Printers General in Stockport

Minuteman Press, Stockport, is a full colour, full service printing centre. The first and last step in printing.

In the higly competitive print environment it is a sophisticated and expensive business keeping ones web site at the leading edge.The site has to focus on two strands.Firstly: being visible to the search engines, particularly Google, because it has the biggest market share in the UK.This is achieved by including lots of text relevant to the sites main business. At the present time Flash content is an obstacle to this because search engines aren't very successful at reading pictures.By constantly developing the site. This is partly achieved by using Blogs. The blog will vary in sophistication from a Steven Fry type Tweet to a WordPress document; the latter will be indistinguishable from a normal web page.By creating hyper links from other sites to your own; the other sites should have 'status'. This will improve ones 'Page Ranking'. The way of achieving this is one of those mysteries of SEO (Search Engine optimisation)By persuading people to visit your site. Cranky pop videos on You Tube are one way of achieving this.Finally, by subscribing to Google Adwords. Plus, all the other add ons that Google offers to help your web site develop. Maps and Analytics spring to mind.Adsense seems an odd way of developing your site, Google adds relevant adverts to your site and pays you when visitors view them. Unfortunately, because the ads will be 'relevant' they will include advertisments to competitors productsThe second strand to a web site is ecommerce. Whilst making your web site come top of any Google search is challenging and potentially expensive; creating a successful ecommerce site is a modern miracle.It has to look good.It has to very easy to use.It has to include choice, choice of products and choice of designs.Making it easy to use means reducing the number of steps the customer has to take to the very minimum.Working against this principle are issues such as security that help reduce internet fraud. Amazon have minimized the steps for the customer by including 'one click' purchases.The customer needs constant reassurance with graphics that illustrate the progress of the purchase.Reassurance that it will 'only take 5 minutes'. Reassurance that the business is bona fida (including a postal address on the site). Reassurance that the products actually exist, with pictures of boxes.The choice of design is one of the biggest challenges to the business running the web site and needs frightening amounts of investment in generating relevant, stylish, well organised, modern designs.The design process has to work, in some cases this is not the case and the customer's art work disappears down the digital black hole. Or, one is left frustrated at ones inability to personalise the design.I am particularly impressed with the www.uprinting.com site; it is particularly attractive and useable.It provides a roll model for me, one that I can aspire to when developing my own site.www.minutemanpress.uk.com

Web design service; bindery; wide format printing.

Federation of Small Businesses

1993

Opening Hours: 8.30am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday