages. Also remember that the URL of a page is shown as part of the search results below the title and snippet and like the title and the snippet, words in the URL will appear in bold if they formed part of the user’s search query. Finally avoid using any capitalisation in your URL as that can make them more complex to remember and most people expect everything to be lower case.

I do hope you have found this interesting and useful.

Until next time.
Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com

Now Cisco have surpassed themselves with the launch of the Cisco UC320 which is aimed at between 4 and 16 users.  It is much more cost effective (OK, cheaper) than the UC500 series while still including all the features you would expect in a Cisco IP telephony phone system like voicemail, hunt groups, auto attendant, etc.  This unit is perfect for the average small to medium business.

The unit includes 4 FXO ports for analogue phone lines, 1 FXS port for either a standard phone or a fax, 4 Gb LANports and a port to plug your music-on-hold source into.  I wouldn’t necessary recommend you use the FXO ports for connectivity when you can use a SIP trunk which gives you cheaper phone calls and more flexibility.  However, if you need ISDN then you have to get a Mediatrix 440 for BRI gateway.  Not sure why Cisco aren’t providing their own ISDN gateway here.

The UC320 even comes with two, yes two, built-in wireless access points; one for your computers and one for your wireless phones.  Now that’s quality and shows that this really is about creating a converged network.  Wireless phones as standard!  The SPA 525G2 can be used wirelessly as well as wired and even allows you to watch an IP camera using its large colour screen.

Converged networks are the way of the future and the UC320 enables small business to make the first step.  This  is not good news for Cisco’s competitors!

Until next time.
Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com

Email has become one of the main ways businesses communicate alongside the phone and post.  In fact, I wonder if anyone has measured if email has surpassed the phone and post now, it wouldn’t surprise me.  When one of avecSys’ customers has email problems it certainly is a serious as when their phones don’t work.  They tell me they are losing sales or it has some damaging effect on their business.

The interesting thing is email relies on the Internet.  The Internet is so fantastic because it just works.  It always amuses me when a customer calls up to tell me the internet is down.  That would be the day.  The Internet was built for resiliency, it was built to sustain a nuclear war as it has no hub, no centre.  Clearly what they mean to say is their connection to the Internet is down, usually a problem with their ADSL.  Although as the Internet is just a massive collection of computers, all connected up, they would be technically correct to say that part of the Internet is down because when you connect your PC to the Internet, you increase the size of it!  And yet no one is totally responsible for the Internet.

So if email is so important to businesses and it relies on the Internet to work, why aren’t more business using the Internet for phone calls?  I bet BT are thinking just that and probably realise that this is a game changer.  One of BT’s major assets is their network which connects everyone’s phones together.  However the Internet is making their network almost redundant.  Clearly BT’s network is still required to connect everyone up to the Internet using technology like ADSL  but it is at a fixed price.  Clearly BT obtain a large portion of their revenues from phone calls and if businesses wake up to the potential of using the Internet for phone calls then this will have a negative effect for them.

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, allows a network like the Internet which was initially built for computers to be used to make phone calls.  If a company has more than one office they can use VoIP to make free phone calls between their offices as long as they have a VoIP enabled phone system.  The phone calls use the Internet so no need to use BT’s network and therefore no need to pay them.  The Internet is virtually built using Cisco routers and Cisco switches and Cisco is at the forefront of making the Internet a place for phone calls.  Their range of phone systems comprising the UC300, UC500 and Call Manager Express, enables any business to start using the Internet to make phones calls and to start saving money.

Using a VoIP provider like Voip.co.uk (www.voip.co.uk) enables businesses to call anyone at rates well below what BT charge, usually saving more than 20% on call charges.

This is a revolution waiting to happen.  It’s not a case of will it happen, but when.

Contact me if you would like to know more.
Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com

This is where a Microsite can help. A Microsite is a very well designed and highly customised small website, about 4 pages, that describes a single product or service.

For more information see www.just5seconds.com

Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com

Just like their larger counterparts the investment banks, Hedge Funds are highly reliant on their IT with their electronic trading and financial information systems at the heart of their business. However, unlike the banks, they are normally based in one physical office space and do not have the funds available to implement complex and expensive IT infrastructures that were necessary to formulate a fully resilient DR plan. The traditional DR plan consisted of a set of redundant or spare systems in a secondary office, usually somewhere outside London. This usually took the form of an office that was never used but contained desks, phones and computers for key staff (perhaps 20% of the total staff in the main office). This facility had to be tested at least once a year to ensure its operational worthiness. This is fine if you are a large multinational bank with the resources to match but renting empty offices that simply gather dust and are never used can be an expensive overhead for smaller companies.

A much more cost effective solution is to incorporate a DR plan into all your IT existing systems without having to spend money on something you will probably never use. Let me explain. There are several fundamental components to a DR plan that need to be considered. The first is to ensure your computers containing important data and software required to run your business are protected from things like fire, flood, theft or similar disasters. The second is to ensure these computers are accessible from anyway your employees might be working. Finally your employees need somewhere to work in case of a disaster.

