We’re going to look at what the law means for you, and what you can do about it. The law affects any website which uses ‘non essential’ cookies, such as visitor tracking code or advertising, and does business in the UK. For example, if your website uses Google Analytics, this law affects you.

Sadly just letting users know they can turn off cookies is not enough. All modern browsers have the ability for a user to change their settings concerning cookies, and block websites from storing cookies on their machines. Previously, the law said if your website does store cookies, you need to let your users know why you store cookies, and give them clear instructions on how to ‘opt out’ if they objected. Many websites did this by writing a privacy policy, as seen on most site, but the new law ignores this and now it’s up to the owner of the website to ask for the user’s consent when they visit their website.

The ICO (the body responsible) has the power to serve penalties of up to £500,000 to organisations that breach the law and is not something that will just be targeted at large national websites. The law affects everyone.

The official reccommendations are vague:
- Check what type of cookies and similar technologies you use and how you use them.
- Assess how intrusive your use of cookies is.
- Decide what solution to obtain consent will be best in your circumstances.

However what’s clear is that this law is set to stay, and a solution, if cookies are used on your site must be implemented to avoid penalties. The bottom line is this. Except for “strictly necessary” purposes, you need to get consent. It’s the “convenience” cookies and those used for analytics purposes that are going to cause compliance headaches. Where do I store a record of their agreeing to cookies? In a cookie? Will I need separate agreement to that cookie? Or do I need to store it in a database with all the cost involved in coding that? You’ll see our solution used on our website details the types of cookies our website uses, and allows users to opt-in or opt-out. This is the most widely used method, and many other sites such as BT (http://www.bt.com) use a similar feature. The biggest worry for sites that do not implement such a feature will be a customer complaining and the authorities notified. The deadline had originally been set for May last year. However, the ICO decided to give firms an extra year to comply with the laws in order to avoid an “overnight” change.

For more information on how your website can implement a similar solutions, or would like to discuss the new legislation further with us, please contact us.

Established in 2009, Spencer Hobbs serves the needs of buyers looking to acquire prestigious properties in the counties of Cumbria, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire and Derbyshire. Providing each client with a service tailored to his or her needs, and priding themselves on an outstanding approach to relationship management, they aim to provide a service gives that is simply unrivalled.

The new site features stunning new imagery, our in-house SiteSuite CMS platform to allow edits by the client, and a great, modern design. The website is dynamic and engaging, with a unique and compelling design, portraying the wealth of services on offer by the company.

We are closely monitoring the website’s performance to ensure it delivers, and will work with Spencer Hobbs to continually enhance the website and grow ROI long-term.

The new site can be viewed here. For more information on our range of services please click here, or alternatively contact us.

LSS have been tasked with handling all elements of Find Me Student Accommodation’s digital activities including media (PPC and SEO), social media, email marketing and brand campaigns. The agency will also undertake a comprehensive brand and digital strategy review to help shape future direction.

Chris Batten, Managing Director, said: “Find Me Student Accommodation is a fantastic addition to our valued stable of clients and is a major win for LSS this year, following a successful pitch. Find Me Student Accommodation has a desire to be innovative and forward thinking in its application of digital marketing and social media, which makes them the perfect partner with LSS.

We’ve been so busy over the last few months and it’s been a while since our last post and we couldn’t neglect our Blog any longer so we thought of writing our latest post on the impact the new Facebook pages will have on your brand, and what you can do to have a smooth transition over!

Come March 30th, Facebook will automatically transfer your current account to one of its ‘Timeline’ style pages, emphasising on the user scrolling a ‘wall’ of posts, organising content as it happens. There are many issues that will arise from the move, such as third-party apps, welcome pages such as artists using a customised ‘Like Me’ page, or Apps such as BandPage. The change of how custom apps will be displayed to the user and how posts appear. But the move should not however been seen as a bad thing.

So what does this mean for your business?
Well for starters the move will be a great way to showcase your brand. A large cover photo will make the difference of whether people interact with your page or return back to their news feed.

The move will also allow you to control who can interact with your page. Administrators will be able to moderate posts as they appear and before they appear to the general public, preventing spam and heavy traffic.

We’ve listed some of the key changes below:

- Cover Photo
This is what makes the new ‘Timeline’ for Pages so attractive for brands. The ‘Timeline’ cover photo allows you to make your brand really stand out and engage with your audience.

- No more Landing Page
Facebook has removed the option to select a desired page with which will appear upon the loading of your page. The new pages or ‘Tabs’ will now appear along the top and allow the first four to be visible.

- Pin Top Posts
The move will allow for posts that you wish you could leave at the top of your page to stay there for 7-days until you replace it with another post. This is a great way to interact with your audience and promote special offers or information that your users may wish to know about.