The first of these requires you to consolidate all of your important data and software onto one or more servers. Modern servers are immensely powerful and with the advent of virtualisation, you can run several virtual servers on one physical server. This means you can reduce costs by purchasing less physical servers while still ensuring they have redundant features like RAID, hot-plug hard disks and spare power supplies. Once you have your important data and software consolidated in one place, you can move your servers to a hosted environment. A hosted environment is a secure data centre which has 24 hour security, redundant internet connections and can maintain its power to the servers even in the event of a power cut. Almost all web servers are kept in a hosted environment.

So how do you access your servers if they are now physically located away from your office? Simple, you just use the internet. Internet connections are now faster and cheaper than ever. ADSL 2+ provides download speeds of up to 24Mbps, SDSL provides symmetric internet connectivity and lease lines provide guaranteed uptimes. This means that you do not have to be in your office to access your servers; you just have to be on the internet. Now if you cannot use your office because of a disaster, no worries you just need to go somewhere where you can get on to the internet. Where better than at home where nearly everyone has fast internet connections.

So this solves the third issue, where do you employees work if they cannot get into the office? They work from home. The ability to work from home then provides additional benefits to employees from a life style point of view. In fact if the dreaded Swine flu or similar pandemic ever did strike and prevented large numbers of people from coming to work, then they would not be able to go to a DR site either; they would be forced to stay at home.

Today’s standards of internet links allow a more modern and “out of the box” thinking when designing IT infrastructure. Technologies such as virtualization mean that your server systems can be anywhere at any time. Things are changing in the world of IT, things that can save you money while at the same time enhancing your business by using a smart technology solution.

Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com

When I first started my career in IT working for Swiss Bank Corporation in 1992, my team leader commented that our job was to basically make people redundant and how did I feel about that. I must admit that I hadn’t thought about it like that but saw my team leader’s point. IT is all about improving efficiency and productivity which can often lead to doing more work with less people.

One of the first big corporates who used IT to make their business more efficient was J Lyons and Co who started building their own computer in the 50s. Now Lyons wasn’t a computer company but was a leading catering and food manufacturers and was best known for their chain of tea rooms which began in 1894 and finally closed in 1981.

However they saw how a computer could process their payroll and manage their inventory more efficiently and faster than humans. The computer Lyons built was called Lyons Electric Office or LEO. The computer was so successful that Lyons allowed other companies to use it and eventually started LEO Computers Ltd. This company evolved and finally merged with ICT and became ICL in 1968 which was bought out by Fujitsu.

Since the pioneering work of Lyons, business has changed a lot because of technology, but how many of those changes result in making things more efficient or just different?
For example, in pictures of offices in the 50’s and 60’s, you often saw a tea lady. What happened to them? Well vending machines came along and they were cheaper but wasn’t the coffee and tea awful. So the tea ladies lost their jobs and we got crappy brown liquid to drink. But then came Starbucks and Costa coffee so are things more efficient now or simply just different? Another example came with the advent of the Word processor. Offices used to have secretaries who typed letters which was a real skill that required training at college.

However because a Word processor allowed the user to make many mistakes and helped with spelling and layout, the managers were made to type their own letters and the secretaries, like the tea ladies, became extinct in the name of progress. But was this progress? Having highly paid managers doing the job of cheaper employees doesn’t sound like great economics to me?
So you have to be careful about using IT and really ensure it is not just making things different, but actually improving your efficiency as an organisation.

A major IT innovation of the last 10 years is the internet and this is where you can build massive efficiencies. It allows you to find new customers and interact with your existing customers in very efficient new ways.

For example, one of our customers was an industrial bakery supplying catering companies
However we noticed that they had a sales desk which comprised of 3 people who took orders over the phone. We suggested that a more efficient way of taking orders would be to take orders over the internet using a website. We suggested that they probably wouldn’t need 3 people, maybe only one if two thirds of their customers ordered online. They decided to keep the 3 people and continue to take orders by phone.

Within a year the company had gone into administration, apparently they couldn’t compete on price, their costs were too high. I’m not saying making the 3 people redundant would have saved them but I wonder where else they could have made savings and whether their competitors were doing this too.

So should IT all be about making redundancies? I think so. Actually you don’t make people redundant, you make jobs redundant and if a computer can do it better than a human then the job is probably repetitive and boring.

In this highly competitive world, then surely it is better to lose a few boring jobs than to have the entire company go under. I also like to think that by using IT efficiently, a company can grow without having to take on as many staff as they would if they weren’t using IT efficiently. To maintain the UKs economic position in the world, it is vital our companies are operating at the highest level of efficiency and productivity to fight off the competition from companies with much cheaper labour costs.

Thanks for reading.
Dr James Leo
james@avecsys.com