- Large Custom Applications
Custom applications can now take advantage of a larger width, allow for more realistic content to be displayed, increasing the amount of useable space.

- Messages
The move to the new ‘Timeline’ style page will allow for new ways for your users  to get in touch with you directly through messages.

- Important Stories
The move will allow for the highlighting of important stories and allow for them to be stretched across the breadth of the Page consequently grabbing more eyeballs.

Many well known brands have already undergone the makeover for their pages including Coca-Cola, ice-cream company Ben & Jerry’s, high-street fashion house Louis Vuitton and football club Manchester United. Clients that currently use LSS Interactive for their Social Media Marketing are in the process of preparing their Facebook Pages ready for the move date.

How can your business prepare for the move?
Until the switch over date, your page will stay exactly the same as it is now. You can preview your page in the  new style ‘Timeline’ view, however come the 30th March, your account will automatically be switched.

If you would like more information on the Facebook Pages transition, or have a question about how your brand or business could benefit from the use of Facebook or other Social Media activity, why not get in touch with us today and our team will be able to assist you in ensuring your business is ready.

The agency will work closely with the company to strengthen its position as the leading maritime security company and will undertake a comprehensive review to ensure the best solution is provided.

Port 2 Port deals with sea port security across the globe as well as the protection of vessels and cargo freight in international waters. The project will commence straight away with phase one of the new website expected to be completed within the coming months.

Since its founding in 1998 Google has continued to grow and expand out from its humble search engine roots and makes its presence felt across a variety of online platforms such as mobile technology, news services and web browsing with the launch of the successful Google Chrome. However according to recent financial reports 95% of Google’s profit still comes from their search engine facility and advertising, with its other ventures contributing only 5%. Despite its attempts to shake off its ‘One-Trick pony’ tag, Google is still highly dependant on its search engine and advertising revenue; remove that and what is Google?

Perhaps the largest problem that Google faces is gaining access to the lucrative market that is social networking. It is a market controlled by heavy-weights such as Facebook and Twitter and Google’s past attempts to launch its own platform have failed. In 2004, the company launched Orkut, a social media platform that has over 100 million active users, primarily in countries such as Brazil and India and therefore failing to achieve large scale success. 2010′s Buzz platform did little to entice users away from sites such as Facebook which remains the most popular in social networking. The reality is Buzz brought nothing fresh to the table and the concept was simply uninspiring in an already saturated market. It has been said that Google simply ‘does not get’ social media.

So where now for Google? Enter +1 – Google’s latest social networking platform that may finally see Google establish itself alongside Facebook and Twitter. The +1 concept taps in to the ‘Like’ facility already established by Facebook but unlike Buzz it strives to establish its own identity. Google +1 allows users to recommend websites and online blogs to their friends through the +1 button and it really has potential. Some critics may call into question its similarities to the already popular element used by rival Facebook but what +1 offers is a new element to its search engine facility. It takes an idea but does something different with it and for this Google cannot be criticised. Google’s power (95% of it) lies primarily as a search engine and by integrating this latest social networking platform into the companies most profitable area it has made a very good call; it looks like the penny may have finally dropped.

Working closely with the creative team at Victor & Clark, LSS are to develop the online styling to represent the heritage and quality of the products the company specialises in. The new E-Commerce site will be built on the Magento Enterprise platform with many site features including rich filtering and faceted navigation to guide customers.

The new website is expected to launch later this summer. For more information on LSS Interactive’s range of services, please contact us.

Our design process combined with the flexibility of Magento allows us to make engaging and rewarding experiences for customers without compromising on back-end functionality that many systems just do not offer. The Magento system reduces the amount of design templates required for an ecommerce build and enables a more rapid design and development process and ensures consistency throughout the website.

The main areas where we believe Magento can help you to increase your profitability are:

- Access to functionality based on industry standard open source software.
- An excellent user experience.
- Access to a team of Magento specialists that understand and can help you optimise your digital environment.
- Ability to deploy products in a matter of minutes with a back-end system that requires little training.

The Magneto platform is an open-source, free to use Ecommerce platform with lots of different ways in which  can contribute

to your profitability. To the right is the LSS Interactive architecture of a Magento Project built by our specialist team. As you can see the base Magento core application is installed and configured to your projects needs and requirements. Following this custom features can be installed and built to support the project. Along with this a tailor-made template along with all relevant styles are created and implemented into the system. We also have a range of our own extensions which can be added to the system if need be.

All of this then relies on performance, and we believe it is an essential component of your Ecommerce site. The importance of speed can be easily verified by research conducted by Amazon and Google. Greg Linden during his time at Amazon presented findings that 1second of latency costs Amazon 1% in sales. This leaves us with one simple conclusion: A faster website equals more sales.

We have spent over a year testing and optimising our hosting to make sure that speed and performance is not an issue for our customers. We choose the very best quality hosting, which is provided by our hosting partners.

The possibilities are endless with the Magento platform. Key features of the platform include:

- Control multiple websites and stores from one Administration Panel with ability to share as much or as little information as needed
- Multi-Lingual Sites
- Fully 100% customizable design using templates
- One-Click Upgrades
- Content Management System for Informational Pages
- Flexible pricing rules with ability to restrict to stores, customer groups, time period, products, and categories.
- Multi-Tier Pricing for quantity discounts
- URL Rewrites
- Up-sells in Shopping Cart
- Send Wishlist to a Friend by Email or RSS
- Polls
- Newsletter Management
- 100% Search Engine Friendly
- Meta-information for products and categories
- One-Page Checkout
- SSL security support for orders on both front-end and back-end
- Checkout without account/Guest Checkout
- Shipping to multiple addresses in one order
- Table rates for weight and destination
- Configurable to authorize and charge, or authorize only and charge on creation of invoices
- Integrated with multiple PayPal gateways
- Accept Purchase Orders
- SagePay Integration
- View, edit, create and fulfill orders from admin panel.
- Create one or multiple invoices, shipments and credit memos per order to allow for split fulfilment
- Print invoices and packing slips
- Email Notifications of Orders
- Forgot Password Email from front-end and administration panel
- Customizable Order Emails
- Create and Edit Orders from the Admin Panel
- Order status and history
- Downloadable Products
- Address Book with unlimited addresses
- Account Dashboard for overview
- Inventory Management with Backordered items, Minimum and Maximum quantities
- Simple, Configurable (e.g. size, color, etc.), Bundled and Grouped Products
- Virtual Products
- Downloadable/Digital Products
- Approve, Edit and Delete Product Reviews
- Integrated with Google Analytics

These are just some of the great features that make Magento such a great plaform to base an Ecommerce project on. It’s for these reasons, that Magento is our Ecommerce standard platform and all Ecommerce projects we undertake are built upon this plaform.

The platform is especially useful for small businesses who are looking for an all-in-one package to complement their other in-house systems and without the need to integrate expensive applications that sit outside the Ecommerce site to perform specific tasks.

To find out more information on our E-Commerce service, please contact us.

The new site boasts a whole new design, eye-catching graphics, as well as an Online Survey section where ratings and comments from customers can be tracked in-house by the Raffles Team.

The new site can be found at: http://www.rafflescoffeehouse.com.

We’re regularly faced with questions about what the benefits email marketing can bring and how to go about starting a campaign. Effective email marketing can offer retailers a range of advantages from highly tangible revenue increases to softer benefits such as improved brand perceptions. An email marketing strategy based on best practice can help:

Drive sales and build revenue

- Communicating the right information at the right time will help drive sales.
- Email can help you acquire new customers (provided lists are used with care).
- Drive traffic to website (the right kind of traffic).

Reduce costs
- The right messages at the right time will help you retain customers – retention is much cheaper than acquisition.
- Email is much cheaper than traditional direct marketing.

Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
- Relevant and tailored information will score you points with consumers.
- A happier customer is less likely to defect to a rival.
- Build an emotional connection with your audience.
- Email provides excellent opportunities to remind customers of the benefits of your proposition and the value they are getting.

Whilst traditional direct marketing campaigns still have their place, email marketing is incredibly cost effective and allows the retailer to be much more reactive to changing conditions i.e. communicate one-off promotions, sales or in-store events to a very targeted audience. In addition the measurability of it means that the return on investment can be demonstrated in tangible terms.

Email marketing instantly gives you a depth of knowledge about how a customer interacted with the email i.e. if they opened it, if they clicked through to your site and ultimately if they went on to take up your offer. Used wisely this knowledge allows the retailer to build up a profile of each customer and produce more efficient and targeted mail campaigns which will ultimately improve conversion rates.

Ultimately once in the inbox the only difference between a promotional email and spam is what’s in the actual message. The subject line is the biggest indicator and so should be as relevant as possible and the best way to avoid spam filters? In a nutshell – use good grammar, good html, do not over punctuate or use ‘spammy’ words such as ‘win’, ‘free’, ‘cash’

In summary, it’s fair to say that carefully planned, strategic email marketing campaigns are much more likely to produce results for you. So before diving in ask yourself a few basic questions such as what are you trying to achieve? Who you are emailing? What is your proposition and is it of interest to your target group? What do you want recipients to do once they’ve opened your email? And how will you measure response and use the information to improve future campaigns?